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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Evolution, Old & New, by Samuel Butler
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Evolution, Old & New
+       Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck,
+       as compared with that of Charles Darwin
+
+Author: Samuel Butler
+
+Release Date: November 9, 2007 [EBook #23427]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EVOLUTION, OLD & NEW ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Stacy Brown, Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Evolution, Old & New
+
+
+    "The want of a practical acquaintance with Natural History leads the
+    author to take an erroneous view of the bearing of his own theories
+    on those of Mr. Darwin.--_Review of 'Life and Habit,' by Mr. A. R.
+    Wallace, in 'Nature,' March 27, 1879._
+
+    "Neither lastly would our observer be driven out of his conclusion,
+    or from his confidence in its truth, by being told that he knows
+    nothing at all about the matter. He knows enough for his argument;
+    he knows the utility of the end; he knows the subserviency and
+    adaptation of the means to the end. These points being known, his
+    ignorance concerning other points, his doubts concerning other
+    points, affect not the certainty of his reasoning. The consciousness
+    of knowing little need not beget a distrust of that which he does
+    know."
+
+    Paley's '_Natural Theology_,' chap. i.
+
+
+
+
+Evolution, Old & New
+
+Or the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck,
+as compared with that of Charles Darwin
+
+_by_
+
+Samuel Butler
+
+
+  New York
+  E. P. Dutton & Company
+  681 Fifth Avenue
+
+
+
+
+_Made and printed in Great Britain_
+
+
+
+
+NOTE
+
+
+    The demand for a new edition of "Evolution, Old and New," gives me
+    an opportunity of publishing Butler's latest revision of his work.
+    The second edition of "Evolution, Old and New," which was published
+    in 1882 and re-issued with a new title-page in 1890, was merely a
+    re-issue of the first edition with a new preface, an appendix, and
+    an index. At a later date, though I cannot say precisely when,
+    Butler revised the text of the book in view of a future edition. The
+    corrections that he made are mainly verbal and do not, I think,
+    affect the argument to any considerable extent. Butler, however,
+    attached sufficient importance to them to incur the expense of
+    having the stereos of more than fifty pages cancelled and new
+    stereos substituted. I have also added a few entries to the index,
+    which are taken from a copy of the book, now in my possession, in
+    which Butler made a few manuscript notes.
+
+    R. A. STREATFEILD.
+
+    _October, 1911._
+
+
+
+
+AUTHOR'S PREFACE
+
+TO
+
+THE SECOND EDITION
+
+
+Since the proof-sheets of the Appendix to this book left my hands,
+finally corrected, and too late for me to be able to recast the first of
+the two chapters that compose it, I hear, with the most profound regret,
+of the death of Mr. Charles Darwin.
+
+It being still possible for me to refer to this event in a preface, I
+hasten to say how much it grates upon me to appear to renew my attack
+upon Mr. Darwin under the present circumstances.
+
+I have insisted in each of my three books on Evolution upon the
+immensity of the service which Mr. Darwin rendered to that
+transcendently important theory. In "Life and Habit," I said: "To the
+end of time, if the question be asked, 'Who taught people to believe in
+Evolution?' the answer must be that it was Mr. Darwin." This is true;
+and it is hard to see what palm of higher praise can be awarded to any
+philosopher.
+
+I have always admitted myself to be under the deepest obligations to Mr.
+Darwin's works; and it was with the greatest reluctance, not to say
+repugnance, that I became one of his opponents. I have partaken of his
+hospitality, and have had too much experience of the charming simplicity
+of his manner not to be among the readiest to at once admire and envy
+it. It is unfortunately true that I believe Mr. Darwin to have behaved
+badly to me; this is too notorious to be denied; but at the same time I
+cannot be blind to the fact that no man can be judge in his own case,
+and that after all Mr. Darwin may have been right, and I wrong.
+
+At the present moment, let me impress this latter alternative upon my
+mind as far as possible, and dwell only upon that side of Mr. Darwin's
+work and character, about which there is no difference of opinion among
+either his admirers or his opponents.
+
+_April 21, 1882._
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+Contrary to the advice of my friends, who caution me to avoid all
+appearance of singularity, I venture upon introducing a practice, the
+expediency of which I will submit to the judgment of the reader. It is
+one which has been adopted by musicians for more than a century--to the
+great convenience of all who are fond of music--and I observe that
+within the last few years two such distinguished painters as Mr.
+Alma-Tadema and Mr. Hubert Herkomer have taken to it. It is a matter for
+regret that the practice should not have been general at an earlier
+date, not only among painters and musicians, but also among the people
+who write books. It consists in signifying the number of a piece of
+music, picture, or book by the abbreviation "Op." and the number
+whatever it may happen to be.
+
+No work can be judged intelligently unless not only the author's
+relations to his surroundings, but also the relation in which the work
+stands to the life and other works of the author, is understood and
+borne in mind; nor do I know any way of conveying this information at a
+glance, comparable to that which I now borrow from musicians. When we
+see the number against a work of Beethoven, we need ask no further to be
+informed concerning the general character of the music. The same holds
+good more or less with all composers. Handel's works were not
+numbered--not at least his operas and oratorios. Had they been so, the
+significance of the numbers on Susanna and Theodora would have been at
+once apparent, connected as they would have been with the number on
+Jephthah, Handel's next and last work, in which he emphatically
+repudiates the influence which, perhaps in a time of self-distrust, he
+had allowed contemporary German music to exert over him. Many painters
+have dated their works, but still more have neglected doing so, and some
+of these have been not a little misconceived in consequence. As for
+authors, it is unnecessary to go farther back than Lord Beaconsfield,
+Thackeray, Dickens, and Scott, to feel how much obliged we should have
+been to any custom that should have compelled them to number their works
+in the order in which they were written. When we think of Shakespeare,
+any doubt which might remain as to the advantage of the proposed
+innovation is felt to disappear.
+
+My friends, to whom I urged all the above, and more, met me by saying
+that the practice was doubtless a very good one in the abstract, but
+that no one was particularly likely to want to know in what order my
+books had been written. To which I answered that even a bad book which
+introduced so good a custom would not be without value, though the value
+might lie in the custom, and not in the book itself; whereon, seeing
+that I was obstinate, they left me, and interpreting their doing so into
+at any rate a modified approbation of my design, I have carried it into
+practice.
+
+The edition of the 'Philosophie Zoologique' referred to in the following
+volume, is that edited by M. Chas. Martins, Paris, Librairie F. Savy,
+24, Rue de Hautefeuille, 1873.
+
+The edition of the 'Origin of Species' is that of 1876, unless another
+edition be especially named.
+
+The italics throughout the book are generally mine, except in the
+quotations from Miss Seward, where they are all her own.
+
+I am anxious also to take the present opportunity of acknowledging the
+obligations I am under to my friend Mr. H. F. Jones, and to other
+friends (who will not allow me to mention their names, lest more errors
+should be discovered than they or I yet know of), for the invaluable
+assistance they have given me while this work was going through the
+press. If I am able to let it go before the public with any comfort or
+peace of mind, I owe it entirely to the carefulness of their
+supervision.
+
+I am also greatly indebted to Mr. Garnett, of the British Museum, for
+having called my attention to many works and passages of which otherwise
+I should have known nothing.
+
+_March 31, 1879._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+  Statement of the Question--Current Opinion adverse to
+  Teleology                                                          1
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+  The Teleology of Paley and the Theologians                        12
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+  Impotence of Paley's Conclusion--The Teleology of the
+  Evolutionist                                                      24
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+  Failure of the First Evolutionists to see their Position
+  as Teleological                                                   34
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+  The Teleological Evolution of Organism--The Philosophy
+  of the Unconscious                                                43
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+  Scheme of the Remainder of the Work--Historical Sketch
+  of the Theory of Evolution                                        60
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+  Pre-Buffonian Evolution, and some German Writers                  68
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+  Buffon--Memoir                                                    74
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+  Buffon's Method--The Ironical Character of his Work               78
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+  Supposed Fluctuations of Opinion--Causes or Means of
+  the Transformation of Species                                     97
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+  Buffon--Puller Quotations                                        107
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+  Sketch of Dr. Erasmus Darwin's Life                              173
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+  Philosophy of Dr. Erasmus Darwin                                 195
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+  Fuller Quotations from the 'Zoonomia'                            214
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+  Memoir of Lamarck                                                235
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+  General Misconception concerning Lamarck--His
+  Philosophical Position                                           244
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+  Summary of the 'Philosophie Zoologique'                          261
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+  Mr. Patrick Matthew, MM. Étienne and Isidore Geoffroy
+  St. Hilaire, and Mr. Herbert Spencer                             315
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+  Main Points of Agreement and of Difference between the
+  Old and New Theories of Evolution                                335
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+  Natural Selection considered as a Means of Modification--The
+  Confusion which this Expression occasions                        345
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+  Mr. Darwin's Defence of the Expression, Natural
+  Selection--Professor Mivart and Natural Selection                362
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+  The Case of the Madeira Beetles as illustrating the
+  Difference between the Evolution of Lamarck and
+  of Mr. Charles Darwin--Conclusion                                373
+
+APPENDIX                                                           385
+
+INDEX                                                              409
+
+
+
+
+EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+STATEMENT OF THE QUESTION. CURRENT OPINION ADVERSE TO TELEOLOGY.
+
+
+Of all the questions now engaging the attention of those whose destiny
+has commanded them to take more or less exercise of mind, I know of none
+more interesting than that which deals with what is called
+teleology--that is to say, with design or purpose, as evidenced by the
+different parts of animals and plants.
+
+The question may be briefly stated thus:--
+
+Can we or can we not see signs in the structure of animals and plants,
+of something which carries with it the idea of contrivance so strongly
+that it is impossible for us to think of the structure, without at the
+same time thinking of contrivance, or design, in connection with it?
+
+It is my object in the present work to answer this question in the
+affirmative, and to lead my reader to agree with me, perhaps mainly, by
+following the history of that opinion which is now supposed to be fatal
+to a purposive view of animal and vegetable organs. I refer to the
+theory of evolution or descent with modification.
+
+Let me state the question more at large.
+
+When we see organs, or living tools--for there is no well-developed
+organ of any living being which is not used by its possessor as an
+instrument or tool for the effecting of some purpose which he considers
+or has considered for his advantage--when we see living tools which are
+as admirably fitted for the work required of them, as is the carpenter's
+plane for planing, or the blacksmith's hammer and anvil for the
+hammering of iron, or the tailor's needle for sewing, what conclusion
+shall we adopt concerning them?
+
+Shall we hold that they must have been designed or contrived, not
+perhaps by mental processes indistinguishable from those by which the
+carpenter's saw or the watch has been designed, but still by processes
+so closely resembling these that no word can be found to express the
+facts of the case so nearly as the word "design"? That is to say, shall
+we imagine that they were arrived at by a living mind as the result of
+scheming and contriving, and thinking (not without occasional mistakes)
+which of the courses open to it seemed best fitted for the occasion, or
+are we to regard the apparent connection between such an organ, we will
+say, as the eye, and the sight which is affected by it, as in no way due
+to the design or plan of a living intelligent being, but as caused
+simply by the accumulation, one upon another, of an almost infinite
+series of small pieces of good fortune?
+
+In other words, shall we see something for which, as Professor Mivart
+has well said, "to us the word 'mind' is the least inadequate and
+misleading symbol," as having given to the eagle an eyesight which can
+pierce the sun, but which, in the night is powerless; while to the owl
+it has given eyes which shun even the full moon, but find a soft
+brilliancy in darkness? Or shall we deny that there has been any purpose
+or design in the fashioning of these different kinds of eyes, and see
+nothing to make us believe that any living being made the eagle's eye
+out of something which was not an eye nor anything like one, or that
+this living being implanted this particular eye of all others in the
+eagle's head, as being most in accordance with the habits of the
+creature, and as therefore most likely to enable it to live contentedly
+and leave plenitude of offspring? And shall we then go on to maintain
+that the eagle's eye was formed little by little by a series of
+accidental variations, each one of which was thrown for, as it were,
+with dice?
+
+We shall most of us feel that there must have been a little cheating
+somewhere with these accidental variations before the eagle could have
+become so great a winner.
+
+I believe I have now stated the question at issue so plainly that there
+can be no mistake about its nature, I will therefore proceed to show as
+briefly as possible what have been the positions taken in regard to it
+by our forefathers, by the leaders of opinion now living, and what I
+believe will be the next conclusion that will be adopted for any length
+of time by any considerable number of people.
+
+In the times of the ancients the preponderance of opinion was in favour
+of teleology, though impugners were not wanting. Aristotle[1] leant
+towards a denial of purpose, while Plato[2] was a firm believer in
+design. From the days of Plato to our own times, there have been but few
+objectors to the teleological or purposive view of nature. If an animal
+had an eye, that eye was regarded as something which had been designed
+in order to enable its owner to see after such fashion as should be most
+to its advantage.
+
+This, however, is now no longer the prevailing opinion either in this
+country or in Germany.
+
+Professor Haeckel holds a high place among the leaders of German
+philosophy at the present day. He declares a belief in evolution and in
+purposiveness to be incompatible, and denies purpose in language which
+holds out little prospect of a compromise.
+
+"As soon, in fact," he writes, "as we acknowledge the exclusive activity
+of the physico-chemical causes in living (organic) bodies as well as in
+so-called inanimate (inorganic) nature,"--and this is what Professor
+Haeckel holds we are bound to do if we accept the theory of descent with
+modification--"we concede exclusive dominion to that view of the
+universe, which we may designate as _mechanical_, and which is opposed
+to the teleological conception. If we compare all the ideas of the
+universe prevalent among different nations at different times, we can
+divide them all into two sharply contrasted groups--a _causal_ or
+_mechanical_, and a _teleological_ or _vitalistic_. The latter has
+prevailed generally in biology until now, and accordingly the animal and
+vegetable kingdoms have been considered as the products of a creative
+power, acting for a definite purpose. In the contemplation of every
+organism, the unavoidable conviction seemed to press itself upon us,
+that such a wonderful machine, so complicated an apparatus for motion as
+exists in the organism, could only be produced by a power analogous to,
+but infinitely more powerful than the power of man in the construction
+of his machines."[3]
+
+A little lower down he continues:--
+
+"_I maintain with regard to_" this "_much talked of 'purpose in nature'
+that it has no existence but for those persons who observe phenomena in
+plants and animals in the most superficial manner_. Without going more
+deeply into the matter, we can see at once that the rudimentary organs
+are a formidable obstacle to this theory. And, indeed, anyone who makes
+a really close study of the organization and mode of life of the various
+animals and plants, ... must necessarily come to the conclusion, that
+this 'purposiveness' no more exists than the much talked of
+'beneficence' of the Creator."[4]
+
+Professor Haeckel justly sees no alternative between, upon the one hand,
+the creation of independent species by a Personal God--by a "Creator,"
+in fact, who "becomes an organism, who designs a plan, reflects upon and
+varies this plan, and finally forms creatures according to it, as a
+human architect would construct his building,"[5]--and the denial of all
+plan or purpose whatever. There can be no question but that he is right
+here. To talk of a "designer" who has no tangible existence, no organism
+with which to think, no bodily mechanism with which to carry his
+purposes into effect; whose design is not design inasmuch as it has to
+contend with no impediments from ignorance or impotence, and who thus
+contrives but by a sort of make-believe in which there is no
+contrivance; who has a familiar name, but nothing beyond a name which
+any human sense has ever been able to perceive--this is an abuse of
+words--an attempt to palm off a shadow upon our understandings as though
+it were a substance. It is plain therefore that there must either be a
+designer who "becomes an organism, designs a plan, &c.," or that there
+can be no designer at all and hence no design.
+
+We have seen which of these alternatives Professor Haeckel has adopted.
+He holds that those who accept evolution are bound to reject all
+"purposiveness." And here, as I have intimated, I differ from him, for
+reasons which will appear presently. I believe in an organic and
+tangible designer of every complex structure, for so long a time past,
+as that reasonable people will be incurious about all that occurred at
+any earlier time.
+
+Professor Clifford, again, is a fair representative of opinions which
+are finding favour with the majority of our own thinkers. He writes:--
+
+"There are here some words, however, which require careful definition.
+And first the word purpose. A thing serves a purpose when it is adapted
+for some end; thus a corkscrew is adapted to the end of extracting corks
+from bottles, and our lungs are adapted to the end of respiration. We
+may say that the extraction of corks is the purpose of the corkscrew,
+and that respiration is the purpose of the lungs, but here we shall have
+used the word in two different senses. A man made the corkscrew with a
+purpose in his mind, and he knew and intended that it should be used for
+pulling out corks. _But nobody made our lungs with a purpose in his mind
+and intended that they should be used for breathing._ The respiratory
+apparatus was adapted to its purpose by natural selection, namely, by
+the gradual preservation of better and better adaptations, and by the
+killing-off of the worse and imperfect adaptations."[6]
+
+No denial of anything like design could be more explicit. For Professor
+Clifford is well aware that the very essence of the "Natural Selection"
+theory, is that the variations shall have been mainly accidental and
+without design of any sort, but that the adaptations of structure to
+need shall have come about by the accumulation, through natural
+selection, of any variation that _happened_ to be favourable.
+
+It will be my business on a later page not only to show that the lungs
+are as purposive as the corkscrew, but furthermore that if drawing corks
+had been a matter of as much importance to us as breathing is, the list
+of our organs would have been found to comprise one corkscrew at the
+least, and possibly two, twenty, or ten thousand; even as we see that
+the trowel without which the beaver cannot plaster its habitation in
+such fashion as alone satisfies it, is incorporate into the beaver's own
+body by way of a tail, the like of which is to be found in no other
+animal.
+
+To take a name which carries with it a far greater authority, that of
+Mr. Charles Darwin. He writes:--
+
+"It is scarcely possible to avoid comparing the eye with a telescope. We
+know that this instrument has been perfected by the long-continued
+efforts of the highest human intellects; and we naturally infer that the
+eye has been formed by a somewhat analogous process. But may not this
+inference be presumptuous? Have we any right to declare that the Creator
+works by intellectual powers like those of man?"[7]
+
+Here purposiveness is not indeed denied point-blank, but the intention
+of the author is unmistakable, it is to refer the wonderful result to
+the gradual accumulation of small accidental improvements which were not
+due as a rule, if at all, to anything "analogous" to design.
+
+"Variation," he says, "will cause the slight alterations;" that is to
+say, the slight successive variations whose accumulation results in such
+a marvellous structure as the eye, are caused by--variation; or in other
+words, they are indefinite, due to nothing that we can lay our hands
+upon, and therefore certainly not due to design. "Generation," continues
+Mr. Darwin, "will multiply them almost infinitely, and natural selection
+will pick out with unerring skill each improvement. Let this process go
+on for millions of years, and during each year on millions of
+individuals of many kinds; and may we not believe that a living optical
+instrument might be thus formed as superior to one of glass, as the
+works of the Creator are to those of man?"[8]
+
+The reader will observe that the only skill--and this involves
+design--supposed by Mr. Darwin to be exercised in the foregoing process,
+is the "unerring skill" of natural selection. Natural selection,
+however, is, as he himself tells us, a synonym for the survival of the
+fittest, which last he declares to be the "more accurate" expression,
+and to be "sometimes" equally convenient.[9] It is clear then that he
+only speaks metaphorically when he here assigns "unerring skill" to the
+fact that the fittest individuals commonly live longest and transmit
+most offspring, and that he sees no evidence of design in the numerous
+slight successive "alterations"--or variations--which are "caused by
+variation."
+
+It were easy to multiply quotations which should prove that the denial
+of "purposiveness" is commonly conceived to be the inevitable
+accompaniment of a belief in evolution. I will, however, content myself
+with but one more--from Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire.
+
+"Whoever," says this author, "holds the doctrine of final causes, will,
+if he is consistent, hold also that of the immutability of species; and
+again, the opponent of the one doctrine will oppose the other also."[10]
+
+Nothing can be plainer; I believe, however, that even without quotation
+the reader would have recognized the accuracy of my contention that a
+belief in the purposiveness or design of animal and vegetable organs is
+commonly held to be incompatible with the belief that they have all been
+evolved from one, or at any rate, from not many original, and low, forms
+of life. Generally, however, as this incompatibility is accepted, it is
+not unchallenged. From time to time a voice is uplifted in protest,
+whose tones cannot be disregarded.
+
+"I have always felt," says Sir William Thomson, in his address to the
+British Association, 1871, "that this hypothesis" (natural selection)
+"does not contain the true theory of evolution, if indeed evolution
+there has been, in biology. Sir John Herschel, in expressing a
+favourable judgment on the hypothesis of zoological evolution (with
+however some reservation in respect to the origin of man), objected to
+the doctrine of natural selection on the ground that it was too like the
+Laputan method of making books, and that it did not sufficiently take
+into account a continually guiding and controlling intelligence. This
+seems to me a most valuable and instructive criticism. _I feel
+profoundly convinced that the argument of design has been greatly too
+much lost sight of in recent zoological speculations._ Reaction against
+the frivolities of teleology such as are to be found in the notes of the
+learned commentators on Paley's 'Natural Theology,' has, I believe, had
+a temporary effect in turning attention from the solid and irrefragable
+argument so well put forward in that excellent old book. But
+overpoweringly strong proofs of intelligent and benevolent design lie
+all around us,"[11] &c. Sir William Thomson goes on to infer that all
+living beings depend on an ever-acting Creator and Ruler--meaning, I am
+afraid, a Creator who is not an organism. Here I cannot follow him, but
+while gladly accepting his testimony to the omnipresence of intelligent
+design in almost every structure, whether of animal or plant, I shall
+content myself with observing the manner in which plants and animals act
+and with the consequences that are legitimately deducible from their
+action.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] See note to Mr. Darwin, Historical Sketch, &c., 'Origin of Species,
+p. xiii. ed. 1876, and Arist. 'Physicæ Auscultationes,' lib. ii. cap.
+viii. s. 2.
+
+[2] See Phædo and Timæus.
+
+[3] 'History of Creation,' vol. i. p. 18 (H. S. King and Co., 1876).
+
+[4] Ibid. p. 19.
+
+[5] 'History of Creation,' vol. i. p. 73 (H. S. King and Co., 1876).
+
+[6] 'Fortnightly Review,' new series, vol. xviii. p. 795.
+
+[7] 'Origin of Species,' p. 146, ed. 1876.
+
+[8] 'Origin of Species,' p. 146, ed. 1876.
+
+[9] Page 49.
+
+[10] 'Vie et Doctrine scientifique d'Étienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire,' by
+Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire. Paris, 1847, p. 344.
+
+[11] Address to the British Association, 1871.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE TELEOLOGY OF PALEY AND THE THEOLOGIANS.
+
+
+Let us turn for a while to Paley, to whom Sir W. Thomson has referred
+us. His work should be so well known that an apology is almost due for
+quoting it, yet I think it likely that at least nine out of ten of my
+readers will (like myself till reminded of it by Sir W. Thomson's
+address) have forgotten its existence.
+
+"In crossing a heath," says Paley, "suppose I pitched my foot against a
+stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly
+answer that for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there for
+ever; nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this
+answer. But suppose I had found a _watch_ upon the ground, and it should
+be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly
+think of the answer I had before given--that for anything I knew the
+watch might have been always there. Yet, why should not this answer
+serve for the watch as well as for the stone? Why is it not as
+admissible in the second case as in the first? For this reason, and for
+no other, viz. that when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive (what
+we could not discover in the stone) that its several parts are framed
+and put together for a purpose, e. g. that they are so formed and
+adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point
+out the hour of the day: that if the different parts had been
+differently shaped from what they are, of a different size from what
+they are, or placed after any other manner, or in any other order, than
+that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been
+carried on in the machine, or none that would have answered the use
+which is now served by it. To reckon up a few of the plainest of these
+parts, and of their offices all tending to one result: we see a
+cylindrical box containing a coiled elastic spring, which, by its
+endeavours to relax itself, turns round the box. We next observe a
+flexible chain (artificially wrought for the sake of flexure)
+communicating the action of the spring from the box to the fusee. We
+then find a series of wheels the teeth of which catch in, and apply to
+each other, conducting the motion from the fusee to the balance, and
+from the balance to the pointer; and at the same time by the size and
+shape of those wheels so regulating the motion as to terminate in
+causing an index, by an equable and measured progression, to pass over a
+given space in a given time. We take notice that the wheels are made of
+brass in order to keep them from rust; the springs of steel, no other
+metal being so elastic; that over the face of the watch there is placed
+a glass, a material employed on no other part of the work, but in the
+room of which if there had been any other than a transparent substance,
+the hour could not have been observed without opening the case. This
+mechanism being observed, ... the inference, we think, is inevitable
+that the watch must have had a maker; that there must have existed, at
+_some time, and at some place or other, an artificer_ or artificers who
+formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who
+comprehended its construction and designed its use."[12]
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"That an animal is a machine, is a proposition neither correctly true
+nor wholly false.... I contend that there is a mechanism in animals;
+that this mechanism is as properly such, as it is in machines made by
+art; that this mechanism is intelligible and certain; that it is not the
+less so because it often begins and terminates with something which is
+not mechanical; that wherever it is intelligible and certain, it
+demonstrates intention and contrivance, as well in the works of nature
+as in those of art; and that it is the best demonstration which either
+can afford."[13]
+
+There is only one legitimate inference deducible from these premises if
+they are admitted as sound, namely, that there must have existed "_at
+some time, and in some place, an artificer_" who formed the animal
+mechanism after much the same mental processes of observation,
+endeavour, successful contrivance, and after a not wholly unlike
+succession of bodily actions, as those with which a watchmaker has made
+a watch. Otherwise the conclusion is impotent, and the whole argument
+becomes a mere juggle of words.
+
+"Now, supposing or admitting," continues Paley, "that we know nothing of
+the proper internal constitution of a gland, or of the mode of its
+acting upon the blood; then our situation is precisely like that of an
+unmechanical looker-on who stands by a stocking loom, a corn mill, a
+carding machine, or a threshing machine, at work, the fabric and
+mechanism of which, as well as all that passes within, is hidden from
+his sight by the outside case; or if seen, would be too complicated for
+his uninformed, uninstructed understanding to comprehend. And what is
+that situation? This spectator, ignorant as he is, sees at one end a
+material enter the machine, as unground grain the mill, raw cotton the
+carding machine, sheaves of unthreshed corn the threshing machine, and
+when he casts his eye to the other end of the apparatus, he sees the
+material issuing from it in a new state and what is more, a state
+manifestly adapted for its future uses: the grain in meal fit for the
+making of bread, the wool in rovings fit for the spinning into threads,
+the sheaf in corn fit for the mill. Is it necessary that this man, in
+order to be convinced that design, that intention, that contrivance has
+been employed about the machine, should be allowed to pull it to pieces,
+should be enabled to examine the parts separately, explore their action
+upon one another, or their operation, whether simultaneous or
+successive, upon the material which is presented to them? He may long to
+do this to satisfy his curiosity; he may desire to do it to improve his
+theoretic knowledge; ... but for the purpose of ascertaining the
+existence of counsel and design in the formation of the machine, he
+wants no such intromission or privity. The effect upon the material, the
+change produced in it, the utility of the change for future
+applications, abundantly testify, be the concealed part of the machine,
+or of its construction, what it will, _the hand and agency of a
+contriver_."[14]
+
+This is admirably put, but it will apply to the mechanism of animal and
+vegetable bodies only, if it is used to show that they too must have had
+a contriver who has a hand, or something tantamount to one; who does
+act; who, being a contriver, has what all other contrivers must have, if
+they are to be called contrivers--a body which can suffer more or less
+pain or chagrin if the contrivance is unsuccessful. If this is what
+Paley means, his argument is indeed irrefragable; but if he does not
+intend this, his words are frivolous, as so clear and acute a reasoner
+must have perfectly well known.
+
+Whether Paley's argument will prove a source of lasting strength to
+himself or no, is a point which my readers will decide presently; but I
+am very clear about its usefulness to my own position. I know few
+writers whom I would willingly quote more largely, or from whom I find
+it harder to leave off quoting when I have once begun. A few more
+passages, however, must suffice.
+
+"I challenge any man to produce in the joints and pivots of the most
+complicated or the most flexible machine that ever was contrived, a
+construction _more artificial_" (here we have it again), "or more
+evidently artificial than the human neck. Two things were to be done.
+The head was to have the power of bending forward and backward as in the
+act of nodding, stooping, looking upwards or downwards; and at the same
+time of turning itself round upon the body to a certain extent, the
+quadrant, we will say, or rather perhaps a hundred and twenty degrees of
+a circle. For these two purposes two distinct contrivances are employed.
+First the head rests immediately upon the uppermost part of the
+vertebra, and is united to it by a hinge-joint; upon this joint the head
+plays freely backward and forward as far either way as is necessary or
+as the ligaments allow, which was the first thing required.
+
+"But then the rotatory motion is thus unprovided for; therefore,
+secondly, to make the head capable of this a further mechanism is
+introduced, not between the head and the uppermost bone of the neck,
+where the hinge is, but between that bone and the next underneath it. It
+is a mechanism resembling a tenon and mortise. This second or uppermost
+bone but one has what the anatomists call a process, viz. a projection
+somewhat similar in size and shape to a tooth, which tooth, entering a
+corresponding hollow socket in the bone above it, forms a pivot or axle,
+upon which that upper bone, together with the head which it supports,
+turns freely in a circle, and as far in the circle as the attached
+muscles permit the head to turn. Thus are both motions perfect without
+interfering with each other. When we nod the head we use the
+hinge-joint, which lies between the head and the first bone of the neck.
+When we turn the head round, we use the tenon and mortise, which runs
+between the first bone of the neck and the second. We see the same
+contrivance and the same principle employed in the frame or mounting of
+a telescope. It is occasionally requisite that the object end of the
+instrument be moved up and down as well as horizontally or equatorially.
+For the vertical motion there is a hinge upon which the telescope plays,
+for the horizontal or equatorial motion, an axis upon which the
+telescope and the hinge turn round together. And this is exactly the
+mechanism which is applied to the action of the head, nor will anyone
+here doubt of the existence of counsel and design, except it be by that
+debility of mind which can trust to its own reasonings in nothing."[15]
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"The patella, or knee-pan, is a curious little bone; in its form and
+office unlike any other bone in the body. It is circular, the size of a
+crown-piece, pretty thick, a little convex on both sides, and covered
+with a smooth cartilage. It lies upon the front of the knee, and the
+powerful tendons by which the leg is brought forward pass through it (or
+rather make it a part of their continuation) from their origin in the
+thigh to their insertion in the tibia. It protects both the tendon and
+the joint from any injury which either might suffer by the rubbing of
+one against the other, or by the pressure of unequal surfaces. It also
+gives to the tendons a very considerable mechanical advantage by
+altering the line of their direction, and by advancing it farther out of
+the centre of motion; and this upon the principles of the resolution of
+force, upon which all machinery is founded. These are its uses. But what
+is most observable in it is that it appears to be supplemental, as it
+were, to the frame; added, as it should almost seem, afterwards; not
+quite necessary, but very convenient. It is separate from the other
+bones; that is, it is not connected with any other bones by the common
+mode of union. It is soft, or hardly formed in infancy; and is produced
+by an ossification, of the inception or progress of which no account can
+be given from the structure or exercise of the part."[16]
+
+It is positively painful to me to pass over Paley's description of the
+joints, but I must content myself with a single passage from this
+admirable chapter.
+
+"The joints, or rather the ends of the bones which form them, display
+also in their configuration another use. The nerves, blood-vessels, and
+tendons which are necessary to the life, or for the motion of the limbs,
+must, it is evident in their way from the trunk of the body to the place
+of their destination, travel over the moveable joints; and it is no less
+evident that in this part of their course they will have from sudden
+motions, and from abrupt changes of curvature, to encounter the danger
+of compression, attrition, or laceration. To guard fibres so tender
+against consequences so injurious, their path is in those parts
+protected with peculiar care; and that by a provision in the figure of
+the bones themselves. The nerves which supply the fore arm, especially
+the inferior cubital nerves, are at the elbow conducted by a kind of
+covered way, between the condyle, or rather under the inner
+extuberances, of the bone which composes the upper part of the arm. At
+the knee the extremity of the thigh-bone is divided by a sinus or cliff
+into two heads or protuberances; and these heads on the back part stand
+out beyond the cylinder of the bone. Through the hollow which lies
+between the hind parts of these two heads, that is to say, under the
+ham, between the ham strings, and within the concave recess of the bone
+formed by the extuberances on either side; in a word, along a defile
+between rocks pass the great vessels and nerves which go to the leg. Who
+led these vessels by a road so defended and secured? In the joint at the
+shoulder, in the edge of the cup which receives the head of the bone, is
+a notch which is covered at the top with a ligament. Through this hole
+thus guarded the blood-vessels steal to their destination in the arm
+instead of mounting over the edge of the concavity."[17]
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"What contrivance can be more mechanical than the following, viz.: a
+slit in one tendon to let another tendon pass through it? This structure
+is found in the tendons which move the toes and fingers. The long
+tendon, as it is called in the foot, which bends the first joint of the
+toe, passes through the short tendon which bends the second joint; which
+course allows to the sinews more liberty and a more commodious action
+than it would otherwise have been capable of exerting. There is nothing,
+I believe, in a silk or cotton mill, in the belts or straps or ropes by
+which the motion is communicated from one part of the machine to another
+that is more artificial, or more evidently so, than this perforation.
+
+"The next circumstance which I shall mention under this head of
+muscular arrangement, is so decidedly a mark of intention, that it
+always appeared to me to supersede in some measure the necessity of
+seeking for any other observation upon the subject; and that
+circumstance is the tendons which pass from the leg to the foot being
+bound down by a ligament at the ankle, the foot is placed at a
+considerable angle with the leg. It is manifest, therefore, that
+flexible strings passing along the interior of the angle, if left to
+themselves, would, when stretched, start from it. The obvious" (and it
+must not be forgotten that the preventive _was_ obvious) "preventive is
+to tie them down. And this is done in fact. Across the instep, or rather
+just above it, the anatomist finds a strong ligament, under which the
+tendons pass to the foot. The effect of the ligament as a bandage can be
+made evident to the senses, for if it be cut the tendons start up. The
+simplicity, yet the clearness of this contrivance, its exact resemblance
+to established resources of art, place it amongst the most indubitable
+manifestations of design with which we are acquainted."
+
+Then follows a passage which is interesting, as being the earliest
+attempt I know of to bring forward an argument against evolution, which
+was, even in Paley's day, called "Darwinism," after Dr. Erasmus Darwin
+its propounder.[18] The argument, I mean, which is drawn from the
+difficulty of accounting for the incipiency of complex structures. This
+has been used with greater force by the Rev. J. J. Murphy, Professor
+Mivart, and others, against that (as I believe) erroneous view of
+evolution which is now generally received as Darwinism.
+
+"There is also a further use," says Paley, "to be made of this present
+example, and that is as it precisely contradicts the opinion, that the
+parts of animals may have been all formed by what is called appetency,
+i. e. endeavour, perpetuated and imperceptibly working its effect
+through an incalculable series of generations. We have here no
+endeavour, but the reverse of it; a constant resistency and reluctance.
+The endeavour is all the other way. The pressure of the ligament
+constrains the tendons; the tendons react upon the pressure of the
+ligament. It is impossible that the ligament should ever have been
+generated by the exercise of the tendons, or in the course of that
+exercise, forasmuch as the force of the tendon perpendicularly resists
+the fibre which confines it, and is constantly endeavouring not to form
+but to rupture and displace the threads of which the ligament is
+composed."[19]
+
+This must suffice.
+
+"True theories," says M. Flourens, inspired by a passage from
+Fontenelle, which he proceeds to quote, "true theories make themselves,"
+they are not made, but are born and grow; they cannot be stopped from
+insisting upon their vitality by anything short of intellectual
+violence, nor will a little violence only suffice to kill them. "True
+theories," he continues, "are but the spontaneous mental coming
+together of facts, which have combined with one another by virtue only
+of their own natural affinity."[20]
+
+When a number of isolated facts, says Fontenelle, take form, group
+themselves together coherently, and present the mind so vividly with an
+idea of their interdependence and mutual bearing upon each other, that
+no matter how violently we tear them asunder they insist on coming
+together again; then, and not till then, have we a theory.
+
+Now I submit that there is hardly one of my readers who can be
+considered as free from bias or prejudice, who will not feel that the
+idea of design--or perception by an intelligent living being, of ends to
+be obtained and of the means of obtaining them--and the idea of the
+tendons of the foot and of the ligament which binds them down, come
+together so forcibly, that no matter how strongly Professors Haeckel and
+Clifford and Mr. Darwin may try to separate them, they are no sooner
+pulled asunder than they straightway fly together again of themselves.
+
+I shall argue, therefore, no further upon this head, but shall assume it
+as settled, and shall proceed at once to the consideration that next
+suggests itself.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[12] 'Natural Theology,' ch. i. § 1.
+
+[13] Ch. vii.
+
+[14] Ch. vii.
+
+[15] 'Natural Theology.' ch. viii.
+
+[16] 'Natural Theology,' ch. viii.
+
+[17] 'Natural Theology,' ch. viii.
+
+[18] "What!" says Coleridge, in a note on Stillingfleet, to which Mr.
+Garnett, of the British Museum, has kindly called my attention, "Did Sir
+Walter Raleigh believe that a male and female ounce (and if so why not
+two tigers and lions, &c.?) would have produced in course of generations
+a cat, or a cat a lion? This is Darwinising with a vengeance."--See
+'Athenæum,' March 27, 1875, p. 423.
+
+[19] 'Natural Theology,' ch. ix.
+
+[20] "La vraie théorie n'est que l'enchaînement naturel des faits, qui
+dès qu'ils sont assez nombreux, se touchent, et se lient, les uns aux
+autres par leur seule vertu propre."--Flourens, 'Buffon, Hist. de ses
+Travaux.' Paris, 1844, p. 82.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+IMPOTENCE OF PALEY'S CONCLUSION. THE TELEOLOGY OF THE EVOLUTIONIST.
+
+
+Though the ideas of design, and of the foot, have come together in our
+minds with sufficient spontaneity, we yet feel that there is a
+difference--and a wide difference if we could only lay our hands upon
+it--between the design and manufacture of the ligament and tendons of
+the foot on the one hand, and on the other the design, manufacture, and
+combination of artificial strings, pieces of wood, and bandages, whereby
+a model of the foot might be constructed.
+
+If we conceive of ourselves as looking simultaneously upon a real foot,
+and upon an admirably constructed artificial one, placed by the side of
+it, the idea of design, and design by an intelligent living being with a
+body and soul (without which, as has been already insisted on, the use
+of the word design is delusive), will present itself strongly to our
+minds in connection both with the true foot, and with the model; but we
+find another idea asserting itself with even greater strength, namely,
+that the design of the true foot is far more intricate, and yet is
+carried into execution in far more masterly manner than that of the
+model. We not only feel that there is a wider difference between the
+ability, time, and care which have been lavished on the real foot and
+upon the model, than there is between the skill and the time taken to
+produce Westminster Abbey, and that bestowed upon a gingerbread cake
+stuck with sugar plums so as to represent it, but also that these two
+objects must have been manufactured on different principles. We do not
+for a moment doubt that the real foot was designed, but we are so
+astonished at the dexterity of the designer that we are at a loss for
+some time to think who could have designed it, where he can live, in
+what manner he studied, for how long, and by what processes he carried
+out his design, when matured, into actual practice. Until recently it
+was thought that there was no answer to many of these questions, more
+especially to those which bear upon the mode of manufacture. For the
+last hundred years, however, the importance of a study has been
+recognized which does actually reveal to us in no small degree the
+processes by which the human foot is manufactured, so that in the
+endeavour to lay our hands upon the points of difference between the
+kind of design with which the foot itself is designed, and the design of
+the model, we turn naturally to the guidance of those who have made this
+study their specialty; and a very wide difference does this study,
+embryology, at once reveal to us.
+
+Writing of the successive changes through which each embryo is forced to
+pass, the late Mr. G. H. Lewes says that "none of these phases have any
+adaptation to the future state of the animal, but are in positive
+contradiction to it or are simply purposeless; whereas all show stamped
+on them the unmistakable characters of _ancestral_ adaptation, and the
+progressions of organic evolution. What does the fact imply? There is
+not a single known example of a complex organism which is not developed
+out of simpler forms. Before it can attain the complex structure which
+distinguishes it, there must be an evolution of forms similar to those
+which distinguish the structure of organisms lower in the series. On the
+hypothesis of a plan which prearranged the organic world, nothing could
+be more unworthy of a supreme intelligence than this inability to
+construct an organism at once, without making several previous tentative
+efforts, undoing to-day what was so carefully done yesterday, and
+_repeating for centuries the same tentatives in the same succession_. Do
+not let us blink this consideration. There is a traditional phrase much
+in vogue among the anthropomorphists, which arose naturally enough from
+a tendency to take human methods as an explanation of the Divine--a
+phrase which becomes a sort of argument--'The Great Architect.' But if
+we are to admit the human point of view, a glance at the facts of
+embryology must produce very uncomfortable reflections. For what should
+we say to an architect who was unable, or being able was obstinately
+unwilling, to erect a palace except by first using his materials in the
+shape of a hut, then pulling them down and rebuilding them as a cottage,
+then adding story to story and room to room, _not_ with any reference to
+the ultimate purposes of the palace, but wholly with reference to the
+way in which houses were constructed in ancient times? What should we
+say to the architect who could not form a museum out of bricks and
+mortar, but was forced to begin as if going to construct a mansion, and
+after proceeding some way in this direction, altered his plan into a
+palace, and that again into a museum? Yet this is the sort of succession
+on which organisms are constructed. The fact has long been familiar; how
+has it been reconciled with infinite wisdom? Let the following passage
+answer for a thousand:--'The embryo is nothing like the miniature of the
+adult. For a long while the body in its entirety and in its details,
+presents the strangest of spectacles. Day by day and hour by hour, the
+aspect of the scene changes, and this instability is exhibited by the
+most essential parts no less than by the accessory parts. One would say
+that nature feels her way, and only reaches the goal after many times
+missing the path' (on dirait que la nature tâtonne et ne conduit son
+oeuvre à bon fin, qu'après s'être souvent trompée)."[21]
+
+The above passage does not, I think, affect the evidence for design
+which we adduced in the preceding chapter. However strange the process
+of manufacture may appear, when the work comes to be turned out the
+design is too manifest to be doubted.
+
+If the reader were to come upon some lawyer's deed which dealt with
+matters of such unspeakable intricacy, that it baffled his imagination
+to conceive how it could ever have been drafted, and if in spite of this
+he were to find the intricacy of the provisions to be made, exceeded
+only by the ease and simplicity with which the deed providing for them
+was found to work in practice; and after this, if he were to discover
+that the deed, by whomsoever drawn, had nevertheless been drafted upon
+principles which at first seemed very foreign to any according to which
+he was in the habit of drafting deeds himself, as for example, that the
+draftsman had begun to draft a will as a marriage settlement, and so
+forth--yet an observer would not, I take it, do either of two things. He
+would not in the face of the result deny the design, making himself
+judge rather of the method of procedure than of the achievement. Nor yet
+after insisting in the manner of Paley, on the wonderful proofs of
+intention and on the exquisite provisions which were to be found in
+every syllable--thus leading us up to the highest pitch of
+expectation--would he present us with such an impotent conclusion as
+that the designer, though a living person and a true designer, was yet
+immaterial and intangible, a something, in fact, which proves to be a
+nothing: an omniscient and omnipotent vacuum.
+
+Our observer would feel he need not have been at such pains to establish
+his design if this was to be the upshot of his reasoning. He would
+therefore admit the design, and by consequence the designer, but would
+probably ask a little time for reflection before he ventured to say who,
+or what, or where the designer was. Then gaining some insight into the
+manner in which the deed had been drawn, he would conclude that the
+draftsman was a specialist who had had long practice in this particular
+kind of work, but who now worked almost as it might be said
+automatically and without consciousness, and found it difficult to
+depart from a habitual method of procedure.
+
+We turn, then, on Paley, and say to him: "We have admitted your design
+and your designer. Where is he? Show him to us. If you cannot show him
+to us as flesh and blood, show him as flesh and sap; show him as a
+living cell; show him as protoplasm. Lower than this we should not
+fairly go; it is not in the bond or _nexus_ of our ideas that something
+utterly inanimate and inorganic should scheme, design, contrive, and
+elaborate structures which can make mistakes: it may elaborate low
+unerring things, like crystals, but it cannot elaborate those which have
+the power to err. Nevertheless, we will commit such abuse with our
+understandings as to waive this point, and we will ask you to show him
+to us as air which, if it cannot be seen, yet can be felt, weighed,
+handled, transferred from place to place, be judged by its effects, and
+so forth; or if this may not be, give us half a grain of hydrogen,
+diffused through all space and invested with some of the minor
+attributes of matter; or if you cannot do this, give us an imponderable
+like electricity, or even the higher mathematics, but give us something
+or throw off the mask and tell us fairly out that it is your paid
+profession to hoodwink us on this matter if you can, and that you are
+but doing your best to earn an honest living."
+
+We may fancy Paley as turning the tables upon us and as saying: "But you
+too have admitted a designer--you too then must mean a designer with a
+body and soul, who must be somewhere to be found in space, and who must
+live in time. Where is this your designer? Can you show him more than I
+can? Can you lay your finger on him and demonstrate him so that a child
+shall see him and know him, and find what was heretofore an isolated
+idea concerning him, combine itself instantaneously with the idea of the
+designer, we will say, of the human foot, so that no power on earth
+shall henceforth tear those two ideas asunder? Surely if you cannot do
+this, you too are trifling with words, and abusing your own mind and
+that of your reader. Where, then, is your designer of man? Who made him?
+And where, again, is your designer of beasts and birds, of fishes, and
+of plants?"
+
+Our answer is simple enough; it is that we can and do point to a living
+tangible person with flesh, blood, eyes, nose, ears, organs, senses,
+dimensions, who did of his own cunning after infinite proof of every
+kind of hazard and experiment scheme out, and fashion each organ of the
+human body. This is the person whom we claim as the designer and
+artificer of that body, and he is the one of all others the best fitted
+for the task by his antecedents, and his practical knowledge of the
+requirements of the case--for he is man himself.
+
+Not man, the individual of any given generation, but man in the entirety
+of his existence from the dawn of life onwards to the present moment. In
+like manner we say that the designer of all organisms is so incorporate
+with the organisms themselves--so lives, moves, and has its being in
+those organisms, and is so one with them--they in it, and it in
+them--that it is more consistent with reason and the common use of
+words to see the designer of each living form in the living form itself,
+than to look for its designer in some other place or person.
+
+Thus we have a third alternative presented to us.
+
+Mr. Charles Darwin and his followers deny design, as having any
+appreciable share in the formation of organism at all.
+
+Paley and the theologians insist on design, but upon a designer outside
+the universe and the organism.
+
+The third opinion is that suggested in the first instance, and carried
+out to a very high degree of development by Buffon. It was improved,
+and, indeed, made almost perfect by Dr. Erasmus Darwin, but too much
+neglected by him after he had put it forward. It was borrowed, as I
+think we may say with some confidence, from Dr. Darwin by Lamarck, and
+was followed up by him ardently thenceforth, during the remainder of his
+life, though somewhat less perfectly comprehended by him than it had
+been by Dr. Darwin. It is that the design which has designed organisms,
+has resided within, and been embodied in, the organisms themselves.
+
+With but a very little change in the present signification of words, the
+question resolves itself into this.
+
+Shall we see God henceforth as embodied in all living forms; as dwelling
+in them; as being that power in them whereby they have learnt to fashion
+themselves, each one according to its ideas of its own convenience, and
+to make itself not only a microcosm, or little world, but a little
+unwritten history of the universe from its own point of view into the
+bargain? From everlasting, in time past, only in so far as life has
+lasted; invisible, only in so far as the ultimate connection between the
+will to do and the thing which does is invisible; imperishable, only in
+so far as life as a whole is imperishable; omniscient and omnipotent,
+within the limits only of a very long and large experience, but ignorant
+and impotent in respect of all else--limited in all the above respects,
+yet even so incalculably vaster than anything that we can conceive?
+
+Or shall we see God as we were taught to say we saw him when we were
+children--as an artificial and violent attempt to combine ideas which
+fly asunder and asunder, no matter how often we try to force them into
+combination?
+
+"The true mainspring of our existence," says Buffon, "lies not in those
+muscles, veins, arteries, and nerves, which have been described with so
+much minuteness, it is to be found in the more hidden forces which are
+not bounden by the gross mechanical laws which we would fain set over
+them. Instead of trying to know these forces by their effects, we have
+endeavoured to uproot even their very idea, so as to banish them utterly
+from philosophy. But they return to us and with renewed vigour; they
+return to us in gravitation, in chemical affinity, in the phenomena of
+electricity, &c. Their existence rests upon the clearest evidence; the
+omnipresence of their action is indisputable, but that action is hidden
+away from our eyes, and is a matter of inference only; we cannot
+actually see them, therefore we find difficulty in admitting that they
+exist; we wish to judge of everything by its exterior; we imagine that
+the exterior is the whole, and deeming that it is not permitted us to
+go beyond it, we neglect all that may enable us to do so."[22]
+
+Or may we not say that the unseen parts of God are those deep buried
+histories, the antiquity and the repeatedness of which go as far beyond
+that of any habit handed down to us from our earliest protoplasmic
+ancestor, as the distance of the remotest star in space transcends our
+distance from the sun?
+
+By vivisection and painful introspection we can rediscover many a long
+buried history--rekindling that sense of novelty in respect of its
+action, whereby we can alone become aware of it. But there are other
+remoter histories, and more repeated thoughts and actions, before which
+we feel so powerless to reawaken fresh interest concerning them, that we
+give up the attempt in despair, and bow our heads, overpowered by the
+sense of their immensity. Thus our inability to comprehend God is
+coextensive with our difficulty in going back upon the past--and our
+sense of him is a dim perception of our own vast and now inconceivably
+remote history.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[21] Quatrefages, 'Metamorphoses de l'Homme et des Animaux,' 1862, p.
+42; G. H. Lewes, 'Physical Basis of Mind,' 1877, p. 83.
+
+[22] Tom. ii. p. 486, 1794.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+FAILURE OF THE FIRST EVOLUTIONISTS TO SEE THEIR POSITION AS
+TELEOLOGICAL.
+
+
+It follows necessarily from the doctrine of Dr. Erasmus Darwin and
+Lamarck, if not from that of Buffon himself, that the greater number of
+organs are as purposive to the evolutionist as to the theologian, and
+far more intelligibly so. Circumstances, however, prevented these
+writers from acknowledging this fact to the world, and perhaps even to
+themselves. Their _crux_ was, as it still is to so many evolutionists,
+the presence of rudimentary organs, and the processes of embryological
+development. They would not admit that rudimentary and therefore useless
+organs were designed by a Creator to take their place once and for ever
+as part of a scheme whose main idea was, that every animal structure was
+to serve some useful end in connection with its possessor.
+
+This was the doctrine of final causes as then commonly held; in the face
+of rudimentary organs it was absurd. Buffon was above all things else a
+plain matter of fact thinker, who refused to go far beyond the obvious.
+Like all other profound writers, he was, if I may say so, profoundly
+superficial. He felt that the aim of research does not consist in the
+knowing this or that, but in the easing of the desire to know or
+understand more completely--in the peace of mind which passeth all
+understanding. His was the perfection of a healthy mental organism by
+which over effort is felt instinctively to be as vicious and
+contemptible as indolence. He knew this too well to know the grounds of
+his knowledge, but we smaller people who know it less completely, can
+see that such felicitous instinctive tempering together of the two great
+contradictory principles, love of effort and love of ease, has underlain
+every step of all healthy growth through all conceivable time. Nothing
+is worth looking at which is seen either too obviously or with too much
+difficulty. Nothing is worth doing or well done which is not done fairly
+easily, and some little deficiency of effort is more pardonable than any
+very perceptible excess; for virtue has ever erred rather on the side of
+self-indulgence than of asceticism, and well-being has ever advanced
+through the pleasures rather than through austerity.
+
+According to Buffon, then--as also according to Dr. Darwin, who was just
+such another practical and genial thinker, and who was distinctly a
+pupil of Buffon, though a most intelligent and original one--if an organ
+after a reasonable amount of inspection appeared to be useless, it was
+to be called useless without more ado, and theories were to be ordered
+out of court if they were troublesome. In like manner, if animals bred
+freely _inter se_ before our eyes, as for example the horse and ass, the
+fact was to be noted, but no animals were to be classed as capable of
+interbreeding until they had asserted their right to such classification
+by breeding with tolerable certainty. If, again, an animal looked as if
+it felt, that is to say, if it moved about pretty quickly or made a
+noise, it must be held to feel; if it did neither of these things, it
+did not look as if it felt and therefore it must be said not to feel.
+_De non apparentibus et non existentibus eadem est lex_ was one of the
+chief axioms of their philosophy; no writers have had a greater horror
+of mystery or of ideas that have not become so mastered as to be, or to
+have been, superficial. Lamarck was one of those men of whom I believe
+it has been said that they have brain upon the brain. He had his theory
+that an animal could not feel unless it had a nervous system, and at
+least a spinal marrow--and that it could not think at all without a
+brain--all his facts, therefore, have to be made to square with this.
+With Buffon and Dr. Darwin we feel safe that however wrong they may
+sometimes be, their conclusions have always been arrived at on that
+fairly superficial view of things in which, as I have elsewhere said,
+our nature alone permits us to be comforted.
+
+To these writers, then, the doctrine of final causes for rudimentary
+organs was a piece of mystification and an absurdity; no less fatal to
+any such doctrine were the processes of embryological development. It
+was plain that the commonly received teleology must be given up; but the
+idea of design or purpose was so associated in their minds with
+theological design that they avoided it altogether. They seem to have
+forgotten that an internal teleology is as much teleology as an external
+one; hence, unfortunately, though their whole theory of development is
+intensely purposive, it is the fact rather than the name of teleology
+which has hitherto been insisted upon, even by the greatest writers on
+evolution--the name having been denied even by those who were most
+insisting on the thing itself.
+
+It is easy to understand the difficulty felt by the fathers of evolution
+when we remember how much had to be seen before the facts could lie well
+before them. It was necessary to attain, firstly, to a perception of the
+unity of person between parents and offspring in successive generations;
+secondly, it must be seen that an organism's memory goes back for
+generations beyond its birth, to the first beginnings in fact, of which
+we know anything whatever; thirdly, the latency of that memory, as of
+memory generally till the associated ideas are reproduced, must be
+brought to bear upon the facts of heredity; and lastly, the
+unconsciousness with which habitual actions come to be performed, must
+be assigned as the explanation of the unconsciousness with which we grow
+and discharge most of our natural functions.
+
+Buffon was too busy with the fact that animals descended with
+modification at all, to go beyond the development and illustration of
+this great truth. I doubt whether he ever saw more than the first, and
+that dimly, of the four considerations above stated.
+
+Dr. Darwin was the first to point out the first two considerations with
+some clearness, but he can hardly be said to have understood their full
+importance: the two latter ideas do not appear to have occurred to him.
+
+Lamarck had little if any perception of any one of the four. When,
+however, they are firmly seized and brought into their due bearings one
+upon another, the facts of heredity become as simple as those of a man
+making a tobacco pipe, and rudimentary organs are seen to be essentially
+of the same character as the little rudimentary protuberance at the
+bottom of the pipe to which I referred in 'Erewhon.'[23]
+
+These organs are now no longer useful, but they once were so, and were
+therefore once purposive, though not so now. They are the expressions of
+a bygone usefulness; sayings, as it were, about which there was at one
+time infinite wrangling, as to what both the meaning and the expression
+should best be, so that they then had living significance in the mouths
+of those who used them, though they have become such mere shibboleths
+and cant formulæ to ourselves that we think no more of their meaning
+than we do of Julius Cæsar in the month of July. They continue to be
+reproduced through the force of habit, and through indisposition to get
+out of any familiar groove of action until it becomes too unpleasant for
+us to remain in it any longer. It has long been felt that embryology and
+rudimentary structures indicated community of descent. Dr. Darwin and
+Lamarck insisted on this, as have all subsequent writers on evolution;
+but the explanation of why and how the structures come to be
+repeated--namely, that they are simply examples of the force of
+habit--can only be perceived intelligently by those who admit so much
+unity between parents and offspring that the self-development of the
+latter can be properly called habitual (as being a repetition of an act
+by one and the same individual), and can only be fully sympathized with
+by those who recognize that if habit be admitted as the key to the fact
+at all, the unconscious manner in which the habit comes to be repeated
+is only of a piece with all our other observations concerning habit. For
+the fuller development of the foregoing, I must refer the reader to my
+work 'Life and Habit.'
+
+The purposiveness, which even Dr. Darwin, and Lamarck still less, seem
+never to have quite recognized in spite of their having insisted so much
+on what amounts to the same thing, now comes into full view. It is seen
+that the organs external to the body, and those internal to it are, the
+second as much as the first, things which we have made for our own
+convenience, and with a prevision that we shall have need of them; the
+main difference between the manufacture of these two classes of organs
+being, that we have made the one kind so often that we can no longer
+follow the processes whereby we make them, while the others are new
+things which we must make introspectively or not at all, and which are
+not yet so incorporate with our vitality as that we should think they
+grow instead of being manufactured. The manufacture of the tool, and the
+manufacture of the living organ prove therefore to be but two species of
+the same genus, which, though widely differentiated, have descended as
+it were from one common filament of desire and inventive faculty. The
+greater or less complexity of the organs goes for very little. It is
+only a question of the amount of intelligence and voluntary
+self-adaptation which we must admit, and this must be settled rather by
+an appeal to what we find in organism, and observe concerning it, than
+by what we may have imagined _à priori_.
+
+Given a small speck of jelly with some kind of circumstance-suiting
+power, some power of slightly varying its actions in accordance with
+slightly varying circumstances and desires--given such a jelly-speck
+with a power of assimilating other matter, and thus, of reproducing
+itself, given also that it should be possessed of a memory, and we can
+show how the whole animal world can have descended it may be from an
+amoeba without interference from without, and how every organ in every
+creature is designed at first roughly and tentatively but finally
+fashioned with the most consummate perfection, by the creature which has
+had need of that organ, which best knew what it wanted, and was never
+satisfied till it had got that which was the best suited to its varying
+circumstances in their entirety. We can even show how, if it becomes
+worth the Ethiopian's while to try and change his skin, or the leopard's
+to change his spots, they can assuredly change them within a not
+unreasonable time and adapt their covering to their own will and
+convenience, and to that of none other; thus what is commonly conceived
+of as direct creation by God is moved back to a time and space
+inconceivable in their remoteness, while the aim and design so obvious
+in nature are shown to be still at work around us, growing ever busier
+and busier, and advancing from day to day both in knowledge and power.
+
+It was reserved for Mr. Darwin and for those who have too rashly
+followed him to deny purpose as having had any share in the development
+of animal and vegetable organs; to see no evidence of design in those
+wonderful provisions which have been the marvel and delight of observers
+in all ages. The one who has drawn our attention more than perhaps any
+other living writer to those very marvels of coadaptation, is the
+foremost to maintain that they are the result not of desire and design,
+either within the creature or without it, but of blind chance, working
+no whither, and due but to the accumulation of innumerable lucky
+accidents.
+
+"There are men," writes Professor Tyndall in the 'Nineteenth Century,'
+for last November, "and by no means the minority, who, however wealthy
+in regard to facts, can never rise into the region of principles; and
+they are sometimes intolerant of those that can. They are formed to plod
+meritoriously on in the lower levels of thought; unpossessed of the
+pinions necessary to reach the heights, they cannot realize the mental
+act--the act of inspiration it might well be called--by which a man of
+genius, after long pondering and proving, reaches a theoretic conception
+which unravels and illuminates the tangle of centuries of observation
+and experiment. There are minds, it may be said in passing, who, at the
+present moment, stand in this relation to Mr. Darwin."
+
+The more rhapsodical parts of the above must go for what they are worth,
+but I should be sorry to think that what remains conveyed a censure
+which might fall justly on myself. As I read the earlier part of the
+passage I confess that I imagined the conclusion was going to be very
+different from what it proved to be. Fresh from the study of the older
+men and also of Mr. Darwin himself, I failed to see that Mr. Darwin had
+"unravelled and illuminated" a tangled skein, but believed him, on the
+contrary, to have tangled and obscured what his predecessors had made in
+great part, if not wholly, plain. With the older writers, I had felt as
+though in the hands of men who wished to understand themselves and to
+make their reader understand them with the smallest possible exertion.
+The older men, if not in full daylight, at any rate saw in what quarter
+of the sky the dawn was breaking, and were looking steadily towards it.
+It is not they who have put their hands over their own eyes and ours,
+and who are crying out that there is no light, but chance and blindness
+everywhere.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[23] Page 210, first edition.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE TELEOLOGICAL EVOLUTION OF ORGANISM--THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE
+UNCONSCIOUS.
+
+
+I have stated the foregoing in what I take to be an extreme logical
+development, in order that the reader may more easily perceive the
+consequences of those premises which I am endeavouring to re-establish.
+But it must not be supposed that an animal or plant has ever conceived
+the idea of some organ widely different from any it was yet possessed
+of, and has set itself to design it in detail and grow towards it.
+
+The small jelly-speck, which we call the amoeba, has no organs save
+what it can extemporize as occasion arises. If it wants to get at
+anything, it thrusts out part of its jelly, which thus serves it as an
+arm or hand: when the arm has served its purpose, it is absorbed into
+the rest of the jelly, and has now to do the duty of a stomach by
+helping to wrap up what it has just purveyed. The small round
+jelly-speck spreads itself out and envelops its food, so that the whole
+creature is now a stomach, and nothing but a stomach. Having digested
+its food, it again becomes a jelly-speck, and is again ready to turn
+part of itself into hand or foot as its next convenience may dictate. It
+is not to be believed that such a creature as this, which is probably
+just sensitive to light and nothing more, should be able to form a
+conception of an eye and set itself to work to grow one, any more than
+it is believable that he who first observed the magnifying power of a
+dew drop, or even he who first constructed a rude lens, should have had
+any idea in his mind of Lord Rosse's telescope with all its parts and
+appliances. Nothing could be well conceived more foreign to experience
+and common sense. Animals and plants have travelled to their present
+forms as man has travelled to any one of his own most complicated
+inventions. Slowly, step by step, through many blunders and mischances
+which have worked together for good to those that have persevered in
+elasticity. They have travelled as man has travelled, with but little
+perception of a want till there was also some perception of a power, and
+with but little perception of a power till there was a dim sense of
+want; want stimulating power, and power stimulating want; and both so
+based upon each other that no one can say which is the true foundation,
+but rather that they must be both baseless and, as it were, meteoric in
+mid air. They have seen very little ahead of a present power or need,
+and have been then most moral, when most inclined to pierce a little
+into futurity, but also when most obstinately declining to pierce too
+far, and busy mainly with the present. They have been so far blindfolded
+that they could see but for a few steps in front of them, yet so far
+free to see that those steps were taken with aim and definitely, and not
+in the dark.
+
+"Plus il a su," says Buffon, speaking of man, "plus il a pu, mais aussi
+moins il a fait, moins il a su." This holds good wherever life holds
+good. Wherever there is life there is a moral government of rewards and
+punishments understood by the amoeba neither better nor worse than by
+man. The history of organic development is the history of a moral
+struggle.
+
+We know nothing as yet about the origin of a creature able to feel want
+and power, nor yet what want and power spring from. It does not seem
+worth while to go into these questions until an understanding has been
+come to as to whether the interaction of want and power in some low form
+or forms of life which could assimilate matter, reproduce themselves,
+vary their actions, and be capable of remembering, will or will not
+suffice to explain the development of the varied organs and desires
+which we see in the higher vertebrates and man. When this question has
+been settled, then it will be time to push our inquiries farther back.
+
+But given such a low form of life as here postulated, and there is no
+force in Paley's pretended objection to the Darwinism of his time.
+
+"Give our philosopher," he says, "appetencies; give him a portion of
+living irritable matter (a nerve or the clipping of a nerve) to work
+upon; give also to his incipient or progressive forms the power of
+propagating their like in every stage of their alteration; and if he is
+to be believed, he could replenish the world with all the vegetable and
+animal productions which we now see in it."[24]
+
+After meeting this theory with answers which need not detain us, he
+continues:--
+
+"The senses of animals appear to me quite incapable of receiving the
+explanation of their origin which this theory affords. Including under
+the word 'sense' the organ and the perception, we have no account of
+either. How will our philosopher get at vision or make an eye? Or,
+suppose the eye formed, would the perception follow? The same of the
+other senses. And this objection holds its force, ascribe what you will
+to the hand of time, to the power of habit, to changes too slow to be
+observed by man, or brought within any comparison which he is able to
+make of past things with the present. Concede what you please to these
+arbitrary and unattested superstitions, how will they help you? Here is
+no inception. No laws, no course, no powers of nature which prevail at
+present, nor any analogous to these would give commencement to a new
+sense; and it is in vain to inquire how that might proceed which would
+never _begin_."
+
+In answer to this, let us suppose that some inhabitants of another world
+were to see a modern philosopher so using a microscope that they should
+believe it to be a part of the philosopher's own person, which he could
+cut off from and join again to himself at pleasure, and suppose there
+were a controversy as to how this microscope had originated, and that
+one party maintained the man had made it little by little because he
+wanted it, while the other declared this to be absurd and impossible; I
+ask, would this latter party be justified in arguing that microscopes
+could never have been perfected by degrees through the preservation of
+and accumulation of small successive improvements, inasmuch as men
+could not have begun to want to use microscopes until they had had a
+microscope which should show them that such an instrument would be
+useful to them, and that hence there is nothing to account for the
+_beginning_ of microscopes, which might indeed make some progress when
+once originated, but which could never originate?
+
+It might be pointed out to such a reasoner, firstly, that as regards any
+acquired power the various stages in the acquisition of which he might
+be supposed able to remember, he would find that, logic notwithstanding,
+the wish did originate the power, and yet was originated by it, both
+coming up gradually out of something which was not recognisable as
+either power or wish, and advancing through vain beating of the air, to
+a vague effort, and from this to definite effort with failure, and from
+this to definite effort with success, and from this to success with
+little consciousness of effort, and from this to success with such
+complete absence of effort that he now acts unconsciously and without
+power of introspection, and that, do what he will, he can rarely or
+never draw a sharp dividing line whereat anything shall be said to
+begin, though none less certain that there has been a continuity in
+discontinuity, and a discontinuity in continuity between it and certain
+other past things; moreover, that his opponents postulated so much
+beginning of the microscope as that there should be a dew drop, even as
+our evolutionists start with a sense of touch, of which sense all the
+others are modifications, so that not one of them but is resolvable into
+touch by more or less easy stages; and secondly, that the question is
+one of fact and of the more evident deductions therefrom, and should not
+be carried back to those remote beginnings where the nature of the facts
+is so purely a matter of conjecture and inference.
+
+No plant or animal, then, according to our view, would be able to
+conceive more than a very slight improvement on its organization at a
+given time, so clearly as to make the efforts towards it that would
+result in growth of the required modification; nor would these efforts
+be made with any far-sighted perception of what next and next and after,
+but only of what next; while many of the happiest thoughts would come
+like all other happy thoughts--thoughtlessly; by a chain of reasoning
+too swift and subtle for conscious analysis by the individual, as will
+be more fully insisted on hereafter. Some of these modifications would
+be noticeable, but the majority would involve no more noticeable
+difference than can be detected between the length of the shortest day,
+and that of the shortest but one.
+
+Thus a bird whose toes were not webbed, but who had under force of
+circumstances little by little in the course of many generations learned
+to swim, either from having lived near a lake, and having learnt the art
+owing to its fishing habits, or from wading about in shallow pools by
+the sea-side at low water, and finding itself sometimes a little out of
+its depth and just managing to scramble over the intermediate yard or so
+between it and safety--such a bird did not probably conceive the idea of
+swimming on the water and set itself to learn to do so, and then
+conceive the idea of webbed feet and set itself to get webbed feet. The
+bird found itself in some small difficulty, out of which it either saw,
+or at any rate found that it could extricate itself by striking out
+vigorously with its feet and extending its toes as far as ever it could;
+it thus began to learn the art of swimming and conceived the idea of
+swimming synchronously, or nearly so; or perhaps wishing to get over a
+yard or two of deep water, and trying to do so without being at the
+trouble of rising to fly, it would splash and struggle its way over the
+water, and thus practically swim, though without much perception of what
+it had been doing. Finding that no harm had come to it, the bird would
+do the same again, and again; it would thus presently lose fear, and
+would be able to act more calmly; then it would begin to find out that
+it could swim a little, and if its food lay much in the water so that it
+would be of great advantage to it to be able to alight and rest without
+being forced to return to land, it would begin to make a practice of
+swimming. It would now discover that it could swim the more easily
+according as its feet presented a more extended surface to the water; it
+would therefore keep its toes extended whenever it swam, and as far as
+in it lay, would make the most of whatever skin was already at the base
+of its toes. After very many generations it would become web-footed, if
+doing as above described should have been found continuously convenient,
+so that the bird should have continuously used the skin about its toes
+as much as possible in this direction.
+
+For there is a margin in every organic structure (and perhaps more than
+we imagine in things inorganic also), which will admit of references,
+as it were, side notes, and glosses upon the original text. It is on
+this margin that we may err or wander--the greatness of a mistake
+depending rather upon the extent of the departure from the original
+text, than on the direction that the departure takes. A little error on
+the bad side is more pardonable, and less likely to hurt the organism
+than a too great departure upon the right one. This is a fundamental
+proposition in any true system of ethics, the question what is too much
+or too sudden being decided by much the same higgling as settles the
+price of butter in a country market, and being as invisible as the link
+which connects the last moment of desire with the first of power and
+performance, and with the material result achieved.
+
+It is on this margin that the fulcrum is to be found, whereby we obtain
+the little purchase over our structure, that enables us to achieve great
+results if we use it steadily, with judgment, and with neither too
+little effort nor too much. It is by employing this that those who have
+a fancy to move their ears or toes without moving other organs learn to
+do so. There is a man at the Agricultural Hall now playing the violin
+with his toes, and playing it, as I am told, sufficiently well. The eye
+of the sailor, the wrist of the conjuror, the toe of the professional
+medium, are all found capable of development to an astonishing degree,
+even in a single lifetime; but in every case success has been attained
+by the simple process of making the best of whatever power a man has had
+at any given time, and by being on the look out to take advantage of
+accident, and even of misfortune. If a man would learn to paint, he must
+not theorize concerning art, nor think much what he would do beforehand,
+but he must do _something_--it does not matter what, except that it
+should be whatever at the moment will come handiest and easiest to him;
+and he must do that something as well as he can. This will presently
+open the door for something else, and a way will show itself which no
+conceivable amount of searching would have discovered, but which yet
+could never have been discovered by sitting still and taking no pains at
+all. "Dans l'animal," says Buffon, "il y a moins de jugement que de
+sentiment."[25]
+
+It may appear as though this were blowing hot and cold with the same
+breath, inasmuch as I am insisting that important modifications of
+structure have been always purposive; and at the same time am denying
+that the creature modified has had any purpose in the greater part of
+all those actions which have at length modified both structure and
+instinct. Thus I say that a bird learns to swim without having any
+purpose of learning to swim before it set itself to make those movements
+which have resulted in its being able to do so. At the same time I
+maintain that it has only learned to swim by trying to swim, and this
+involves the very purpose which I have just denied. The reconciliation
+of these two apparently irreconcilable contentions must be found in the
+consideration that the bird was not the less trying to swim, merely
+because it did not know the name we have chosen to give to the art
+which it was trying to master, nor yet how great were the resources of
+that art. A person, who knew all about swimming, if from some bank he
+could watch our supposed bird's first attempt to scramble over a short
+space of deep water, would at once declare that the bird was trying to
+swim--if not actually swimming. Provided then that there is a very
+little perception of, and prescience concerning, the means whereby the
+next desired end may be attained, it matters not how little in advance
+that end may be of present desires or faculties; it is still reached
+through purpose, and must be called purposive. Again, no matter how many
+of these small steps be taken, nor how absolute was the want of purpose
+or prescience concerning any but the one being actually taken at any
+given moment, this does not bar the result from having been arrived at
+through design and purpose. If each one of the small steps is purposive
+the result is purposive, though there was never purpose extended over
+more than one, two, or perhaps at most three, steps at a time.
+
+Returning to the art of painting for an example, are we to say that the
+proficiency which such a student as was supposed above will certainly
+attain, is not due to design, merely because it was not until he had
+already become three parts excellent that he knew the full purport of
+all that he had been doing? When he began he had but vague notions of
+what he would do. He had a wish to learn to represent nature, but the
+line into which he has settled down has probably proved very different
+from that which he proposed to himself originally. Because he has taken
+advantage of his accidents, is it, therefore, one whit the less true
+that his success is the result of his desires and his design? The
+'Times' pointed out not long ago that the theory which now associates
+meteors and comets in the most unmistakable manner, was suggested by one
+accident, and confirmed by another. But the writer added well that "such
+accidents happen only to the zealous student of nature's secrets." In
+the same way the bird that is taking to the habit of swimming, and of
+making the most of whatever skin it already has between its toes, will
+have doubtless to thank accidents for no small part of its progress; but
+they will be such accidents as could never have happened to, or been
+taken advantage of by any creature which was not zealously trying to
+make the most of itself--and between such accidents as this, and design,
+the line is hard to draw; for if we go deep enough we shall find that
+most of our design resolves itself into as it were a shaking of the bag
+to see what will come out that will suit our purpose, and yet at the
+same time that most of our shaking of the bag resolves itself into a
+design that the bag shall contain only such and such things, or
+thereabouts.
+
+Again, the fact that animals are no longer conscious of
+design and purpose in much that they do, but act unreflectingly,
+and as we sometimes say concerning ourselves "automatically" or
+"mechanically"--that they have no idea whatever of the steps whereby
+they have travelled to their present state, and show no sign of doubt
+about what must have been at one time the subject of all manner of
+doubts, difficulties, and discussions--that whatever sign of reflection
+they now exhibit is to be found only in case of some novel feature or
+difficulty presenting itself; these facts do not bar that the results
+achieved should be attributed to an inception in reason, design, and
+purpose, no matter how rapidly and as we call it instinctively, the
+creatures may now act.
+
+For if we look closely at such an invention as the steam engine in its
+latest and most complicated developments, about which there can be no
+dispute but that they are achievements of reason, purpose, and design,
+we shall find them present us with examples of all those features the
+presence of which in the handiwork of animals is too often held to bar
+reason and purpose from having had any share therein.
+
+Assuredly such men as the Marquis of Worcester and Captain Savery had
+very imperfect ideas as to the upshot of their own action. The simplest
+steam engine now in use in England is probably a marvel of ingenuity as
+compared with the highest development which appeared possible to these
+two great men, while our newest and most highly complicated engines
+would seem to them more like living beings than machines. Many, again,
+of the steps leading to the present development have been due to action
+which had but little heed of the steam engine, being the inventions of
+attendants whose desire was to save themselves the trouble of turning
+this or that cock, and who were indifferent to any other end than their
+own immediate convenience. No step in fact along the whole route was
+ever taken with much perception of what would be the next step after the
+one being taken at any given moment.
+
+Nor do we find that an engine made after any old and well-known pattern
+is now made with much more consciousness of design than we can suppose a
+bird's nest to be built with. The greater number of the parts of any
+such engine, are made by the gross as it were like screws and nuts,
+which are turned out by machinery and in respect of which the labour of
+design is now no more felt than is the design of him who first invented
+the wheel. It is only when circumstances require any modification in the
+article to be manufactured that thought and design will come into play
+again; but I take it few will deny that if circumstances compel a bird
+either to give up a nest three-parts built altogether, or to make some
+trifling deviation from its ordinary practice, it will in nine cases out
+of ten make such deviation as shall show that it had thought the matter
+over, and had on the whole concluded to take such and such a course,
+that is to say, that it had reasoned and had acted with such purpose as
+its reason had dictated.
+
+And I imagine that this is the utmost that anyone can claim even for
+man's own boasted powers. Set the man who has been accustomed to make
+engines of one type, to make engines of another type without any
+intermediate course of training or instruction, and he will make no
+better figure with his engines than a thrush would do if commanded by
+her mate to make a nest like a blackbird. It is vain then to contend
+that the ease and certainty with which an action is performed, even
+though it may have now become matter of such fixed habit that it cannot
+be suddenly and seriously modified without rendering the whole
+performance abortive, is any argument against that action having been an
+achievement of design and reason in respect of each one of the steps
+that have led to it; and if in respect of each one of the steps then as
+regards the entire action; for we see our own most reasoned actions
+become no less easy, unerring, automatic, and unconscious, than the
+actions which we call instinctive when they have been repeated a
+sufficient number of times.
+
+This has been often pointed out, but I insisted upon it and developed it
+in 'Life and Habit,' more I believe than has been done hitherto, at the
+same time making it the key to many phenomena of growth and heredity
+which without such key seem explained by words rather than by any
+corresponding peace of mind in our ideas concerning them. Seeing that I
+dwelt much on the importance of bearing in mind the vanishing tendency
+of consciousness, volition, and memory upon their becoming intense, a
+tendency which no one after five minutes' reflection will venture to
+deny, some reviewers have imagined that I am advocating the same views
+as have been put forward by Von Hartmann under the title of 'the
+Philosophy of the Unconscious.' Unless, however, I am much mistaken,
+their opinion is without foundation. For so far as I can gather, Von
+Hartmann personifies the unconscious and makes it act and think--in fact
+deifies it--whereas I only infer a certain history for certain of our
+growths and actions in consequence of observing that often repeated
+actions come in time to be performed unconsciously. I cannot think I
+have done more than note a fact which all must acknowledge, and drawn
+from it an inference which may or may not be true, but which is at any
+rate perfectly intelligible, whereas if Von Hartmann's meaning is
+anything like what Mr. Sully says it is,[26] I can only say that it has
+not been given to me to form any definite conception whatever as to what
+that meaning may be. I am encouraged moreover to hope that I am not in
+the same condemnation with Von Hartmann--if, indeed, Von Hartmann is to
+be condemned, about which I know nothing--by the following extract from
+a German Review of 'Life and Habit.'
+
+     "Der erste dieser beiden Erklärungsversuche, ist eine wahre
+     'Philosophie des Unbewussten' nicht des Hartmann'schen Unbewussten
+     welches hellsehend und wunderthätig von aussen in die natürliche
+     Entwickelung der Organismen eingreift, sondern eines Unbewussten
+     welches wie der Verfasser zeigt, in allen organischen Wesen
+     anzunehmen unsere eigene Erfahrung und die Stufenfolge der
+     Organismen von den Moneren und Amoeben bis zu den höchsten
+     Pflanzen und Thieren und uns selbst aufwärts--uns gestattet, wenn
+     nicht uns nöthigt. Der Gedankengang dieser neuen oder wenigstens in
+     diesem Sinne wohl zum ersten Male consequent im Einzelnen
+     durchgeführten Philosophie des Unbewussten ist, seinen Hauptzügen
+     nach kurz angedeutet, folgender."[27]
+
+Even here I am made to personify more than I like; I do not wish to say
+that the unconscious does this or that, but that when we have done this
+or that sufficiently often we do it unconsciously.
+
+If the foregoing be granted, and it be admitted that the unconsciousness
+and seeming automatism with which any action may be performed is no bar
+to its having a foundation in memory, reason, and at one time
+consciously recognized effort--and this I believe to be the chief
+addition which I have ventured to make to the theory of Buffon and Dr.
+Erasmus Darwin--then the wideness of the difference between the
+Darwinism of eighty years ago and the Darwinism of to-day becomes
+immediately apparent, and it also becomes apparent, how important and
+interesting is the issue which is raised between them.
+
+According to the older Darwinism the lungs are just as purposive as the
+corkscrew. They, no less than the corkscrew, are a piece of mechanism
+designed and gradually improved upon and perfected by an intelligent
+creature for the gratification of its own needs. True there are many
+important differences between mechanism which is part of the body, and
+mechanism which is no such part, but the differences are such as do not
+affect the fact that in each case the result, whether, for example,
+lungs or corkscrew, is due to desire, invention, and design.
+
+And now I will ask one more question, which may seem, perhaps, to have
+but little importance, but which I find personally interesting. I have
+been told by a reviewer, of whom upon the whole I have little reason to
+complain, that the theory I put forward in 'Life and Habit,' and which I
+am now again insisting on, is pessimism--pure and simple. I have a very
+vague idea what pessimism means, but I should be sorry to believe that I
+am a pessimist. Which, I would ask, is the pessimist? He who sees love
+of beauty, design, steadfastness of purpose, intelligence, courage, and
+every quality to which success has assigned the name of "worth," as
+having drawn the pattern of every leaf and organ now and in all past
+time, or he who sees nothing in the world of nature but a chapter of
+accidents and of forces interacting blindly?
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[24] 'Nat. Theol.,' ch. xxiii.
+
+[25] 'Oiseaux,' vol. i. p. 5.
+
+[26] 'Westminster Review,' vol. xlix. p. 124.
+
+[27] Translation: "The first of these two attempts is a true 'philosophy
+of the unconscious,' not Hartmann's unconscious, which influences the
+natural evolution of organism from without as though by Providence and
+miracle, but of an unconscious, which, as the author shows, our own
+experience and the progressive succession of organisms from the monads
+and amoebæ up to the highest plants and animals, including ourselves,
+allows, if it does not compel us to assume [as obtaining] in all organic
+beings. This philosophy of the unconscious is new, or at any rate now
+for the first time carried out consequentially in detail; its main
+features, briefly stated are as follows."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+SCHEME OF THE REMAINDER OF THE WORK. HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE THEORY OF
+EVOLUTION.
+
+
+I have long felt that evolution must stand or fall according as it is
+made to rest or not on principles which shall give a definite purpose
+and direction to the variations whose accumulation results in specific,
+and ultimately in generic differences. In other words, according as it
+is made to stand upon the ground first clearly marked out for it by Dr.
+Erasmus Darwin and afterwards adopted by Lamarck, or on that taken by
+Mr. Charles Darwin.
+
+There is some reason to fear that in consequence of the disfavour into
+which modern Darwinism is seen to be falling by those who are more
+closely watching the course of opinion upon this subject, evolution
+itself may be for a time discredited as something inseparable from the
+theory that it has come about mainly through "the means" of natural
+selection. If people are shown that the arguments by which a somewhat
+startling conclusion has been reached will not legitimately lead to that
+conclusion, they are very ready to assume that the conclusion must be
+altogether unfounded, especially when, as in the present case, there is
+a vast mass of vested interests opposed to the conclusion. Few know that
+there are other great works upon descent with modification besides Mr.
+Darwin's. Not one person in ten thousand has any distinct idea of what
+Buffon, Dr. Darwin, and Lamarck propounded. Their names have been
+discredited by the very authors who have been most indebted to them;
+there is hardly a writer on evolution who does not think it incumbent
+upon him to warn Lamarck off the ground which he at any rate made his
+own, and to cast a stone at what he will call the "shallow speculations"
+or "crude theories" or the "well-known doctrine" of the foremost
+exponent of Buffon and Dr. Darwin. Buffon is a great name, Dr. Darwin is
+no longer even this, and Lamarck has been so systematically laughed at
+that it amounts to little less than philosophical suicide for anyone to
+stand up in his behalf. Not one of our scientific elders or chief
+priests but would caution a student rather to avoid the three great men
+whom I have named than to consult them. It is a perilous task therefore
+to try and take evolution from the pedestal on which it now appears to
+stand so securely, and to put it back upon the one raised for it by its
+propounders; yet this is what I believe will have to be done sooner or
+later unless the now general acceptance of evolution is to be shaken
+more rudely than some of its upholders may anticipate. I propose
+therefore to give a short biographical sketch of the three writers whose
+works form new departures in the history of evolution, with a somewhat
+full _résumé_ of the positions they took in regard to it. I will also
+touch briefly upon some other writers who have handled the same subject.
+The reader will thus be enabled to follow the development of a great
+conception as it has grown up in the minds of successive men of genius,
+and by thus growing with it, as it were, through its embryonic stages,
+he will make himself more thoroughly master of it in all its bearings.
+
+I will then contrast the older with the newer Darwinism, and will show
+why the 'Origin of Species,' though an episode of incalculable value,
+cannot, any more than the 'Vestiges of Creation,' take permanent rank in
+the literature of evolution.
+
+It will appear that the evolution of evolution has gone through the
+following principal stages:--
+
+I. A general conception of the fact that specific types were not always
+immutable.
+
+This was common to many writers, both ancient and modern; it has been
+occasionally asserted from the times of Anaximander and Lucretius to
+those of Bacon and Sir Walter Raleigh.
+
+II. A definite conception that animal and vegetable forms were so
+extensively mutable that few (and, if so, perhaps but one) could claim
+to be of an original stock; the direct effect of changed conditions
+being assigned as the cause of modification, and the important
+consequences of the struggle for existence being in many respects fully
+recognized. The fact of design or purpose in connection with organism,
+as causing habits and thus as underlying all variation, was also
+indicated with some clearness, but was not thoroughly understood.
+
+This phase must be identified with the name of Buffon, who, as I will
+show reason for believing, would have carried his theory much further if
+he had not felt that he had gone as far in the right direction as was
+then desirable. Buffon put forward his opinions, with great reserve and
+yet with hardly less frankness, in volume after volume from 1749 to
+1788, the year of his death, but they do not appear to have taken root
+at once in France. They took root in England, and were thence
+transplanted back to France.
+
+III. A development in England of the Buffonian system, marked by
+glimpses of the unity between offspring and parents, and broad
+suggestions to the effect that the former must be considered as capable
+of remembering, under certain circumstances, what had happened to it,
+and what it did, when it was part of the personality of those from whom
+it had descended.
+
+A definite belief, openly expressed, that not only are many species
+mutable, but that all living forms, whether animal or vegetable, are
+descended from a single, or at any rate from not many, original low
+forms of life, and this as the direct consequence of the actions and
+requirements of the living forms themselves, and as the indirect
+consequence of changed conditions. A definite cause is thus supposed to
+underlie variations, and the resulting adaptations become purposive; but
+this was not said, nor, I am afraid, seen.
+
+This is the original Darwinism of Dr. Erasmus Darwin. It was put forward
+in his 'Zoonomia,' in 1794, and was adopted almost in its entirety by
+Lamarck, who, when he had caught the leading idea (probably through a
+French translation of the 'Loves of the Plants,' which appeared in
+1800), began to expound it in 1801; in 1802, 1803, 1806, and 1809, he
+developed it with greater fulness of detail than Dr. Darwin had done,
+but perhaps with a somewhat less nice sense of some important points.
+Till his death, in 1831, Lamarck, as far as age and blindness would
+permit, continued to devote himself to the exposition of the theory of
+descent with modification.
+
+IV. A more distinct perception of the unity of parents and offspring,
+with a bolder reference of the facts of heredity (whether of structure
+or instinct), to memory pure and simple; a clearer perception of the
+consequences that follow from the survival of the fittest, and a just
+view of the relation in which those consequences stand to "the
+circumstance-suiting" power of animals and plants; a reference of the
+variations whose accumulation results in species, to the volition of the
+animal or plant which varies, and perhaps a dawning perception that all
+adaptations of structure to need must therefore be considered as
+"purposive."
+
+This must be connected with Mr. Matthew's work on 'Naval Timber and
+Arboriculture,' which appeared in 1831. The remarks which it contains in
+reference to evolution are confined to an appendix, but when brought
+together, as by Mr. Matthew himself, in the 'Gardeners' Chronicle' for
+April 7, 1860, they form one of the most perfect yet succinct
+expositions of the theory of evolution that I have ever seen. I shall
+therefore give them in full.[28] This book was well received, and was
+reviewed in the 'Quarterly Review,'[29] but seems to have been valued
+rather for its views on naval timber than on evolution. Mr. Matthew's
+merit lies in a just appreciation of the importance of each one of the
+principal ideas which must be present in combination before we can have
+a correct conception of evolution, and of their bearings upon one
+another. In his scheme of evolution I find each part kept in due
+subordination to the others, so that the whole theory becomes more
+coherent and better articulated than I have elsewhere found it; but I do
+not detect any important addition to the ideas which Dr. Darwin and
+Lamarck had insisted upon.
+
+I pass over the 'Vestiges of Creation,' which should be mentioned only
+as having, as Mr. Charles Darwin truly says, "done excellent service in
+this country, in calling attention to this subject, in removing
+prejudice, and in thus preparing the ground for the reception of
+analogous views."[30] The work neither made any addition to ideas which
+had been long familiar, nor arranged old ones in a satisfactory manner.
+Such as it is, it is Dr. Darwin and Lamarck, but Dr. Darwin and Lamarck
+spoiled. The first edition appeared in 1844.
+
+I also pass over Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire's 'Natural History,' which
+appeared 1854-62, and the position of which is best described by calling
+it intermediate between the one which Buffon thought fit to pretend to
+take, and that actually taken by Lamarck. The same may be said also of
+Étienne Geoffroy. I will, however, just touch upon these writers later
+on.
+
+A short notice, again, will suffice for the opinions of Goethe,
+Treviranus, and Oken, none of whom can I discover as having originated
+any important new idea; but knowing no German, I have taken this
+opinion from the résumé of each of these writers, given by Professor
+Haeckel in his 'History of Creation.'
+
+V. A time of retrogression, during which we find but little apparent
+appreciation of the unity between parents and offspring; no reference to
+memory in connection with heredity, whether of instinct or structure; an
+exaggerated view of the consequences which may be deduced from the fact
+that the fittest commonly survive in the struggle for existence; the
+denial of any known principle as underlying variations; comparatively
+little appreciation of the circumstance-suiting power of plants and
+animals, and a rejection of purposiveness. By far the most important
+exponent of this phase of opinion concerning evolution is Mr. Charles
+Darwin, to whom, however, we are more deeply indebted than to any other
+living writer for the general acceptance of evolution in one shape or
+another. The 'Origin of Species' appeared in 1859, the same year, that
+is to say, as the second volume of Isidore Geoffroy's 'Histoire
+Naturelle Générale.'
+
+VI. A reaction against modern Darwinism, with a demand for definite
+purpose and design as underlying variations. The best known writers who
+have taken this line are the Rev. J. J. Murphy and Professor Mivart,
+whose 'Habit and intelligence' and 'Genesis of Species' appeared in 1869
+and 1871 respectively. In Germany Professor Hering has revived the idea
+of memory as explaining the phenomena of heredity satisfactorily,
+without probably having been more aware that it had been advanced
+already than I was myself when I put it forward recently in 'Life and
+Habit.' I have never seen the lecture in which Professor Hering has
+referred the phenomena of heredity to memory, but will give an extract
+from it which appeared in the 'Athenæum,' as translated by Professor Ray
+Lankester.[31] The only new feature which I believe I may claim to have
+added to received ideas concerning evolution, is a perception of the
+fact that the unconsciousness with which we go through our embryonic and
+infantile stages, and with which we discharge the greater number and
+more important of our natural functions, is of a piece with what we
+observe concerning all habitual actions, as well as concerning memory;
+an explanation of the phenomena of old age; and of the main principle
+which underlies longevity. I may, perhaps, claim also to have more fully
+explained the passage of reason into instinct than I yet know of its
+having been explained elsewhere.[32]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[28] See ch. xviii. of this volume.
+
+[29] Vol. xlix. p. 125.
+
+[30] 'Origin of Species,' Hist. Sketch, xvii.
+
+[31] See page 199 of this volume.
+
+[32] Apropos of this, a friend has kindly sent me the following extract
+from Balzac:--"Historiquement, les paysans sont encore au lendemain de
+la Jacquerie, leur défaite est restée inscrite dans leur cervelle. _Ils
+ne se souviennent plus du fait, il est passé à l'état d'idée
+instinctive._"--Balzac, 'Les Paysans,' v.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+PRE-BUFFONIAN EVOLUTION, AND SOME GERMAN WRITERS.
+
+
+Let us now proceed to the fuller development of the foregoing sketch.
+
+"Undoubtedly," says Isidore Geoffroy, "from the most ancient times many
+philosophers have imagined vaguely that one species can be transformed
+into another. This doctrine seems to have been adopted by the Ionian
+school from the sixth century before our era.... Undoubtedly also the
+same opinion reappeared on several occasions in the middle ages, and in
+modern times; it is to be found in some of the hermetic books, where the
+transmutation of animal and vegetable species, and that of metals, are
+treated as complementary to one another. In modern times we again find
+it alluded to by some philosophers, and especially by Bacon, whose
+boldness is on this point extreme. Admitting it as 'incontestable that
+plants sometimes degenerate so far as to become plants of another
+species,' Bacon did not hesitate to try and put his theory into
+practice. He tried, in 1635, to give 'the rules' for the art of changing
+'plants of one species into those of another.'"
+
+This must be an error. Bacon died in 1626. The passage of Bacon referred
+to is in 'Nat. Hist.,' Cent. vi. ("Experiments in consort touching the
+degenerating of plants, and the transmutation of them one into
+another"), and is as follows:--
+
+"518. This rule is certain, that plants for want of culture degenerate
+to be baser in the same kind; and sometimes so far as to change into
+another kind. 1. The standing long and not being removed maketh them
+degenerate. 2. Drought unless the earth, of itself, be moist doth the
+like. 3. So doth removing into worse earth, or forbearing to compost the
+earth; as we see that water mint turneth into field mint, and the
+colewort into rape by neglect, &c."
+
+"525. It is certain that in very steril years corn sown will grow to
+another kind:--
+
+    'Grandia sæpe quibus mandavimus hordea sulcis,
+    Infelix lolium, et steriles dominantur avenæ.'
+
+And generally it is a rule that plants that are brought forth for
+culture, as corn, will sooner change into other species, than those that
+come of themselves; for that culture giveth but an adventitious nature,
+which is more easily put off."
+
+Changed conditions, according to Bacon (though he does not use these
+words), appear to be "the first rule for the transmutation of plants."
+
+"But how much value," continues M. Geoffroy, "ought to be attached to
+such prophetic glimpses, when they were neither led up to, nor justified
+by any serious study? They are conjectures only, which, while bearing
+evidence to the boldness or rashness of those who hazarded them, remain
+almost without effect upon the advance of science. Bacon excepted, they
+hardly deserve to be remembered. As for De Maillet, who makes birds
+spring from flying fishes, reptiles from creeping fishes, and men from
+tritons, his dreams, taken in part from Anaximander, should have their
+place not in the history of science, but in that of the aberrations of
+the human mind."[33]
+
+A far more forcible and pregnant passage, however, is the following,
+from Sir Walter Raleigh's 'History of the World,' which Mr. Garnett has
+been good enough to point out to me:--
+
+"For mine owne opinion I find no difference but only in magnitude
+between the Cat of Europe, and the Ounce of India; and even those dogges
+which are become wild in Hispagniola, with which the Spaniards used to
+devour the naked Indians, are now changed to Wolves, and begin to
+destroy the breed of their Cattell, and doe often times teare asunder
+their owne children. The common crow and rooke of India is full of red
+feathers in the droun'd and low islands of Caribana, and the blackbird
+and thrush hath his feathers mixt with black and carnation in the north
+parts of Virginia. The Dog-fish of England is the Sharke of the South
+Ocean. For if colour or magnitude made a difference of Species, then
+were the Negroes, which wee call the Blacke-Mores, _non animalia
+rationalia_, not Men but some kind of strange Beasts, and so the giants
+of the South America should be of another kind than the people of this
+part of the World. We also see it dayly that the nature of fruits are
+changed by transplantation."[34]
+
+For information concerning the earliest German writers on evolution, I
+turn to Professor Haeckel's 'History of Creation,' and find Goethe's
+name to head the list. I do not gather, however, that Goethe added much
+to the ideas which Buffon had already made sufficiently familiar.
+Professor Haeckel does not seem to be aware of Buffon's work, and quotes
+Goethe as making an original discovery when he writes, in the year
+1796:--"Thus much then we have gained, that we may assert without
+hesitation that all the more perfect organic natures, such as fishes,
+amphibious animals, birds, mammals, and man at the head of the last,
+were all formed upon one original type, which only varies more or less
+in parts which were none the less permanent, and still daily changes and
+modifies its form by propagation."[35] But these, as we shall see, are
+almost Buffon's own words--words too that Buffon insisted on for many
+years. Again Professor Haeckel quotes Goethe as writing in the year
+1807:--
+
+"If we consider plants and animals in their most imperfect condition,
+they can hardly be distinguished." This, however, had long been insisted
+upon by Bonnet and Dr. Erasmus Darwin, the first of whom was a
+naturalist of world-wide fame, while the 'Zoonomia' of Dr. Darwin had
+been translated into German between the years 1795 and 1797, and could
+hardly have been unknown to Goethe in 1807, who continues: "But this
+much we may say, that the creatures which by degrees emerge as plants
+and animals out of a common phase where they are barely distinguishable,
+arrive at perfection in two opposite directions, so that the plant in
+the end reaches its highest glory in the tree, which is immovable and
+stiff, the animal in man who possesses the greatest elasticity and
+freedom." Professor Haeckel considers this to be a remarkable passage,
+but I do not think it should cause its author to rank among the founders
+of the evolution theory, though he may justly claim to have been one of
+the first to adopt it. Goethe's anatomical researches appear to have
+been more important, but I cannot find that he insisted on any new
+principle, or grasped any unfamiliar conception, which had not been long
+since grasped and widely promulgated by Buffon and by Dr. Erasmus
+Darwin.
+
+Treviranus (1776-1837), whom Professor Haeckel places second to Goethe,
+is clearly a disciple of Buffon, and uses the word "degeneration" in the
+same sense as Buffon used it many years earlier, that is to say, as
+"descent with modification," without any reference to whether the
+offspring was, as Buffon says, "perfectionné ou dégradé." He cannot
+claim, any more than Goethe, to rank as a principal figure in the
+history of evolution.
+
+Of Oken, Professor Haeckel says that his 'Naturphilosophie,' which
+appeared in 1809--in the same year, that is to say, as the 'Philosophie
+Zoologique' of Lamarck--was "the nearest approach to the natural theory
+of descent, newly established by Mr. Charles Darwin," of any work that
+appeared in the first decade of our century. But I do not detect any
+important difference of principle between his system and that of Dr.
+Erasmus Darwin, among whose disciples he should be reckoned.
+
+"We now turn," says Professor Haeckel after referring to a few more
+German writers who adopted a belief in evolution, "from the German to
+the French nature-philosophers who have likewise held the theory of
+descent, since the beginning of this century. At their head stands Jean
+Lamarck, who occupies the first place next to Darwin and Goethe in the
+history of the doctrine of Filiation."[36] This is rather a surprising
+assertion, but I will leave the reader of the present volume to assign
+the value which should be attached to it.
+
+Professor Haeckel devotes ten lines to Dr. Erasmus Darwin, who he
+declares "expresses views very similar to those of Goethe and Lamarck,
+without, however, _then_ knowing anything about these two men;" which is
+all the more strange inasmuch as Dr. Darwin preceded them, and was a
+good deal better known to them, probably, than they to him; but it is
+plain Professor Haeckel has no acquaintance with the 'Zoonomia' of Dr.
+Erasmus Darwin. From all, then, that I am able to collect, I conclude
+that I shall best convey to the reader an idea of the different phases
+which the theory of descent with modification has gone through, by
+confining his attention almost entirely to Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin,
+Lamarck, and Mr. Charles Darwin.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[33] 'Hist. Nat. Gen.,' vol. ii. p. 385, 1859.
+
+[34] 'History of the World,' bk. i. ch. vii. § 9 ('Athenæum,' March 27,
+1875).
+
+[35] 'History of Creation,' vol. i. p. 91.
+
+[36] 'History of Creation,' bk. i. ch. iii. (H. S. King, 1876).
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+BUFFON--MEMOIR.
+
+
+Buffon, says M. Flourens, was born at Montbar, on the 7th of September,
+1707; he died in Paris, at the Jardin du Roi, on the 16th of April,
+1788, aged 81 years. More than fifty of these years, as he used himself
+to say, he had passed at his writing-desk. His father was a councillor
+of the parliament of Burgundy. His mother was celebrated for her wit,
+and Buffon cherished her memory.
+
+He studied at Dijon with much _éclat_, and shortly after leaving became
+accidentally acquainted with the Duke of Kingston, a young Englishman of
+his own age, who was travelling abroad with a tutor. The three travelled
+together in France and Italy, and Buffon then passed some months in
+England.
+
+Returning to France, he translated Hales's 'Vegetable Statics' and
+Newton's 'Treatise on Fluxions.' He refers to several English writers on
+natural history in the course of his work, but I see he repeatedly
+spells the English name Willoughby, "Willulghby." He was appointed
+superintendent of the Jardin du Roi in 1739, and from thenceforth
+devoted himself to science.
+
+In 1752 Buffon married Mdlle. de Saint Bélin, whose beauty and charm of
+manner were extolled by all her contemporaries. One son was born to
+him, who entered the army, became a colonel, and I grieve to say, was
+guillotined at the age of twenty-nine, a few days only before the
+extinction of the Reign of Terror.
+
+Of this youth, who inherited the personal comeliness and ability of his
+father, little is recorded except the following story. Having fallen
+into the water and been nearly drowned when he was about twelve years
+old, he was afterwards accused of having been afraid: "I was so little
+afraid," he answered, "that though I had been offered the hundred years
+which my grandfather lived, I would have died then and there, if I could
+have added one year to the life of my father;" then thinking for a
+minute, a flush suffused his face, and he added, "but I should petition
+for one quarter of an hour in which to exult over the thought of what I
+was about to do."
+
+On the scaffold he showed much composure, smiling half proudly, half
+reproachfully, yet wholly kindly upon the crowd in front of him.
+"Citoyens," he said, "Je me nomme Buffon," and laid his head upon the
+block.
+
+The noblest outcome of the old and decaying order, overwhelmed in the
+most hateful birth frenzy of the new. So in those cataclysms and
+revolutions which take place in our own bodies during their development,
+when we seem studying in order to become fishes and suddenly make, as it
+were, different arrangements and resolve on becoming men--so, doubtless,
+many good cells must go, and their united death cry comes up, it may be,
+in the pain which an infant feels on teething.
+
+But to return. The man who could be father of such a son, and who could
+retain that son's affection, as it is well known that Buffon retained
+it, may not perhaps always be strictly accurate, but it will be as well
+to pay attention to whatever he may think fit to tell us. These are the
+only people whom it is worth while to look to and study from.
+
+"Glory," said Buffon, after speaking of the hours during which he had
+laboured, "glory comes always after labour if she can--_and she
+generally can_." But in his case she could not well help herself. "He
+was conspicuous," says M. Flourens, "for elevation and force of
+character, for a love of greatness and true magnificence in all he did.
+His great wealth, his handsome person, and graceful manners seemed in
+correspondence with the splendour of his genius, so that of all the
+gifts which Fortune has it in her power to bestow she had denied him
+nothing."
+
+Many of his epigrammatic sayings have passed into proverbs: for example,
+that "genius is but a supreme capacity for taking pains." Another and
+still more celebrated passage shall be given in its entirety and with
+its original setting.
+
+"Style," says Buffon, "is the only passport to posterity. It is not
+range of information, nor mastery of some little known branch of
+science, nor yet novelty of matter that will ensure immortality. Works
+that can claim all this will yet die if they are conversant about
+trivial objects only, or written without taste, genius and true nobility
+of mind; for range of information, knowledge of details, novelty of
+discovery are of a volatile essence and fly off readily into other
+hands that know better how to treat them. The matter is foreign to the
+man, and is not of him; the manner is the man himself."[37]
+
+"Le style, c'est l'homme même." Elsewhere he tells us what true style
+is, but I quote from memory and cannot be sure of the passage. "Le
+style," he says, "est comme le bonheur; il vient de la douceur de
+l'âme."
+
+Is it possible not to think of the following?--
+
+"But whether there be prophecies they shall fail; whether there be
+tongues they shall cease; whether there be knowledge it shall vanish
+away ... and now abideth faith, hope and charity, these three; but the
+greatest of these is charity."[38]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[37] 'Discours de Réception à l'Académie Française.'
+
+[38] 1 Cor. xiii. 8, 13.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+BUFFON'S METHOD--THE IRONICAL CHARACTER OF HIS WORK.
+
+
+Buffon's idea of a method amounts almost to the denial of the
+possibility of method at all. "The true method," he writes, "is the
+complete description and exact history of each particular object,"[39]
+and later on he asks, "is it not more simple, more natural and more true
+to call an ass an ass, and a cat a cat, than to say, without knowing
+why, that an ass is a horse, and a cat a lynx."[40]
+
+He admits such divisions as between animals and vegetables, or between
+vegetables and minerals, but that done, he rejects all others that can
+be founded on the nature of things themselves. He concludes that one who
+could see things in their entirety and without preconceived opinions,
+would classify animals according to the relations in which he found
+himself standing towards them:--
+
+"Those which he finds most necessary and useful to him will occupy the
+first rank; thus he will give the precedence among the lower animals to
+the dog and the horse; he will next concern himself with those which
+without being domesticated, nevertheless occupy the same country and
+climate as himself, as for example stags, hares, and all wild animals;
+nor will it be till after he has familiarized himself with all these
+that curiosity will lead him to inquire what inhabitants there may be in
+foreign climates, such as elephants, dromedaries, &c. The same will hold
+good for fishes, birds, insects, shells, and for all nature's other
+productions; he will study them in proportion to the profit which he can
+draw from them; he will consider them in that order in which they enter
+into his daily life; he will arrange them in his head according to this
+order, which is in fact that in which he has become acquainted with
+them, and in which it concerns him to think about them. This order--the
+most natural of all--is the one which I have thought it well to follow
+in this volume. My classification has no more mystery in it than the
+reader has just seen ... it is preferable to the most profound and
+ingenious that can be conceived, for there is none of all the
+classifications which ever have been made or ever can be, which has not
+more of an arbitrary character than this has. Take it for all in all,"
+he concludes, "it is more easy, more agreeable, and more useful, to
+consider things in their relation to ourselves than from any other
+standpoint."[41]
+
+"Has it not a better effect not only in a treatise on natural history,
+but in a picture or any work of art to arrange objects in the order and
+place in which they are commonly found, than to force them into
+association in virtue of some theory of our own? Is it not better to let
+the dog which has toes, come after the horse which has a single hoof,
+in the same way as we see him follow the horse in daily life, than to
+follow up the horse by the zebra, an animal which is little known to us,
+and which has no other connection with the horse than the fact that it
+has a single hoof?"[42]
+
+Can we suppose that Buffon really saw no more connection than this? The
+writer whom we shall presently find[43] declining to admit any essential
+difference between the skeletons of man and of the horse, can here see
+no resemblance between the zebra and the horse, except that they each
+have a single hoof. Is he to be taken at his word?
+
+It is perhaps necessary to tell the reader that Buffon carried the
+foregoing scheme into practice as nearly as he could in the first
+fifteen volumes of his 'Natural History.' He begins with man--and then
+goes on to the horse, the ass, the cow, sheep, goat, pig, dog, &c. One
+would be glad to know whether he found it always more easy to decide in
+what order of familiarity this or that animal would stand to the
+majority of his readers than other classifiers have found it to know
+whether an individual more resembles one species or another; probably he
+never gave the matter a thought after he had gone through the first
+dozen most familiar animals, but settled generally down into a
+classification which becomes more and more specific--as when he treats
+of the apes and monkeys--till he reaches the birds, when he openly
+abandons his original idea, in deference, as he says, to the opinion of
+"le peuple des naturalistes."
+
+Perhaps the key to this piece of apparent extravagance is to be found
+in the word "mystérieuse."[44] Buffon wished to raise a standing protest
+against mystery mongering. Or perhaps more probably, he wished at once
+"to turn to animals and plants under domestication," so as to insist
+early on the main object of his work--the plasticity of animal forms.
+
+I am inclined to think that a vein of irony pervades the whole, or much
+the greater part of Buffon's work, and that he intended to convey, one
+meaning to one set of readers, and another to another; indeed, it is
+often impossible to believe that he is not writing between his lines for
+the discerning, what the undiscerning were not intended to see. It must
+be remembered that his 'Natural History' has two sides,--a scientific
+and a popular one. May we not imagine that Buffon would be unwilling to
+debar himself from speaking to those who could understand him, and yet
+would wish like Handel and Shakespeare to address the many, as well as
+the few? But the only manner in which these seemingly irreconcilable
+ends could be attained, would be by the use of language which should be
+self-adjusting to the capacity of the reader. So keen an observer can
+hardly have been blind to the signs of the times which were already
+close at hand. Free-thinker though he was, he was also a powerful member
+of the aristocracy, and little likely to demean himself--for so he would
+doubtless hold it--by playing the part of Voltaire or Rousseau. He would
+help those who could see to see still further, but he would not dazzle
+eyes that were yet imperfect with a light brighter than they could
+stand. He would therefore impose upon people, as much as he thought was
+for their good; but, on the other hand, he would not allow inferior men
+to mystify them.
+
+"In the private character of Buffon," says Sir William Jardine in a
+characteristic passage, "we regret there is not much to praise; his
+disposition was kind and benevolent, and he was generally beloved by his
+inferiors, followers, and dependents, which were numerous over his
+extensive property; he was strictly honourable, and was an affectionate
+parent. In early youth he had entered into the pleasures and
+dissipations of life, and licentious habits seem to have been retained
+to the end. But the great blemish in such a mind was his declared
+infidelity; it presents one of those exceptions among the persons who
+have been devoted to the study of nature; and it is not easy to imagine
+a mind apparently with such powers, scarcely acknowledging a Creator,
+and when noticed, only by an arraignment for what appeared wanting or
+defective in his great works. So openly, indeed, was the freedom of his
+religious opinions expressed, that the indignation of the Sorbonne was
+provoked. He had to enter into an explanation which he in some way
+rendered satisfactory; and while he afterwards attended to the outward
+ordinances of religion, he considered them as a system of faith for the
+multitude, and regarded those most impolitic who most opposed them."[45]
+
+This is partly correct and partly not. Buffon was a free-thinker, and as
+I have sufficiently explained, a decided opponent of the doctrine that
+rudimentary and therefore useless organs were designed by a Creator in
+order to serve some useful end throughout all time to the creature in
+which they are found.
+
+He was not, surely, to hide the magnificent conceptions which he had
+been the first to grasp, from those who were worthy to receive them; on
+the other hand he would not tell the uninstructed what they would
+interpret as a license to do whatever they pleased, inasmuch as there
+was no God. What he did was to point so irresistibly in the right
+direction, that a reader of any intelligence should be in no doubt as to
+the road he ought to take, and then to contradict himself so flatly as
+to reassure those who would be shocked by a truth for which they were
+not yet ready. If I am right in the view which I have taken of Buffon's
+work, it is not easy to see how he could have formed a finer scheme, nor
+have carried it out more finely.
+
+I should, however, warn the reader to be on his guard against accepting
+my view too hastily. So far as I know I stand alone in taking it.
+Neither Dr. Darwin nor Flourens, nor Isidore Geoffroy, nor Mr. Charles
+Darwin see any subrisive humour in Buffon's pages; but it must be
+remembered that Flourens was a strong opponent of mutability, and
+probably paid but little heed to what Buffon said on this question;
+Isidore Geoffroy is not a safe guide, as will appear presently; Mr.
+Charles Darwin seems to have adopted the one half of Isidore Geoffroy's
+conclusions without verifying either; and Dr. Erasmus Darwin, who has no
+small share of a very pleasant conscious humour, yet sometimes rises to
+such heights of unconscious humour, that Buffon's puny labour may well
+have been invisible to him. Dr. Darwin wrote a great deal of poetry,
+some of which was about the common pump. Miss Seward tells us, as we
+shall see later on, that he "illustrated this familiar object with a
+picture of Maternal Beauty administering sustenance to her infant."
+Buffon could not have done anything like this.
+
+Buffon never, then, "arraigned the Creator for what was wanting or
+defective in His works;" on the contrary, whenever he has led up by an
+irresistible chain of reasoning to conclusions which should make men
+recast their ideas concerning the Deity, he invariably retreats under
+cover of an appeal to revelation. Naturally enough, the Sorbonne
+objected to an artifice which even Buffon could not conceal completely.
+They did not like being undermined; like Buffon himself, they preferred
+imposing upon the people, to seeing others do so. Buffon made his peace
+with the Sorbonne immediately, and, perhaps, from that time forward,
+contradicted himself a little more impudently than heretofore.
+
+It is probably for the reasons above suggested that Buffon did not
+propound a connected scheme of evolution or descent with modification,
+but scattered his theory in fragments up and down his work in the
+prefatory remarks with which he introduces the more striking animals or
+classes of animals. He never wastes evolutionary matter in the preface
+to an uninteresting animal; and the more interesting the animal, the
+more evolution will there be commonly found. When he comes to describe
+the animal more familiarly--and he generally begins a fresh chapter or
+half chapter when he does so--he writes no more about evolution, but
+gives an admirable description, which no one can fail to enjoy, and
+which I cannot think is nearly so inaccurate as is commonly supposed.
+These descriptions are the parts which Buffon intended for the general
+reader, expecting, doubtless, and desiring that such a reader should
+skip the dry parts he had been addressing to the more studious. It is
+true the descriptions are written _ad captandum_, as are all great
+works, but they succeed in captivating, having been composed with all
+the pains a man of genius and of great perseverance could bestow upon
+them. If I am not mistaken, he looked to these parts of his work to keep
+the whole alive till the time should come when the philosophical side of
+his writings should be understood and appreciated.
+
+Thus the goat breeds with the sheep, and may therefore serve as the text
+for a dissertation on hybridism, which is accordingly given in the
+preface to this animal. The presence of rudimentary organs under a pig's
+hoof suggests an attack upon the doctrine of final causes in so far as
+it is pretended that every part of every animal or plant was specially
+designed with a view to the wants of the animal or plant itself once and
+for ever throughout all time. The dog with his great variety of breeds
+gives an opportunity for an article on the formation of breeds and
+sub-breeds by man's artificial selection. The cat is not honoured with
+any philosophical reflections, and comes in for nothing but abuse. The
+hare suggests the rabbit, and the rabbit is a rapid breeder, although
+the hare is an unusually slow one; but this is near enough, so the hare
+shall serve us for the theme of a discourse on the geometrical ratio of
+increase and the balance of power which may be observed in nature. When
+we come to the carnivora, additional reflections follow upon the
+necessity for death, and even for violent death; this leads to the
+question whether the creatures that are killed suffer pain; here, then,
+will be the proper place for considering the sensations of animals
+generally.
+
+Perhaps the most pregnant passage concerning evolution is to be found in
+the preface to the ass, which is so near the beginning of the work as to
+be only the second animal of which Buffon treats after having described
+man himself. It points strongly in the direction of his having believed
+all animal forms to have been descended from one single common ancestral
+type. Buffon did not probably choose to take his very first opportunity
+in order to insist upon matter that should point in this direction; but
+the considerations were too important to be deferred long, and are
+accordingly put forward under cover of the ass, his second animal.
+
+When we consider the force with which Buffon's conclusion is led up to;
+the obviousness of the conclusion itself when the premises are once
+admitted; the impossibility that such a conclusion should be again lost
+sight of if the reasonableness of its being drawn had been once
+admitted; the position in his scheme which is assigned to it by its
+propounder; the persistency with which he demonstrates during forty
+years thereafter that the premises, which he has declared should
+establish the conclusion in question, are indisputable;--when we
+consider, too, that we are dealing with a man of unquestionable genius,
+and that the times and circumstances of his life were such as would go
+far to explain reserve and irony--is it, I would ask, reasonable to
+suppose that Buffon did not, in his own mind, and from the first, draw
+the inference to which he leads his reader, merely because from time to
+time he tells the reader, with a shrug of the shoulders, that _he_ draws
+no inferences opposed to the Book of Genesis? Is it not more likely that
+Buffon intended his reader to draw his inferences for himself, and
+perhaps to value them all the more highly on that account?
+
+The passage to which I am alluding is as follows:--
+
+"If from the boundless variety which animated nature presents to us, we
+choose the body of some animal or even that of man himself to serve as a
+model with which to compare the bodies of other organized beings, we
+shall find that though all these beings have an individuality of their
+own, and are distinguished from one another by differences of which the
+gradations are infinitely subtle, there exists at the same time a
+primitive and general design which we can follow for a long way, and the
+departures from which (_dégénérations_) are far more gentle than those
+from mere outward resemblance. For not to mention organs of digestion,
+circulation, and generation, which are common to all animals, and
+without which the animal would cease to be an animal, and could neither
+continue to exist nor reproduce itself--there is none the less even in
+those very parts which constitute the main difference in outward
+appearance, a striking resemblance which carries with it irresistibly
+the idea of a single pattern after which all would appear to have been
+conceived. The horse, for example--what can at first sight seem more
+unlike mankind? Yet when we compare man and horse point by point and
+detail by detail, is not our wonder excited rather by the points of
+resemblance than of difference that are to be found between them? Take
+the skeleton of a man; bend forward the bones in the region of the
+pelvis, shorten the thigh bones, and those of the leg and arm, lengthen
+those of the feet and hands, run the joints together, lengthen the jaws,
+and shorten the frontal bone, finally, lengthen the spine, and the
+skeleton will now be that of a man no longer, but will have become that
+of a horse--for it is easy to imagine that in lengthening the spine and
+the jaws we shall at the same time have increased the number of the
+vertebræ, ribs, and teeth. It is but in the number of these bones, which
+may be considered accessory, and by the lengthening, shortening, or mode
+of attachment of others, that the skeleton of the horse differs from
+that of the human body.... We find ribs in man, in all the quadrupeds,
+in birds, in fishes, and we may find traces of them as far down as the
+turtle, in which they seem still to be sketched out by means of furrows
+that are to be found beneath the shell. Let it be remembered that the
+foot of the horse, which seems so different from a man's hand, is,
+nevertheless, as M. Daubenton has pointed out, composed of the same
+bones, and that we have at the end of each of our fingers a nail
+corresponding to the hoof of a horse's foot. Judge, then, whether this
+hidden resemblance is not more marvellous than any outward
+differences--whether this constancy to a single plan of structure which
+we may follow from man to the quadrupeds, from the quadrupeds to the
+cetacea, from the cetacea to birds, from birds to reptiles, from
+reptiles to fishes--in which all such essential parts as heart,
+intestines, spine, are invariably found--whether, I say, this does not
+seem to indicate that the Creator when He made them would use but a
+single main idea, though at the same time varying it in every
+conceivable way, so that man might admire equally the magnificence of
+the execution and the simplicity of the design.[46]
+
+"If we regard the matter thus, not only the ass and the horse, _but even
+man himself, the apes, the quadrupeds, and all animals might be regarded
+but as forming members of one and the same family_. But are we to
+conclude that within this vast family which the Creator has called into
+existence out of nothing, there are other and smaller families,
+projected as it were by Nature, and brought forth by her in the natural
+course of events and after a long time, of which some contain but two
+members, as the ass and the horse, others many members, as the weasel,
+martin, stoat, ferret, &c., and that on the same principle there are
+families of vegetables, containing ten, twenty, or thirty plants, as the
+case may be? If such families had any real existence they could have
+been formed only by crossing, by the accumulation of successive
+variations (_variation successive_), and by degeneration from an
+original type; but if we once admit that there are families of plants
+and animals, so that the ass may be of the family of the horse, and
+that the one may only differ from the other through degeneration from a
+common ancestor, we might be driven to admit that the ape is of the
+family of man, that he is but a degenerate man, and that he and man have
+had a common ancestor, even as the ass and horse have had. It would
+follow then that every family, whether animal or vegetable, had sprung
+from a single stock, which after a succession of generations, had become
+higher in the case of some of its descendants and lower in that of
+others."
+
+What inference could be more aptly drawn? But it was not one which
+Buffon was going to put before the general public. He had said enough
+for the discerning, and continues with what is intended to make the
+conclusions they should draw even plainer to them, while it conceals
+them still more carefully from the general reader.
+
+"The naturalists who are so ready to establish families among animals
+and vegetables, do not seem to have sufficiently considered the
+consequences which should follow from their premises, for these would
+limit direct creation to as small a number of forms as anyone might
+think fit (reduisoient le produit immédiat de la création, à un nombre
+d'individus aussi petit que l'on voudroit). _For if it were once shown
+that we had right grounds for establishing these families; if the point
+were once gained that among animals and vegetables there had been, I do
+not say several species, but even a single one, which had been produced
+in the course of direct descent from another species; if for example it
+could be once shown that the ass was but a degeneration from the
+horse--then there is no further limit to be set to the power of nature,
+and we should not be wrong in supposing that with sufficient time she
+could have evolved all other organized forms from one primordial type
+(et l'on n'auroit pas tort de supposer, que d'un seul être elle a su
+tirer avec le temps tous les autres êtres organisés)._"
+
+Buffon now felt that he had sailed as near the wind as was desirable.
+His next sentence is as follows:--
+
+"But no! It is certain _from revelation_ that all animals have alike
+been favoured with the grace of an act of direct creation, and that the
+first pair of every species issued full formed from the hands of the
+Creator."[47]
+
+This might be taken as _bonâ fide_, if it had been written by Bonnet,
+but it is impossible to accept it from Buffon. It is only those who
+judge him at second hand, or by isolated passages, who can hold that he
+failed to see the consequences of his own premises. No one could have
+seen more clearly, nor have said more lucidly, what should suffice to
+show a sympathetic reader the conclusion he ought to come to. Even when
+ironical, his irony is not the ill-natured irony of one who is merely
+amusing himself at other people's expense, but the serious and
+legitimate irony of one who must either limit the circle of those to
+whom he appeals, or must know how to make the same language appeal
+differently to the different capacities of his readers, and who trusts
+to the good sense of the discerning to understand the difficulty of his
+position, and make due allowance for it.
+
+The compromise which he thought fit to put before the public was that
+"Each species has a type of which the principal features are engraved in
+indelible and eternally permanent characters, while all accessory
+touches vary."[48] It would be satisfactory to know where an accessory
+touch is supposed to begin and end.
+
+And again:--
+
+"The essential characteristics of every animal have been conserved
+without alteration in their most important parts.... The individuals of
+each genus still represent the same forms as they did in the earliest
+ages, especially in the case of the larger animals" (so that the generic
+forms even of the larger animals prove not to be the same, but only
+'especially' the same as in the earliest ages).[49]
+
+This transparently illogical position is maintained ostensibly from
+first to last, much in the same spirit as in the two foregoing passages,
+written at intervals of thirteen years. But they are to be read by the
+light of the earlier one--placed as a lantern to the wary upon the
+threshold of his work in 1753--to the effect that a single, well
+substantiated case of degeneration would make it conceivable that all
+living beings were descended from a single common ancestor. If after
+having led up to this by a remorseless logic, a man is found
+five-and-twenty years later still substantiating cases of degeneration,
+as he has been substantiating them unceasingly in thirty quartos during
+the whole interval, there should be little question how seriously we
+are to take him when he wishes us to stop short of the conclusions he
+has told us we ought to draw from the premises that he has made it the
+business of his life to establish--especially when we know that he has a
+Sorbonne to keep a sharp eye upon him.
+
+I believe that if the reader will bear in mind the twofold, serious and
+ironical, character of Buffon's work he will understand it, and feel an
+admiration for it which will grow continually greater and greater the
+more he studies it, otherwise he will miss the whole point.
+
+Buffon on one of the early pages of his first volume protested against
+the introduction of either "_plaisanterie_" or "_équivoque_" (p. 25)
+into a serious work. But I have observed that there is an unconscious
+irony in most disclaimers of this nature. When a writer begins by saying
+that he has "an ineradicable tendency to make things clear," we may
+infer that we are going to be puzzled; so when he shows that he is
+haunted by a sense of the impropriety of allowing humour to intrude into
+his work, we may hope to be amused as well as interested. As showing how
+far the objection to humour which he expressed upon his twenty-fifth
+page succeeded in carrying him safely over his twenty-sixth and
+twenty-seventh, I will quote the following, which begins on page
+twenty-six:--
+
+"Aldrovandus is the most learned and laborious of all naturalists; after
+sixty years of work he has left an immense number of volumes behind him,
+which have been printed at various times, the greater number of them
+after his death. It would be possible to reduce them to a tenth part if
+we could rid them of all useless and foreign matter, and of a prolixity
+which I find almost overwhelming; were this only done, his books should
+be regarded as among the best we have on the subject of natural history
+in its entirety. The plan of his work is good, his classification
+distinguished for its good sense, his dividing lines well marked, his
+descriptions sufficiently accurate--monotonous it is true, but
+painstaking; the historical part of his work is less good; it is often
+confused and fabulous, and the author shows too manifestly the credulous
+tendencies of his mind.
+
+"While going over his work, I have been struck with that defect, or
+rather excess, which we find in almost all the books of a hundred or a
+couple of hundred years ago, and which prevails still among the
+Germans--I mean with that quantity of useless erudition with which they
+intentionally swell out their works, and the result of which is that
+their subject is overlaid with a mass of extraneous matter on which they
+enlarge with great complacency, but with no consideration whatever for
+their readers. They seem, in fact, to have forgotten what they have to
+say in their endeavour to tell us what has been said by other people.
+
+"I picture to myself a man like Aldrovandus, after he has once conceived
+the design of writing a complete natural history. I see him in his
+library reading, one after the other, ancients, moderns, philosophers,
+theologians, jurisconsults, historians, travellers, poets, and reading
+with no other end than with that of catching at all words and phrases
+which can be forced from far or near into some kind of relation with his
+subject. I see him copying all these passages, or getting them copied
+for him, and arranging them in alphabetical order. He fills many
+portfolios with all manner of notes, often taken without either
+discrimination or research, and at last sets himself to write with a
+resolve that not one of all these notes shall remain unused. The result
+is that when he comes to his account of the cow or of the hen, he will
+tell us all that has ever yet been said about cows or hens; all that the
+ancients ever thought about them; all that has ever been imagined
+concerning their virtues, characters, and courage; every purpose to
+which they have ever yet been put; every story of every old woman that
+he can lay hold of; all the miracles which certain religions have
+ascribed to them; all the superstitions they have given rise to; all the
+metaphors and allegories which poets have drawn from them; the
+attributes that have been assigned to them; the representations that
+have been made of them in hieroglyphics and armorial bearings, in a word
+all the histories and all fables in which there was ever yet any mention
+either of a cow or hen. How much natural history is likely to be found
+in such a lumber room? and how is one to lay one's hand upon the little
+that there may actually be?"[50]
+
+It is hoped that the reader will see Buffon, much us Buffon saw the
+learned Aldrovandus. He should see him going into his library, &c., and
+quietly chuckling to himself as he wrote such a passage as the one in
+which we lately found him saying that the larger animals had
+"especially" the same generic forms as they had always had. And the
+reader should probably see Daubenton chuckling also.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[39] Tom. i. p. 24, 1749.
+
+[40] Tom. i. p. 40, 1749.
+
+[41] Vol. i. p. 34, 1749.
+
+[42] Tom. i. p. 36.
+
+[43] See p. 88 of this volume; see also p. 155, and 164.
+
+[44] Tom. i. p. 33.
+
+[45] 'The Naturalist's Library,' vol. ii. p. 23, Edinburgh, 1843.
+
+[46] Tom. iv. p. 381, 1753.
+
+[47] Tom. iv. p. 383, 1753 (this was the first volume on the lower
+animals).
+
+[48] Tom. xiii. p. ix. 1765.
+
+[49] Sup. tom. v. p. 27, 1778.
+
+[50] Tom. i. p. 28, 1749.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+SUPPOSED FLUCTUATIONS OF OPINION--CAUSES OR MEANS OF THE TRANSFORMATION
+OF SPECIES.
+
+
+Enough, perhaps, has been already said to disabuse the reader's mind of
+the common misconception of Buffon, namely, that he was more or less of
+an elegant trifler with science, who cared rather about the language in
+which his ideas were clothed than about the ideas themselves, and that
+he did not hold the same opinions for long together; but the accusation
+of instability has been made in such high quarters that it is necessary
+to refute it still more completely.
+
+Mr. Darwin, for example, in his "Historical Sketch of the Recent
+Progress of Opinion on the Origin of Species" prefixed to all the later
+editions of his own 'Origin of Species,' says of Buffon that he "was the
+first author who, in modern times, has treated" the origin of species
+"in a scientific spirit. But," he continues, "as his opinions fluctuated
+greatly at different periods, and as he does not enter on the causes or
+means of the transformation of species, I need not here enter on
+details."[51]
+
+Mr. Darwin seems to have followed the one half of Isidore Geoffroy St.
+Hilaire's "full account of Buffon's conclusions" upon the subject of
+descent with modification,[52] to which he refers with approval on the
+second page of his historical sketch.[53]
+
+Turning, then, to Isidore Geoffroy's work, I find that in like manner he
+too has been following the one half of what Buffon actually said. But
+even so, he awards Buffon very high praise.
+
+"Buffon," he writes, "is to the doctrine of the mutability of species
+what Linnæus is to that of its fixity. It is only since the appearance
+of Buffon's 'Natural History,' and in consequence thereof, that the
+mutability of species has taken rank among scientific questions."[54]
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"Buffon, who comes next in chronological order after Bacon, follows him
+in no other respect than that of time. He is entirely original in
+arriving at the doctrine of the variability of organic types, and in
+enouncing it after long hesitation, during which one can watch the
+labour of a great intelligence freeing itself little by little from the
+yoke of orthodoxy.
+
+"But from this source come difficulties in the interpretation of
+Buffon's work which have misled many writers. Buffon expresses
+absolutely different opinions in different parts of his natural
+history--so much so that partisans and opponents of the doctrine of the
+fixity of species have alike believed and still believe themselves at
+liberty to claim Buffon as one of the great authorities upon their
+side."
+
+Then follow the quotations upon which M. Geoffroy relies--to which I
+will return presently--after which the conclusion runs thus:--
+
+"The dates, however, of the several passages in question are sufficient
+to explain the differences in their tenor, in a manner worthy of Buffon.
+Where are the passages in which Buffon affirms the immutability of
+species? At the beginning of his work. His first volume on animals[55]
+is dated 1753. The two following are those in which Buffon still shares
+the views of Linnæus; they are dated 1755 and 1756. Of what date are
+those in which Buffon declares for variability? From 1761 to 1766. And
+those in which, after having admitted variability and declared in favour
+of it, he proceeds to limit it? From 1765 to 1778.
+
+"The inference is sufficiently simple. Buffon does but correct himself.
+He does not fluctuate. He goes once for all from one opinion to the
+other, from what he accepted at starting on the authority of another to
+what he recognized as true after twenty years of research. If while
+trying to set himself free from the prevailing notions, he in the first
+instance went, like all other innovators, somewhat to the opposite
+extreme, he essays as soon as may be to retrace his steps in some
+measure, and thenceforward to remain unchanged.
+
+"Let the reader cast his eye over the general table of contents wherein
+Buffon, at the end of his 'Natural History,' gives a _résumé_ of all of
+it that he is anxious to preserve. He passes over alike the passages in
+which he affirms and those in which he unreservedly denies the
+immutability of species, and indicates only the doctrine of the
+permanence of essential features and the variability of details (toutes
+les touches accessoires); he repeats this eleven years later in his
+'Époques de la Nature'" (published 1778).[56]
+
+But I think I can show that the passages which M. Geoffroy brings
+forward, to prove that Buffon was in the first instance a supporter of
+invariability, do not bear him out in the deduction he has endeavoured
+to draw from them.
+
+"What author," he asks, "has ever pronounced more decidedly than Buffon
+in favour of the invariability of species? Where can we find a more
+decided expression of opinion than the following?
+
+"'The different species of animals are separated from one another by a
+space which Nature cannot overstep.'"
+
+On turning, however, to Buffon himself, I find the passage to stand as
+follows:--
+
+"_Although_ the different species of animals are separated from one
+another by a space which Nature cannot overstep--_yet some of them
+approach so nearly to one another in so many respects that there is only
+room enough left for the getting in of a line of separation between
+them_,"[57] and on the following page he distinctly encourages the idea
+of the mutability of species in the following passage:--
+
+"In place of regarding the ass as a degenerate horse, there would be
+more reason in calling the horse a more perfect kind of ass (un âne
+perfectionné), and the sheep a more delicate kind of goat, that we have
+tended, perfected, and propagated for our use, and that the more perfect
+animals in general--especially the domestic animals--_draw their origin
+from some less perfect species of that kind of wild animal which they
+most resemble. Nature alone not being able to do as much as Nature and
+man can do in concert with one another_."[58]
+
+But Buffon had long ago declared that if the horse and the ass could be
+considered as being blood relations there was no stopping short of the
+admission that all animals might also be blood relations--that is to
+say, descended from common ancestors--and now he tells us that the ass
+and horse _are_ in all probability descended from common ancestors. Will
+a reader of any literary experience hold that so laborious, and yet so
+witty a writer, and one so studious of artistic effect, could ignore the
+broad lines he had laid down for himself, or forget how what he had said
+would bear on subsequent passages, and subsequent passages on it? A less
+painstaking author than Buffon may yet be trusted to remember his own
+work well enough to avoid such literary bad workmanship as this. If
+Buffon had seen reason to change his mind he would have said so, and
+would have contradicted the inference he had originally pronounced to be
+deducible from an admission of kinship between the ass and the horse.
+This, it is hardly necessary to say, he never does, though he frequently
+thinks it well to remind his reader of the fact that the ass and the
+horse are in all probability closely related. This is bringing two and
+two together with sufficient closeness for all practical purposes.
+
+Should not M. Geoffroy's question, then, have rather been "Who has ever
+pronounced more grudgingly, even in an early volume, &c., &c., and who
+has more completely neutralized whatever concession he might appear to
+have been making?"
+
+Nor does the only other passage which M. Geoffroy brings forward to
+prove that Buffon was originally a believer in the fixity of species
+bear him out much better. It is to be found on the opening page of a
+brief introduction to the wild animals. M. Geoffroy quotes it thus: "We
+shall see Nature dictating her laws, so simple yet so unchangeable, and
+imprinting her own immutable characters upon every species." But M.
+Geoffroy does not give the passage which, on the same page, admits
+mutability among domesticated animals, in the case of which he declares
+we find Nature "rarement perfectionnée, souvent alterée, défigurée;" nor
+yet does he deem it necessary to show that the context proves that this
+unchangeableness of wild animals is only relative; and this he should
+certainly have done, for two pages later on Buffon speaks of the
+American tigers, lions, and panthers as being "degenerated, if their
+original nature was cruel and ferocious; or, rather, they have
+experienced the effect of climate, and under a milder sky have assumed a
+milder nature, their excesses have become moderated, and by the changes
+which they have undergone they have become more in conformity with the
+country they inhabit."[59]
+
+And again:--
+
+"If we consider each species in the different climates which it
+inhabits, we shall find perceptible varieties as regards size and form:
+they all derive an impress to a greater or less extent from the climate
+in which they live. _These changes are only made slowly and
+imperceptibly._ Nature's great workman is Time. He marches ever with an
+even pace, and does nothing by leaps and bounds, but by degrees,
+gradations, and succession he does all things; and the changes which he
+works--at first imperceptible--become little by little perceptible, and
+show themselves eventually in results about which there can be no
+mistake.
+
+"Nevertheless animals in a free, wild state are perhaps less subject
+than any other living beings, man not excepted, to alterations, changes,
+and variations of all kinds. Being free to choose their own food and
+climate, they vary less than domestic animals vary."[60] The conditions
+of their existence, in fact, remaining practically constant, the animals
+are no less constant themselves.
+
+The writer of the above could hardly be claimed as a very thick and thin
+partisan of immutability, even though he had not shown from the first
+how clearly he saw that there was no middle position between the denial
+of all mutability, and the admission that in the course of sufficient
+time any conceivable amount of mutability is possible. I will give a
+considerable part of what I have found in the first six volumes of
+Buffon to bear one way or the other on his views concerning the
+mutability of species; and I think the reader, so far from agreeing with
+M. Isidore Geoffroy that Buffon began his work with a belief in the
+fixity of species, will find, that from the very first chapter onward,
+he leant strongly to mutability, even if he did not openly avow his
+belief in it.
+
+In support of this assertion, one quotation must suffice:--
+
+"Nature advances by gradations which pass unnoticed. She passes from one
+species, and often from one genus to another by imperceptible degrees,
+so that we meet with a great number of mean species and objects of such
+doubtful characters that we know not where to place them."[61]
+
+The reader who turns to Buffon himself will find the idea that Buffon
+took a less advanced position in his old age than he had taken in middle
+life is also without foundation.
+
+Mr. Darwin has said that Buffon "does not enter into the causes or means
+of the transformation of species." It is not easy to admit the justice
+of this. Independently of his frequently insisting on the effect of all
+kinds of changed surroundings, he has devoted a long chapter of over
+sixty quarto pages to this very subject; it is to be found in his
+fourteenth volume, and is headed "De la Dégénération des Animaux," of
+which words "On descent with modification" will be hardly more than a
+literal translation. I shall give a fuller but still too brief outline
+of the chapter later on, and will confine myself here to saying that the
+three principal causes of modification which Buffon brings forward are
+changes of climate, of food, and the effects of domestication. He may
+be said to have attributed variation to the direct and specific action
+of changed conditions of life, and to have had but little conception of
+the view which he was himself to suggest to Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and
+through him to Lamarck.
+
+Isidore Geoffroy, writing of Lamarck, and comparing his position with
+that taken by Buffon, says, on the whole truly, that "what Buffon
+ascribes to the general effects of climate, Lamarck maintains to be
+caused, especially in the case of animals, by the force of habits; _so
+that, according to him, they are not, properly speaking, modified by the
+conditions of their existence, but are only induced by these conditions
+to set about modifying themselves_."[62] But it is very hard to say how
+much Buffon saw and how much he did not see. He may be trusted to have
+seen that if he once allowed the thin end of this wedge into his system,
+he could no more assign limits to the effect which living forms might
+produce upon their own organisms by effort and ingenuity in the course
+of long time, than he could set limits to what he had called the power
+of Nature if he was once to admit that an ass and a horse might, through
+that power, have been descended from a common ancestor. Nevertheless, he
+shows no unwillingness or recalcitrancy about letting the wedge enter,
+for he speaks of domestication as inducing modifications "sufficiently
+profound to become constant and hereditary in successive generations ...
+_by its action on bodily habits it influences also their natures,
+instincts, and most inward qualities_."[63]
+
+This is a very thick thin end to have been allowed to slip in unawares;
+but it is astonishing how little Buffon can see when he likes. I hardly
+doubt but he would have been well enough pleased to have let the wedge
+enter still farther, but this fluctuating writer had assigned himself
+his limits some years before, and meant adhering to them. Again, in this
+very chapter on Degeneration, to which M. Geoffroy has referred, there
+are passages on the callosities on a camel's knees, on the llama, and on
+the haunches of pouched monkeys which might have been written by Dr.
+Darwin himself.[64] They will appear more fully presently. Buffon now
+probably felt that he had said enough, and that others might be trusted
+to carry the principle farther when the time was riper for its
+enforcement.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[51] 'Origin of Species,' p. xiii. ed. 1876.
+
+[52] 'Hist. Nat. Gén.,' tom. ii. p. 405, 1859.
+
+[53] 'Origin of Species,' p. xiv. 1876.
+
+[54] 'Hist. Nat. Gén.,' tom. ii. p. 383.
+
+[55] Tom. iv.
+
+[56] 'Hist. Nat. Gén.,' tom. ii. p. 391, 1859.
+
+[57] Tom. v. p. 59, 1755.
+
+[58] Tom. v. p. 60.
+
+[59] Tom. vi. p. 58, 1756.
+
+[60] Tom. vi. pp. 59-60, 1756.
+
+[61] Tom. i. p. 13, 1749.
+
+[62] 'Hist. Nat. Gén.,' tom. ii. p. 411, 1859.
+
+[63] Tom. xi. p. 290, 1764 (misprinted on title-page 1754).
+
+[64] See tom. xiv. p. 326, 1766; and p. 162 of this volume.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+BUFFON--FULLER QUOTATIONS.
+
+
+Let us now proceed to those fuller quotations which may answer the
+double purpose of bearing me out in the view of Buffon's work which I
+have taken in the foregoing pages, and of inducing the reader to turn to
+Buffon himself.
+
+I have already said that from the very commencement of his work Buffon
+showed a proclivity towards considerations which were certain to lead
+him to a theory of evolution, even though he had not, as I believe he
+had, already taken a more comprehensive view of the subject than he
+thought fit to proclaim unreservedly.
+
+In 1749, at the beginning of his first volume he writes:--
+
+"The first truth that makes itself apparent on serious study of Nature,
+is one that man may perhaps find humiliating; it is this--that he, too,
+must take his place in the ranks of animals, being, as he is, an animal
+in every material point. It is possible also that the instinct of the
+lower animals will strike him as more unerring, and their industry more
+marvellous than his own. Then, running his eye over the different
+objects of which the universe is composed, he will observe with
+astonishment that we can descend by almost imperceptible degrees from
+the most perfect creature to the most formless matter--from the most
+highly organized animal to the most entirely inorganic substance. He
+will recognize this gradation as the great work of Nature; and he will
+observe it not only as regards size and form, but also in respect of
+movements, and in the successive generations of every species.[65]
+
+"Hence," he continues, "arises the difficulty of arriving at any perfect
+system or method in dealing either with Nature as a whole or even with
+any single one of her subdivisions. The gradations are so subtle that we
+are often obliged to make arbitrary divisions. Nature knows nothing
+about our classifications, and does not choose to lend herself to them
+without reserve. We therefore see a number of intermediate species and
+objects which it is very hard to classify, and which of necessity
+derange our system whatever it may be."[66]
+
+"The attempt to form perfect systems has led to such disastrous results
+that it is now more easy to learn botany than the terminology which has
+been adopted as its language."[67]
+
+After saying that "_la marche de la Nature_" has been misunderstood, and
+that her progress has ever been by a succession of slow steps, he
+maintains that the only proper course is to class together whatever
+objects resemble one another, and to separate those which are unlike. If
+individual specimens are absolutely alike, or differ so little that the
+differences can hardly be perceived, they must be classed as of the same
+species; if the differences begin to be perceptible, but if at the same
+time there is more resemblance than difference, the individuals
+presenting these features should be classed as of a different species,
+but as of the same genus; if the differences are still more marked, but
+nevertheless do not exceed the resemblances, then they must be taken as
+not only specific but generic, though as not sufficient to warrant
+the individuals in which they appear, being placed in different
+classes. If they are still greater, then the individuals are not even
+of the same class; but it should be always understood that the
+resemblances and differences are to be considered in reference to the
+entirety of the plant or animal, and not in reference to any particular
+part only.[68] The two rocks which are equally to be avoided are, on
+the one hand, absence of method, and, on the other, a tendency to
+over-systematize.[69]
+
+Like Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and more recently Mr. Francis Darwin, Buffon is
+more struck with the resemblances than with the differences between
+animals and plants, but he supposes the vegetable kingdom to be a
+continuation of the animal, extending lower down the scale, instead of
+holding as Dr. Darwin did, that animals and vegetables have been
+contemporaneous in their degeneration from a common stock.
+
+"We see," he writes, "that there is no absolute and essential difference
+between animals and vegetables, but that Nature descends by subtle
+gradations from what we deem the most perfect animal to one which is
+less so, and again from this to the vegetable. The fresh-water polypus
+may perhaps be considered as the lowest animal, and as at the same time
+the highest plant."[70]
+
+Looking to the resemblances between animals and plants, he declares that
+their modes of reproduction and growth involve such close analogy that
+no difference of an essential nature can be admitted between them.[71]
+
+On the other hand, Buffon appears, at first sight, to be more struck
+with the points of difference between the mental powers of the lower
+animals and man than with those which they present in common. It is
+impossible, however, to accept this as Buffon's real opinion, on the
+strength of isolated passages, and in face of a large number of others
+which point stealthily but irresistibly to an exactly opposite
+conclusion. We find passages which show a clear apprehension of facts
+that the world is only now beginning to consider established, followed
+by others which no man who has kept a dog or cat will be inclined to
+agree with. I think I have already explained this sufficiently by
+referring it to the impossibility of his taking any other course under
+the circumstances of his own position and the times in which he lived.
+Buffon does not deal with such pregnant facts, as, for example, the
+geometrical ratio of increase, in such manner as to suggest that he was
+only half aware of their importance and bearing. On the contrary, in the
+very middle of those passages which, if taken literally, should most
+shake confidence in his judgment, there comes a sustaining sentence, so
+quiet that it shall pass unnoticed by all who are not attentive
+listeners, yet so encouraging to those who are taking pains to
+understand their author that their interest is revived at once.
+
+Thus, he has insisted, and means insisting much further, on the many
+points of resemblance between man and the lower animals, and it has now
+become necessary to neutralize the effect of what he has written upon
+the minds of those who are not yet fitted to see instinct and reason as
+differentiations of a single faculty. He accordingly does this, and, as
+is his wont, he does it handsomely; so handsomely that even his most
+admiring followers begin to be uncomfortable. Whereon he begins his next
+paragraph with "Animals have excellent senses, but not _generally, all
+of them_, as good as man's."[72] We have heard of damning with faint
+praise. Is not this to praise with faint damnation? Yet we can lay hold
+of nothing. It was not Buffon's intention that we should. An ironical
+writer, concerning whom we cannot at once say whether he is in earnest
+or not, is an actor who is continually interrupting his performance in
+order to remind the spectator that he is acting. Complaint, then,
+against an ironical writer on the score that he puzzles us, is a
+complaint against irony itself; for a writer is not ironical unless he
+puzzles. He should not puzzle unless he believes that this is the best
+manner of making his reader understand him in the end, or without having
+a _bonne bouche_ for those who will be at the pains to puzzle over him;
+and he should make it plain that for long parts of his work together he
+is to be taken according to the literal interpretation of his words;
+but if he has observed the above duly, he is a successful or
+unsuccessful writer according as he puzzles or fails to do so, and
+should be praised or blamed accordingly. To condemn irony entirely, is
+to say that there should be no people allowed to go about the world but
+those to whom irony would be an impertinence.
+
+Having already in some measure reassured us by the faintness with which
+he disparages the senses of the lower animals, Buffon continues, that
+these senses, whether in man or in animals, may be greatly developed by
+exercise: which we may suppose that a man of even less humour than
+Buffon must know to be great nonsense, unless it be taken to involve
+that animals as well as man can reflect and remember; it now, therefore,
+becomes necessary to reassure the other side, and to maintain that
+animals cannot reflect, and have no memory. "_Je crois_," he writes,
+"_qu'on peut démontrer que les animaux n'ont aucune connaissance du
+passé, aucune idée du temps, et que par conséquent ils n'ont pas la
+mémoire_."[73]
+
+I am ashamed of even arguing seriously against the supposition that this
+was Buffon's real opinion. The very sweepingness of the assertion, the
+baldness, and I might say brutality with which it is made, are
+convincing in their suggestiveness of one who is laughing very quietly
+in his sleeve.
+
+"Society," he continues, later on, "considered even in the case of a
+single human family, involves the power of reason; it involves feeling
+in such of the lower animals as form themselves into societies freely
+and of their own accord, but it involves nothing whatever in the case of
+bees, who have found themselves thrown together through no effort of
+their own. Such societies can only be, and it is plain have only been,
+the results--neither foreseen, nor ordained, nor conceived by those who
+achieve them--of the universal mechanism and of the laws of movement
+established by the Creator."[74] A hive of bees, in fact, is to be
+considered as composed of "ten thousand animated automata."[75] Years
+later he repeats these views with little if any modification.[76] A
+still more remarkable passage is to be found a little farther on. "If,"
+he asks, "animals have neither understanding, mind, nor memory, if they
+are wholly without intelligence, and if they are limited to the exercise
+and experience of feeling only," and it must be remembered that Buffon
+has denied all these powers to the inferior animals, "whence comes that
+remarkable prescient instinct which so many of them exhibit? Is the mere
+power of feeling sensations sufficient to make them garner up food
+during the summer, on which food they may subsist in winter? Does not
+this involve the power of comparing dates, and the idea of a coming
+future, an '_inquiétude raisonnée_'? Why do we find in the hole of the
+field-mouse enough acorns to keep him until the following summer? Why do
+we find such an abundant store of honey and wax within the bee-hive? Why
+do ants store food? Why should birds make nests if they do not know that
+they will have need of them? Whence arise the stories that we hear of
+the wisdom of foxes, which hide their prey in different spots, that they
+may find it at their need and live upon it for days together? Or of the
+subtilty of owls, which husband their store of mice by biting off their
+feet, so that they cannot run away? Or of the marvellous penetration of
+bees, which know beforehand that their queen should lay so many eggs in
+such and such a time, and that so many of these eggs should be of a kind
+which will develop into drones, and so many more of such another kind as
+should become neuters; and who in consequence of this their
+foreknowledge build so many larger cells for the first, and so many
+smaller for the second?"[77]
+
+Buffon answers these questions thus:--
+
+"Before replying to them," he says, "we should make sure of the facts
+themselves;--are they to be depended upon? Have they been narrated by
+men of intelligence and philosophers, or are they popular fables only?"
+(How many delightful stories of the same character does he not soon
+proceed to tell us himself). "I am persuaded that all these pretended
+wonders will disappear, and the cause of each one of them be found upon
+due examination. But admitting their truth for a moment, and granting to
+the narrators of them that animals have a presentiment, a forethought,
+and even a certainty concerning coming events, does it therefore follow
+that this should spring from intelligence? If so, theirs is assuredly
+much greater than our own. For our foreknowledge amounts to conjecture
+only; the vaunted light of our reason doth but suffice to show us a
+little probability; whereas the forethought of animals is unerring, and
+must spring from some principle far higher than any we know of through
+our own experience. Does not such a consequence, I ask, _prove repugnant
+alike to religion and common sense_?"[78]
+
+This is Buffon's way. Whenever he has shown us clearly what we ought to
+think, he stops short suddenly on religious grounds. It is incredible
+that the writer who at the very commencement of his work makes man take
+his place among the animals, and who sees a subtle gradation extending
+over all living beings "from the most perfect creature"--who must be
+man--"to the most entirely inorganic substance"--I say it is incredible
+that such a writer should not see that he had made out a stronger case
+in favour of the reason of animals than against it.
+
+According to him, the test whether a thing is to have such and such a
+name is whether it looks fairly like other things to which the same name
+is given; if it does, it is to have the name; if it does not, it is not.
+No one accepted this lesson more heartily than Dr. Darwin, whose shrewd
+and homely mind, if not so great as Buffon's, was still one of no common
+order. Let us see the view he took of this matter. He writes:--
+
+"If we were better acquainted with the histories of those insects which
+are formed into societies, as the bees, wasps, and ants, I make no doubt
+but we should find that their arts and improvements are not so similar
+and uniform as they now appear to us, but that they arose in the same
+manner from experience and tradition, as the arts of our own species;
+though their reasoning is from fewer ideas, is busied about fewer
+objects, and is executed with less energy."[79]
+
+And again, a little later:--
+
+"According to the late observations of Mr. Hunter, it appears that
+beeswax is not made from the dust of the anthers of flowers, which they
+bring home on their thighs, but that this makes what is termed
+bee-bread, and is used for the purpose of feeding the bee-maggots; in
+the same way butterflies live on honey, but the previous caterpillar
+lives on vegetable leaves, while the maggots of large flies require
+flesh for their food. What induces the bee, who lives on honey, to lay
+up vegetable powder for its young? What induces the butterfly to lay its
+eggs on leaves when itself feeds on honey?... If these are not
+deductions from their own previous experience or observation, all the
+actions of mankind must be resolved into instincts."[80]
+
+Or again:--
+
+"Common worms stop up their holes with leaves or straws to prevent the
+frost from injuring them, or the centipes from devouring them. The
+habits of peace or the stratagems of war of these subterranean nations
+are covered from our view; but a friend of mine prevailed on a
+distressed worm to enter the hole of another worm on a bowling green,
+and he presently returned much wounded about the head, ... which
+evinces they have design in stopping the mouths of their
+habitations."[81]
+
+Does it not look as if Dr. Darwin had in his mind the very passage of
+Buffon which I have been last quoting? and is it likely that the facts
+which were accepted by Dr. Darwin without question, or the conclusions
+which were obvious to him, were any less accepted by or obvious to
+Buffon?
+
+
+_The Goat--Hybridism._
+
+In his prefatory remarks upon the goat, Buffon complains of the want of
+systematic and certified experiment as to what breeds and species will
+be fertile _inter se_, and with what results. The passage is too long to
+quote, but is exceedingly good, and throughout involves belief in a very
+considerable amount of modification in the course of successive
+generations. I may give the following as an example:--
+
+"We do not know whether or no the zebra would breed with the horse or
+ass--whether the large-tailed Barbary sheep would be fertile if crossed
+with our own--whether the chamois is not a wild goat; and whether it
+would not form an intermediate breed if crossed with our domesticated
+goats; we do not know whether the differences between apes are really
+specific, or whether apes are not like dogs, one single species, of
+which there are many different breeds.... Our ignorance concerning all
+these facts is almost inevitable, as the experiments which would decide
+them require more time, pains, and money than can be spared from, the
+life and fortune of an ordinary man. I have spent many years in
+experiments of this kind, and will give my results when I come to my
+chapter on mules; but I may as well say at once that they have thrown
+but little light upon the subject, and have been for the most part
+unsuccessful."[82]
+
+"But these," he continues, "are the very points which must determine our
+whole knowledge concerning animals, their right division into species,
+and the true understanding of their history." He proposes therefore, in
+the present lack of knowledge, "to regard all animals as different
+species which do not breed together under our eyes," and to leave time
+and experiment to correct mistakes.[83]
+
+
+_The Pig--Doctrine of Final Causes._
+
+We have seen that the doctrine of the mutability of species has been
+unfortunately entangled with that of final causes, or the belief that
+every organ and every part of each animal or plant has been designed to
+serve some purpose useful to the animal, and this not only useful at
+some past time, but useful now, and for all time to come. He who
+believes species to be mutable will see in many organs signs of the
+history of the individual, but nothing more. Buffon, as I have said, is
+explicit in his denial of final causes in the sense expressed above.
+After pointing out that the pig is an animal whose relation to other
+animals it is difficult to define, he says:--
+
+"In a word, it is of a nature altogether equivocal and ambiguous, or,
+rather, it must appear so to those who believe the hypothetical order of
+their own ideas to be the real order of things, and who see nothing in
+the infinite chain of existences but a few apparent points to which they
+will refer everything.
+
+"But we cannot know Nature by inclosing her action within the narrow
+circle of our own thoughts.... Instead of limiting her action, we should
+extend it through immensity itself; we should regard nothing as
+impossible, but should expect to find all things--supposing that all
+things are possible--nay, _are_. Doubtful species, then, irregular
+productions, anomalous existences will henceforth no longer surprise us,
+and will find their place in the infinite order of things as duly as any
+others. They fill up the links of the chain; they form knots and
+intermediate points, and also they mark its extremities: they are of
+especial value to human intelligence, as providing it with cases in
+which Nature, being less in conformity with herself, is taken more
+unawares, so that we can recognize singular characters and fleeting
+traits which show us that her ends are much more general than are our
+own views of those ends, and that, though she does nothing in vain, yet
+she does but little with the designs which we ascribe to her."[84]
+
+"The pig," he continues, "is not formed on an original, special, and
+perfect type; its type is compounded of that of many other animals. It
+has parts which are evidently useless, or which at any rate it cannot
+use--such as toes, all the bones of which are perfectly formed but
+which are yet of no service to it. Nature then is far from subjecting
+herself to final causes in the composition of her creatures. Why should
+she not sometimes add superabundant parts, seeing she so often omits
+essential ones?" "How many animals are there not which lack sense and
+limbs? Why is it considered so necessary that every part in an
+individual should be useful to the other parts and to the whole animal?
+Should it not be enough that they do not injure each other nor stand in
+the way of each other's fair development? All parts coexist which do not
+injure each other enough to destroy each other, and perhaps in the
+greater number of living beings the parts which must be considered as
+relative, useful, or necessary, are fewer than those which are
+indifferent, useless, and superabundant. But we--ever on the look out to
+refer all parts to a certain end--when we can see no apparent use for
+them suppose them to have hidden uses, and imagine connections which are
+without foundation, and serve only to obscure our perception of Nature
+as she really is: we fail to see that we thus rob philosophy of her true
+character, which is to inquire into the 'how' of things--into the manner
+in which Nature acts--and that we substitute for this true object a vain
+idea, seeking to divine the 'why'--the ends which she has proposed in
+acting."[85]
+
+
+_The Dog--Varieties in consequence of Man's Selection._
+
+"Of all animals the dog is most susceptible of impressions, and becomes
+most easily modified by moral causes. He is also the one whose nature
+is most subject to the variations and alterations caused by physical
+influences: he varies to a prodigious extent, in temperament, mental
+powers, and in habits: his very form is not constant;" ... but presents
+so many differences that "dogs have nothing in common but conformity of
+interior organization, and the power of interbreeding freely."...
+
+... "How then can we detect the characters of the original race? How
+recognize the effects produced by climate, food, &c.? How, again,
+distinguish these from those other effects which come from the
+intermixture of races, either when wild or in a state of domestication?
+All these causes, in the course of time, alter even the most constant
+forms, so that the imprint of Nature does not preserve its sharpness in
+races which man has dealt with largely. Those animals which are free to
+choose climate and food for themselves can best conserve their original
+character, ... but those which man has subjected to his own
+influence--which he has taken with him from clime to clime, whose food,
+habits, and manner of life he has altered--must also have changed their
+form far more than others; and as a matter of fact we find much greater
+variety in the species of domesticated animals than in those of wild
+ones. Of all these, however, the dog is the one most closely attached to
+man, living like man the least regular manner of life; he is also the
+one whose feelings so master him as to make him docile, obedient,
+susceptible of every kind of impression, and even of every kind of
+constraint; it is not surprising, then, that he should of all animals
+present us with the greatest variety in shape, stature, colour, and all
+physical and mental qualities."
+
+Here again the direct cause of modification is given as being the inner
+feelings of the animal modified, change of conditions being the indirect
+cause as with Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck.
+
+"Other circumstances, however, concur to produce these results. The dog
+is short-lived: he breeds often and freely: he is perpetually under the
+eye of man; hence when--by some chance common enough with Nature--a
+variation or special feature has made its appearance, man has tried to
+perpetuate it by uniting together the individuals in which it has
+appeared, as people do now who wish to form new breeds of dogs and other
+animals. Moreover, though species were all formed at the same time, yet
+the number of generations since the creation has been much greater in
+the short-lived than in the long-lived species: hence variations,
+alterations, and departure from the original type, may be expected to
+have become more perceptible in the case of animals which are so much
+farther removed from their original stock.
+
+"Man is now eight times nearer Adam than the dog is to the first
+dog--for man lives eighty years, while the dog lives but ten. If, then,
+these species have an equal tendency to depart from their original type,
+the departure should be eight times more apparent with the dog than with
+man."[86]
+
+Here follow remarks upon the great variability of ephemeral insects and
+of animal plants, on the impossibility of discovering the parent-stock
+of our wheat and of others of our domesticated plants,[87] and on the
+tendency of both plants and animals to resume feral characteristics on
+becoming wild again after domestication.[88]
+
+
+_The Hare--Geometrical Ratio of Increase._
+
+We have already seen that it was Buffon's pleasure to consider the hare
+a rabbit for the time being, and to make it the text for a discourse
+upon fecundity. I have no doubt he enjoyed doing this, and would have
+found comparatively little pleasure in preaching the same discourse upon
+the rabbit. Speaking of the way in which even the races of mankind have
+struggled and crowded each other out, Buffon says:--
+
+"These great events--these well-marked epochs in the history of the
+human race--are yet but ripples, as it were, on the current of life;
+which, as a general rule, flows onward evenly and in equal volume.
+
+"It may be said that the movement of Nature turns upon two immovable
+pivots--one, the illimitable fecundity which she has given to all
+species; the other, the innumerable difficulties which reduce the
+results of that fecundity, and leave throughout time nearly the same
+quantity of individuals in every species.[89]... Taking the earth as a
+whole, and the human race in its entirety, the numbers of mankind, like
+those of animals, should remain nearly constant throughout time; for
+they depend upon an equilibrium of physical causes which has long since
+been reached, and which neither man's moral nor his physical efforts can
+disturb, inasmuch as these moral efforts do but spring from physical
+causes, of which they are the special effects. No matter what care man
+may take of his own species, he can only make it more abundant in one
+place by destroying it or diminishing its numbers in another. When one
+part of the globe is overpeopled, men emigrate, spread themselves over
+other countries, destroy one another, and establish laws and customs
+which sometimes only too surely prevent excess of population. In those
+climates where fecundity is greatest, as in China, Egypt, and Guinea,
+they banish, mutilate, sell, or drown infants. Here, we condemn them to
+a perpetual celibacy. Those who are in being find it easy to assert
+rights over the unborn. Regarding themselves as the necessary, they
+annihilate the contingent, and suppress future generations for their own
+pleasure and advantage. Man does for his own race, without perceiving
+it, what he does also for the inferior animals: that is to say, he
+protects it and encourages it to increase, or neglects it according to
+his sense of need--according as advantage or inconvenience is expected
+as the consequence of either course. And since all these moral effects
+themselves depend upon physical causes, which have been in permanent
+equilibrium ever since the world was formed, it follows that the numbers
+of mankind, like those of animals, should remain constant.
+
+"Nevertheless, this fixed state, this constant number, is not absolute,
+all physical and moral causes, and all the results which spring from
+them, balance themselves, as though, upon a see-saw, which has a certain
+play, but never so much as that equilibrium should be altogether lost.
+As everything in the universe is in movement, and as all the forces
+which are contained in matter act one against the other and
+counterbalance one another, all is done by a kind of oscillation; of
+which the mean points are those to which we refer as being the ordinary
+course of nature, while the extremes are the periods which deviate from
+that course most widely. And, as a matter of fact, with animals as much
+as with plants, a time of unusual fecundity is commonly followed by one
+of sterility; abundance and dearth come alternately, and often at such
+short intervals that we may foretell the production of a coming year by
+our knowledge of the past one. Our apples, pears, oaks, beeches, and the
+greater number of our fruit and forest trees, bear freely but about one
+year in two. Caterpillars, cockchafers, woodlice, which in one year may
+multiply with great abundance, will appear but sparsely in the next.
+What indeed would become of all the good things of the earth, what would
+become of the useful animals, and indeed of man himself, if each
+individual in these years of excess was to leave its quotum of
+offspring? This, however, does not happen, for destruction and sterility
+follow closely upon excessive fecundity, and, independently of the
+contagion which follows inevitably upon overcrowding, each species has
+its own special sources of death and destruction, which are of
+themselves sufficient to compensate for excess in any past generation.
+
+"Nevertheless the foregoing should not be taken in an absolute sense,
+nor yet too strictly,--especially in the case of those races which are
+not left entirely to the care of Nature. Those which man takes care
+of--commencing with his own--are more abundant than they would be
+without his care, yet, as his power of taking this care is limited, the
+increase which has taken place is also fixed, and has long been
+restrained within impassable boundaries. Again, though in civilized
+countries man, and all the animals useful to him, are more numerous than
+in other places, yet their numbers never become excessive, for the same
+power which brings them into being destroys them as soon as they are
+found inconvenient."[90]
+
+
+_The Carnivora--Sensation._
+
+Buffon begins his seventh volume with some remarks on the _carnivora_ in
+general, which I would gladly quote at fuller length than my space will
+allow. He dwells on the fact that the number, as well as the fecundity
+of the insect races is greater than that of the mammalia, and even than
+of plants; and he points out that "violent death is almost as necessary
+an usage as is the law that we must all, in one way or another, die."
+This leads him to the question whether animals can feel. "To speak
+seriously," (au réel) he says (and why this, if he had always spoken
+seriously?[91]), "can we doubt that those animals whose organization
+resembles our own, feel the same sensations as we do? They must feel,
+for they have senses, and they must feel more and more in proportion as
+their senses are more active and more perfect." Those whose organ of any
+sense is imperfect, have but imperfect perception in respect of that
+sense; and those that are entirely without the organ want also all
+corresponding sensation. "Movement is the necessary consequence of acts
+of perception. I have already shown that in whatever manner a living
+being is organized, if it has perceptions at all, it cannot fail to show
+that it has them by some kind of movement of its body. Hence plants,
+though highly organized, have no feeling, any more than have those
+animals which, like plants, manifest no power of motion. Among animals
+there are those which, like the sensitive plant, have but a certain
+power of movement about their own parts, and which have no power of
+locomotion; such animals have as yet but little perception. Those,
+again, which have power of locomotion, but which, like automata, do but
+a small number of things, and always after the same fashion, can have
+only small powers of perception, and these limited to a small number of
+objects. But in the case of man, what automata, indeed, have we not
+here! How much do not education and the intercommunication of ideas
+increase our powers and vivacity of perception. What difference can we
+not see in this respect between civilized and uncivilized races, between
+the peasant girl, and the woman of the world? And in like manner among
+animals, those which live with us have their perceptions increased in
+range, while those that are wild have but their natural instinct, which
+is often more certain but always more limited in range than is the
+intelligence of domesticated animals."[92]
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"For perception to exist in its fullest development in any animal body,
+that body must form a whole--an _ensemble_, which shall not only be
+capable of feeling in all its parts, but shall be so arranged that all
+these feeling parts shall have a close correspondence with one another,
+and that no one of them can be disturbed without communicating a portion
+of that disturbance to every other part. There must also be a single
+chief centre, with which all these different disturbances may be
+connected, and from which, as from a common _point d'appui_, the
+reactions against them may take their rise. Hence man, and those animals
+whose organization most resembles man's, will be the most capable of
+perceptions, while those whose unity is less complete, whose parts have
+a less close correspondence with each other--which have several centres
+of sensation, and which seem, in consequence, less to envelope a single
+existence in a single body than to contain many centres of existence
+separated and different from one another--these will have fewer and
+duller perceptions. The polypus, which can be reproduced by fission; the
+wasp, whose head even after separation from the body still moves, lives,
+acts, and even eats as heretofore; the lizard which we deprive neither
+of sensation nor movement by cutting off part of its body; the lobster
+which can restore its amputated limbs; the turtle whose heart beats long
+after it has been plucked out, in a word all the animals whose
+organization differs from our own, have but small powers of perception,
+and the smaller the more they differ from us."[93]
+
+This is Buffon's way of satirizing our inability to bear in mind that we
+are compelled to judge all things by our own standards. He also wishes
+to reassure those who might be alarmed at the tendency of some of his
+foregoing remarks, and who he knew would find comfort in being told that
+a thing which does not express itself as they do does not feel at all.
+
+The diaphragm according to Buffon appears to be the centre of the powers
+of sensation; the slightest injury "even to the attachments of the
+diaphragm is followed by strong convulsions, and even by death. The
+brain which has been called the seat of 'sensations' is yet not the
+centre of 'perception,' since we can wound it, and even take
+considerable parts of it away, without death's ensuing, and without
+preventing an animal from living, moving and feeling in all its parts."
+
+Buffon thus distinguishes between "sensation" and "perception."
+"Sensation," he says, "is simply the activity of a sense, but perception
+is the pleasantness or unpleasantness of this sensation," "perceived by
+its being propagated and becoming active throughout the entire system."
+I have therefore several times, when translating from Buffon, rendered
+the word "_sentiment_" by "perception," and shall continue to do so. "I
+say," writes Buffon, "the pleasantness or unpleasantness, because this
+is the very essence of perception; the one feature of perception
+consists in perceiving either pain or pleasure; and though movements
+which do not affect us in either one or the other of these two ways may
+indeed take place within us, yet we are indifferent to them, and do not
+perceive that we are affected by them. All external movement, and all
+exercise of the animal powers, spring from perception; its action is
+proportionate to the extent of its excitation, to the extent of the
+feeling which is being felt.[94] And this same part, which we regard as
+the centre of sensation, will also be that of all the animal powers; or,
+if it is preferred to call it so, it will be the common _point d'appui_
+from which they all take rise. The diaphragm is to the animal what the
+'stock' is to the plant; both divide an organism transversely, both
+serve as the _point d'appui_ of opposing forces; for the forces which
+push upward those parts of a tree which should form its trunk and
+branches, bear upon and are supported by the 'stock,' as do those
+opposing forces, which drive the roots downwards.
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"Even on a cursory examination we can see that all our innermost
+affections, our most lively emotions, our most expansive moments of
+delight, and, on the other hand, our sudden starts, pains, sicknesses,
+and swoons--in fact, all our strong impressions concerning the pleasure
+or pain of any sensation--make themselves felt within the body, and
+about the region of the diaphragm. The brain, on the contrary, shows no
+sign of being a seat of perception. In the head there are pure
+sensations and nothing else, or rather, there are but the
+representations of sensations stripped of the character of perception;
+that is to say, we can remember and call to mind whether such and such a
+sensation was pleasant to us or otherwise, and if this operation, which
+goes on in the head, is followed by a vivid perception, then the
+impression made is perceived in the interior of the body, and always in
+the region of the diaphragm. Hence, in the foetus where this membrane
+is without use, there is no perception, or so little that nothing comes
+of it, the movements of the foetus, such as they are, being rather
+mechanical than dependent on sensation and will.
+
+"Whatever the matter may be which serves as the vehicle of perception,
+and produces muscular movement, it is certain that it is propagated
+through the nerves, and that it communicates itself instantaneously from
+one extremity of the system to the other. In whatever manner this
+operation is conducted, whether by the vibrations, as it were, of
+elastic cords or by a subtle fire, or by a matter resembling
+electricity, which not only resides in animal as in all other bodies,
+but is being continually renewed in them by the movements of the heart
+and lungs, by the friction of the blood within the arteries, and also by
+the action of exterior causes upon our organs of sense--in whatever
+manner, I say, the operation is conducted, it is nevertheless certain
+that the nerves and membranes are the only parts in an animal body that
+can feel. The blood, lymphs, and all other fluids, the fats, bone,
+flesh, and all other solids, are of themselves void of sensation. And
+so also is the brain; it is a soft and inelastic substance, incapable
+therefore of producing or of propagating the movement, vibrations, or
+concussions which, result in perception. The meninges, on the other
+hand, are exceedingly sensitive, and are the envelopes of all the
+nerves; like the nerves, they take rise in the head; and, dividing
+themselves like the branches of the nerves, they extend even to their
+smallest ramifications: they are, so to speak, flattened nerves; they
+are of the same substance as the nerves, are nearly of the same degree
+of elasticity, and form a necessary part of the system of sensation. If,
+then, the seat of the sensations must be placed in the head, let it be
+placed in the meninges, and not in the medullary part of the brain,
+which is of an entirely different substance."[95]
+
+If this is so, it appears from what will follow as though the meninges
+must be the "stock" rather than the diaphragm.
+
+"What perhaps has given rise to the opinion that the seat of all
+sensations and the centre of all sensibility is in the brain, is the
+fact that the nerves, which are the organs of perception, all attach
+themselves to the brain, which has hence come to be regarded as the one
+common centre which can receive all their vibrations and impressions.
+This fact alone has sufficed to indicate the brain as the origin of
+perceptions--as the essential organ of sensations; in a word, as the
+common sensorium. This supposition has appeared so simple and natural
+that its physical impossibility has been overlooked, an impossibility,
+however, which should be sufficiently apparent. For how can a part
+which cannot feel--a soft inactive substance like the brain--be the very
+organ of perception and movement? How can this soft and perceptionless
+part not only receive impressions, but preserve them for a length of
+time, and transmit their undulatory movements (_en propage les
+ébranlements_) throughout all the solid and feeling parts of the body?
+It may perhaps be maintained with Descartes and M. de Peyronie that the
+principle of sensation does not reside in the brain, but in the pineal
+gland or in the _corpus callosum_; but a glance at the conformation of
+the brain itself will suffice to show that these parts do not join on to
+the nerves, but that they are entirely surrounded by those parts of the
+brain which do not feel, and are so separated from the nerves that they
+cannot receive any movement from them; whence it follows that this
+second supposition is as groundless as the first."[96]
+
+What, then, asks Buffon, _is_ the use of the brain? Man, the quadrupeds,
+and birds all have larger brains, and at the same time more extended
+perceptions, than fishes, insects, and those other living beings whose
+brains are smaller in proportion. "When the brain is compressed, there
+is suspension of all power of movement. If this part is not the source
+of our powers of motion, why is it so necessary and so essential? Why,
+again, does it seem so proportionate in each animal to the amount of
+perceiving power which that animal possesses?
+
+"I think I can answer this question in a satisfactory manner, difficult
+though it seems; but in order that I may do so, I would ask the reader
+to lend me his attention for a few moments while we regard the brain
+simply _as brain_, and have no other idea concerning it than we can
+derive from inspection and reflection. The brain, as well as the
+_medulla oblongata_ and the spinal marrow, which are but prolongations
+of the brain itself, is only a kind of hardly organized mucilage; we
+find in it nothing but the extremities of small arteries, which run into
+it in very great numbers, but which convey a white and nourishing lymph
+instead of blood. When the parts of the brain are disunited by
+maceration, these same small arteries, or lymphatic vessels, appear as
+very delicate threads throughout their whole length. The nerves, on the
+contrary, do not penetrate the substance of the brain; they abut upon
+its surface only; before reaching it they lose their elasticity and
+solidity, and the extremities of the nerves which are nearest to the
+brain are soft, and nearly mucilaginous. From this exposition, in which
+there is nothing hypothetical, it appears that the brain, which is
+nourished by the lymphatic arteries, does in its turn provide
+nourishment for the nerves, and that we must regard these as a kind of
+vegetation which rises as trunks and branches from the brain, and become
+subsequently subdivided into an infinite number, as it were, of twigs.
+The brain is to the nerves what the earth is to plants: the last
+extremities of the nerves are the roots, which with every vegetable are
+more soft and tender than the trunk or branches; they contain a ductile
+matter fit for the growth and nourishment of the nervous tree or fibre;
+they draw the ductile matter from the substance of the brain itself, to
+which the arteries are continually bringing the lymph that is necessary
+to supply it. The brain, then, instead of being the seat of the
+sensations, and the originator of perception, is an organ of secretion
+and nutrition only, though a very essential organ, without which the
+nerves could neither grow nor be maintained.
+
+"This organ is greater in man, in quadrupeds, and in birds, because the
+number or bulk of the nerves is greater in these animals than in fishes
+or insects, whose power of perception is more feeble, for this very
+reason, that they have but a small brain; one, in fact, that is
+proportioned to the small quantity of nerves which that brain must
+support. Nor can I omit to state here that man has not, as has been
+pretended by some, a larger brain than has any other animal; for there
+are apes and cetacea which have more brain than man in proportion to the
+volume of their bodies--another fact which proves that the brain is
+neither the seat of sensations nor the originator of perception, since
+in that case these animals would have more sensations and perception
+than man.
+
+"If we consider the manner in which plants derive their nourishment, we
+shall find that they do not draw up the grosser parts either of earth or
+water; these parts must be reduced by warmth into subtle vapours before
+the roots can suck them up into the plant. In like manner the nutrition
+of the nerves is only effected by means of the more subtle parts of the
+humidity of the brain, which are sucked up by the roots or extremities
+of the nerves, and are carried thence through all the branches of the
+sensory system. This system forms, as we have said, a whole, all whose
+parts are interconnected by so close a union that we cannot wound one
+without communicating a violent shock to all the others; the wounding or
+simply pulling of the smallest nerve is sufficient to cause lively
+irritation to all the others, and to put the body in convulsion; nor can
+we ease this pain and convulsion except by cutting the nerve higher up
+than the injured part; but on this all the parts abutting on this nerve
+become thenceforward senseless and immovable for ever. The brain should
+not be considered as of the same character, nor as an organic portion of
+the nervous system, for it has not the same properties nor the same
+substance, being neither solid nor elastic, nor yet capable of feeling.
+I admit that on its compression perception ceases, but this very fact
+shows it to be a body foreign to the nervous system itself, which,
+acting by its weight, or pressure, against the extremities of the
+nerves, oppresses them and stupefies them in the same way as a weight
+placed upon the arm, leg, or any other part of the body, stupefies the
+nerves and deadens the perceptions of that part. And it is evident that
+this cessation of sensation on compression is but a suspension and
+temporary stupefaction, for the moment the compression of the brain
+ceases, perception and the power of movement returns. Again, I admit
+that on tearing the medullary substance, and on wounding the brain till
+the _corpus callosum_ is reached, convulsion, loss of sensation, and
+death ensue; but this is because the nerves are so entirely deranged
+that they are, so to speak, torn up by the roots and wounded all
+together, and at their source.
+
+"In further proof that the brain is neither the centre of perception nor
+the seat of the sensations, I may remind the reader that animals and
+even children have been born without heads and brains, and have yet had
+feeling, movement, and life. There are also whole classes of animals,
+like insects and worms, with a brain that is by no means a distinct mass
+nor of sensible volume, but with only something which corresponds with
+the _medulla oblongata_ and the spinal marrow. There would be more
+reason, then, in placing the seat of the feelings and perceptions in the
+spinal marrow, which no animal is without, than in the brain which is
+not an organ common to all creatures that can feel."
+
+If Buffon's ideas concerning the brain are as just as they appear to be,
+the resemblance between plants and animals is more close than is
+apparent, even to a superficial observer, on a first inspection of the
+phenomena. Such an observer, however, on looking but a little more
+intently, will see the higher _vertebrata_ as perambulating vegetables
+planted upside down. So the man who had been born blind, on being made
+to see, and on looking at the objects before him with unsophisticated
+eyes, said without hesitation that he saw "men as trees walking," thus
+seeing with more prophetic insight than either he or the bystanders
+could interpret. For our skull is as a kind of flower-pot, and holds the
+soil from which we spring, that is to say the brain; our mouth and
+stomach are roots, in two stories or stages; our bones are the
+trellis-work to which we cling while going about in search of
+sustenance for our roots; or they are as the woody trunk of a tree; _we_
+are the nerves which are rooted in the brain, and which draw thence the
+sustenance which is supplied it by the stomach; our lungs are leaves
+which are folded up within us, as the blossom of a fig is hidden within
+the fruit itself.
+
+This is what should follow if Buffon's theory of the brain is allowed to
+stand, which I hope will prove to be the case, for it is the only
+comfortable thought concerning the brain that I have met with in any
+writer. I have given it here at some length on account of its
+importance, and for the illustration it affords of Buffon's hatred of
+mystery, rather than for its bearing upon evolution. The fact that our
+leading men of science have adopted other theories will weigh little
+with those who have watched scientific orthodoxy with any closeness.
+What Buffon thought of that orthodoxy may be gathered from the
+following:--
+
+"The greatest obstacles to the advancement of human knowledge lie less
+in things themselves than in man's manner of considering them. However
+complicated a machine the human body may be, it is still less
+complicated than are our own ideas concerning it. It is less difficult
+to see Nature as she is, than as she is presented to us. She carries a
+veil only, while we would put a mask over her face; we load her with our
+own prejudices, and suppose her to act and to conduct her operations
+even after the same fashion as ourselves.[97]
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"I am by no means speaking of those purely arbitrary systems which we
+are able at a glance to detect as chimeras that are being pretended to
+us as realities, but I refer to the methods whereby people have set
+themselves seriously to study nature. Even the experimental method
+itself has been more fertile of error than of truth, for though it is
+indeed the surest, yet is it no surer than the hand of him who uses it.
+No matter how little we incline out of the straight path, we soon find
+ourselves wandering in a sterile wilderness, where we can see but a few
+obscure objects scattered sparsely; nevertheless we do violence to these
+facts and to ourselves, and resemble them together on a conceit of
+analogies and common properties amongst them. Then, passing and
+repassing complaisantly over the tortuous path which we have ourselves
+beaten, we deem the road a worn one, and though it leads no whither, the
+world follows it, adopts it, and accepts its supposed consequences as
+first principles. I could show this by laying bare the origin of that
+which goes by the name of 'principle' in all the sciences, whether
+abstract or natural. In the case of the former, the basis of principle
+is abstraction--that is to say, one or more suppositions: in that of the
+second, principles are but the consequences, better or worse, of the
+methods which may have been followed. And to speak here of anatomy only,
+did not he who first surmounted his natural repugnance and set himself
+to work to open a human body--did he not believe that through going all
+over it, dissecting it, dividing it into all its parts, he would soon
+learn its structure, mechanism, and functions? But he found the task
+greater than he had expected, and renouncing such pretensions, was fain
+to content himself with a method--not for seeing and judging, but for
+seeing after an orderly fashion. This method ... is still the sole
+business of our ablest anatomists, but it is not science. It is the road
+which should lead scienceward, and might perhaps have reached science
+itself, if instead of walking ever on a single narrow path men had set
+the anatomy of man and that of animals face to face with one another.
+For, what real knowledge can be drawn from an isolated pursuit? Is not
+the foundation of all science seen to consist in the comparison which
+the human mind can draw between different objects in the matter of their
+resemblances and differences--of their analogous or conflicting
+properties, and of all the relations in which they stand to one another?
+The absolute, if it exist at all, is but of the concurrence of man's own
+knowledge; we judge and can judge of things only by their bearings one
+upon another; hence whenever a method limits us to only a single
+subject, whenever we consider it in its solitude and without regard to
+its resemblances or to its differences from other objects, we can attain
+to no real knowledge, nor yet, much less, reach any general principle.
+We do but give names, and make descriptions of a thing, and of all its
+parts. Hence comes it that, after three thousand years of dissection,
+anatomy is still but a nomenclature, and has hardly advanced a step
+towards its true object, which is the science of animal economy.
+Furthermore, what defects are there not in the method itself, which
+should above all things else be simple and easy to be understood,
+depending as it does upon inspection and having denominations only for
+its end! For seeing that nomenclature has been mistaken for knowledge,
+men have made it their chief business to multiply names, instead of
+limiting things; they have crushed themselves under the burden of
+details, and been on the look out for differences where there was no
+distinction. When they had given a new name they conceived of it as a
+new thing, and described the smallest parts with the most minutious
+exactness, while the description of some still smaller part, forgotten
+or neglected by previous anatomists, has been straightway hailed as a
+discovery. The denominations themselves being often taken from things
+which had no relation to the object that it was desired to denominate,
+have served but to confound confusion. The part of the brain, for
+example, which is called testes and nates, wherein does it so differ
+from the rest of the brain that it should deserve a name? These names,
+taken at haphazard or springing from some preconceived opinion, have
+themselves become the parents of new prejudices and speculations; other
+names given to parts which have been ill observed, or which are even
+non-existent, have been sources of new errors. What functions and uses
+has it not been attempted to foist upon the pineal gland, and on the
+alleged empty space in the brain which is called the arch, the first of
+which is but a gland, while the very existence of the other is
+doubtful,--the empty space being perhaps produced by the hand of the
+anatomist and the method of dissection."[98]
+
+
+_The Genus felis._
+
+In his preliminary remarks upon the lion, Buffon while still professing
+to believe in some considerable mutability of species, seems very far
+from admitting that all living forms are capable of modification. But he
+has shown us long since how clearly he saw the impossibility of limiting
+mutability, if he once admitted so much of the thin end of the wedge as
+that a horse and an ass might be related. It is plain, therefore, that
+he is not speaking "_au réel_" here, and we accordingly find him talking
+clap-trap about the nobleness of the lion in having no species
+immediately allied to it. A few lines lower on he reminds us in a casual
+way that the ass and horse are related.
+
+He writes:--
+
+"Added to all these noble individual features the lion has also what may
+be called a _specific_ nobility. For I call those species noble which
+are constant, invariable, and which are above suspicion of having
+degenerated. These species are commonly isolated, and the only ones of
+their genus. They are distinguished by such well-marked features that
+they cannot be mistaken, nor confounded with any other species. To begin
+for example with man, the noblest of created beings; he is but of a
+single species, inasmuch as men and women will breed freely _inter se_
+in spite of all existing differences of race, climate and colour; and
+also inasmuch as there is no other animal which can claim either a
+distant or near relationship with him. The horse, on the other hand, is
+more noble as an individual than as a species, for he has the ass as
+his near neighbour, _and seems himself to be nearly enough related to
+it_; ... the dog is perhaps of even less noble species, approaching as
+he does to the wolf, fox, and jackal, _which we can only consider to be
+the degenerated species of a single family_"[99]--all which may seem
+very natural opinions for a French aristocrat in the days before the
+Revolution, but which cannot for a moment be believed to have been
+Buffon's own. I have not ascertained the date of Buffon's little quarrel
+with the Sorbonne, but I cannot doubt that if we knew the inner history
+of the work we are considering, we should find this passage and others
+like it explained by the necessity of quieting orthodox adversaries. He
+concludes the paragraph from which I have just been quoting by saying,
+"To class man and the ape together, or the lion with the cat, and to say
+that the lion is a _cat with a mane and a long tail_--this were to
+degrade and disfigure nature instead of describing her and denominating
+her species." Buffon very rarely uses italics, but those last given are
+his, not mine; could words be better chosen to make us see the lion and
+the cat as members of the same genus? No wonder the Sorbonne considered
+him an infelicitous writer; why could he not have said "cat," and have
+done with it, instead of giving a couple of sly but telling touches,
+which make the cat as like a lion as possible, and then telling us that
+we must not call her one? Sorbonnes never do like people who write in
+this way.
+
+"The lion, then, belongs to a most noble species, standing as he does
+alone, and incapable of being confounded with the tiger, leopard,
+ounce, &c., while, on the contrary, those species, which appear to be
+least distant from the lion, are very sufficiently indistinguishable, so
+that travellers and nomenclators are continually confounding them."[100]
+
+If this is not pure malice, never was a writer more persistently
+unfortunate in little ways. Why remind us here that the species which
+come nearest to the lion are so hard to distinguish? Why not have said
+nothing about it? As it is, the case stands thus: we are required to
+admit close resemblance between the leopard and the tiger, while we are
+to deny it between the tiger and the lion, in spite of there being no
+greater outward difference between the first than between the second
+pair, and in spite of the hurried whisper "_cat with a mane and a long
+tail_" still haunting our ears. Isidore Geoffroy and his followers may
+consent to this arrangement, but I hope the majority of my readers will
+not do so.
+
+I went on to the account of the tiger with some interest to see the line
+which Buffon would take concerning it. I anticipated that we should find
+cats, pumas, lynxes, &c., to be really very like tigers, and was
+surprised to learn that the "true" tiger, though certainly not unlike
+these animals, was still to be distinguished from "many others which had
+since been called tigers." He is on no account to be confounded with
+these, in spite of the obvious temptation to confound him. He is "a rare
+animal, little known to the ancients, and badly described by the
+moderns." He is a beast "of great ferocity, of terrible swiftness, and
+surpassing even the proportions of the lion." The effect of the
+description is that we no longer find the lion standing alone, but with
+the tiger on a par with him if not above him; but at the same time we
+fall easy victims to the temptation to confound the tiger with "the many
+other animals which are also called tigers." A surface stream has swept
+the members of the cat family in different directions, but a stealthy
+undercurrent has seized them from beneath, and they are now happily
+reunited.
+
+
+_Animals of the Old and New World--Changed Geographical Distribution._
+
+Writing upon the animals of the old world,[101] and referring to the
+humps of the camel and the bison, Buffon shows that very considerable
+modification may be effected in some animals within even a few
+generations, but he attributes the effect produced to the direct
+influence of climate. Buffon concludes his sketch of the animals of the
+new world by pointing out that the larger animals of the African torrid
+zone have been hindered by sea and desert from finding their way to
+America, and by claiming to be the first "even to have suspected" that
+there was not a single denizen of the torrid zone of one continent which
+was common also to the other.[102]
+
+The animals common to both continents are those which can stand the cold
+and which are generally suited for a temperate climate. These, Buffon
+believes, to have travelled either over some land still unknown, or
+"more probably," over territory which has long since been submerged. The
+species of the old and new world are never without some well-marked
+difference, which however should not be held sufficient for us to refuse
+to admit their practical identity. But he maintains, I imagine wilfully,
+that there is a tendency in all the mammalia to become smaller on being
+transported to the new world, and refers the fact to the quality of the
+earth, the condition of the climate, the degrees of heat and humidity,
+to the height of mountains, amounts of running or stagnant waters,
+extent of forest, and above all to the brutal condition of nature in a
+new country, which he evidently regards with true aristocratic
+abhorrence.[103]
+
+Then follows a passage which I had better perhaps give in full:--
+
+The mammoth "was certainly the greatest and strongest of all quadrupeds;
+but it has disappeared; and if so, how many smaller, feebler, and less
+remarkable species must have also perished without leaving us any traces
+or even hints of their having existed? How many other species have
+changed their nature, that is to say, become perfected or degraded,
+through great changes in the distribution of land and ocean, through the
+cultivation or neglect of the country which they inhabit, through the
+long-continued effects of climatic changes, so that they are no longer
+the same animals that they once were? Yet of all living beings after
+man, the quadrupeds are the ones whose nature is most fixed and form
+most constant: birds and fishes vary much more easily; insects still
+more again than these, and if we descend to plants, which certainly
+cannot be excluded from animated nature, we shall be surprised at the
+readiness with which species are seen to vary, and at the ease with
+which they change their forms and adopt new natures.
+
+"It is probable then that all the animals of the new world are derived
+from congeners in the old, without any deviation from the ordinary
+course of nature. We may believe that having become separated in the
+lapse of ages, by vast oceans and countries which they could not
+traverse, they have gradually been affected by, and derived impressions
+from, a climate which has itself been modified so as to become a new one
+through the operation of those same causes which dissociated the
+individuals of the old and new world from one another; thus in the
+course of time they have grown smaller and changed their characters.
+This, however, should not prevent our classifying them as different
+species now, for the difference is no less real whether it is caused by
+time, climate and soil, or whether it dates from the creation. _Nature I
+maintain is in a state of continual flux and movement. It is enough for
+man if he can grasp her as she is in his own time, and throw but a
+glance or two upon the past and future, so as to try and perceive what
+she may have been in former times and what one day she may attain
+to._"[104]
+
+
+_The Buffalo--Animals under Domestication._
+
+"The bison and the aurochs," says Buffon, "differ only in unessential
+characteristics, and are, by consequence, of the same species as our
+domestic cattle, so that I believe all the pretended species of the ox,
+whether ancient or modern, may be reduced to three--the bull, the
+buffalo, and the bubalus.
+
+"The case of animals under domestication is in many respects different
+from that of wild ones; they vary much more in disposition, size and
+shape, especially as regards the exterior parts of their bodies: the
+effects of climate, so powerful throughout nature, act with far greater
+effect upon captive animals than upon wild ones. Food prepared by man,
+and often ill chosen, combined with the inclemency of an uncongenial
+climate--these eventuate in modifications sufficiently profound to
+become constant and hereditary in successive generations. I do not
+pretend to say that this general cause of modification is so powerful as
+to change radically the nature of beings which have had their impress
+stamped upon them in that surest of moulds--heredity; but it
+nevertheless changes them in not a few respects; it masks and transforms
+their outward appearance; it suppresses some of their parts, and gives
+them new ones; it paints them with various colours, and _by its action
+on bodily habits influences also their natures, instincts, and most
+inward qualities_" (and what is this but "radically changing their
+nature"?). "The modification of but a single part, moreover, in a whole
+as perfect as an animal body, will necessitate a correlative
+modification in every other part, and it is from this cause that our
+domestic animals differ almost as much in nature and instinct, as in
+form, from those from which they originally sprung."[105]
+
+Buffon confirms this last assertion by quoting the sheep as an
+example--an animal which can now no longer exist in a wild state. Then
+returning to cattle, he repeats that many varieties have been formed by
+the effects--"diverse in themselves, and diverse in their
+combinations--of climate, food, and treatment, whether under
+domestication or in their wild state." These are the main causes of
+variation ("causes générales de variété"),[106] among our domesticated
+animals, but by far the greatest is changed climate in consequence of
+their accompanying man in his migrations. The effects of the foregoing
+causes of modification, especially the last of them, are repeatedly
+insisted on in the course of the forty pages which complete the
+preliminary account of the buffalo.
+
+What holds good for the buffalo does so also for the mouflon or wild
+sheep. This, Buffon declares to be the source of all our domesticated
+breeds: of these there are in all some four or five, "all of them being
+but degenerations from a single stock, produced by man's agency, and
+propagated for his convenience."[107] At the same time that man has
+protected them he has hunted out the original race which was "less
+useful to him,"[108] so that it is now to be found only in a few
+secluded spots, such as the mountains of Greece, Cyprus, and Sardinia.
+Buffon does not consider even the differences between sheep and goats to
+be sufficiently characteristic to warrant their being classed as
+different species.
+
+"I shall never tire," he continues, "of repeating--seeing how important
+the matter is--that we must not form our opinions concerning nature, nor
+differentiate (différencier) her species, by a reference to minor
+special characteristics. And, again, that systems, far from having
+illustrated the history of animals, have, on the contrary, served rather
+to obscure it ... leading, as they do, to the creation of arbitrary
+species which nature knows nothing about; perpetually confounding real
+and hypothetical existences; giving us false ideas as to the very
+essence of species; uniting them and separating them without foundation
+or knowledge, and often without our having seen the animal with which we
+are dealing."[109]
+
+
+_First and Second Views of Nature._
+
+The twelfth volume begins with a preface, entitled "A First View of
+Nature," from which I take the following:--
+
+"What cannot Nature effect with such means at her disposal? She can do
+all except either create matter or destroy it. These two extremes of
+power the deity has reserved for himself only; creation and destruction
+are the attributes of his omnipotence. To alter and undo, to develop and
+to renew--these are powers which he has handed over to the charge of
+Nature."[110]
+
+The thirteenth volume opens with a second view of nature. After
+describing what a man would have observed if he could have lived during
+many continuous ages, Buffon goes on to say:--
+
+"And as the number, sustenance, and balance of power among species is
+constant, Nature would present ever the same appearance, and would be in
+all times and under all climates absolutely and relatively the same, if
+it were not her fashion to vary her individual forms as much as
+possible. The type of each species is founded in a mould of which the
+principal features have been cut in characters that are ineffaceable and
+eternally permanent, but all the accessory touches vary; no one
+individual is the exact facsimile of any other, and no species exists
+without a large number of varieties. In the human race on which the
+divine seal has been set most firmly, there are yet varieties of black
+and white, large and small races, the Patagonian, Hottentot, European,
+American, Negro, which, though all descended from a common father,
+nevertheless exhibit no very brotherly resemblance to one another."[111]
+
+On an earlier page there is a passage which I may quote as showing
+Buffon to have not been without some--though very imperfect--perception
+of the fact which evidently made so deep an impression upon his
+successor, Dr. Erasmus Darwin. I refer to that continuity of life in
+successive generations, and that oneness of personality between parents
+and offspring, which is the only key that will make the phenomena of
+heredity intelligible.
+
+"Man," he says, "and especially educated man, is no longer a single
+individual, but represents no small part of the human race in its
+entirety. He was the first to receive from his fathers the knowledge
+which their own ancestors had handed down to them. These, having
+discovered the divine art of fixing their thoughts so that they can
+transmit them to their posterity, become, as it were, one and the same
+people with their descendants (_se sont, pour ainsi dire, identifiés
+avec leur neveux_); while our descendants will in their turn be one and
+the same people with ourselves (_s'identifieront avec nous_). This
+reunion in a single person of the experience of many ages, throws back
+the boundaries of man's existence to the utmost limits of the past; he
+is no longer a single individual, limited as other beings are to the
+sensations and experiences of to-day. In place of the individual we have
+to deal, as it were, with the whole species."[112]
+
+"Differences in exterior are nothing in comparison with those in
+interior parts. These last must be regarded as the causes, while the
+others are but the effects. The interior parts of living beings are the
+foundation of the plan of their design; this is their essential form,
+their real shape, their exterior is only the surface, or rather the
+drapery in which their true figure is enveloped. How often does not the
+study of comparative anatomy show us that two exteriors which differ
+widely conceal interiors absolutely like each other, and, on the
+contrary, that the smallest internal difference is accompanied by the
+most marked differences of outward appearance, changing as it does even
+the natural habits, faculties and attributes of the animal?"[113]
+
+
+_Apes and Monkeys._
+
+The fourteenth volume is devoted to apes and monkeys, and to the chapter
+with which the volumes on quadrupeds are brought to a conclusion--a
+chapter for which perhaps the most important position in the whole work
+is thus assigned. It is very long, and is headed "On Descent with
+Modification" ("De la Dégénération des Animaux"). This is the chapter in
+which Buffon enters more fully into the "causes or means" of the
+transformation of species.
+
+At the opening of the chapter on the nomenclature of monkeys, the theory
+is broached that there is a certain fixed amount of life-substance as of
+matter in nature; and that neither can be either augmented or
+diminished. Buffon maintains this organic and living substance to be as
+real and durable as inanimate matter; as permanent in its state of life
+as the other in that of death; it is spread over the whole of nature,
+and passes from vegetables to animals by way of nutrition, and from
+animals back to vegetables through putrefaction, thus circulating
+incessantly to the animation of all that lives.
+
+As might be expected, Buffon is loud in his protest against any real
+similarity between man and the apes--man has had the spirit of the Deity
+breathed into his nostrils, and the lowest creature with this is higher
+than the highest without it. Having settled this point, he makes it his
+business to show how little difference in other respects there is
+between the apes and man.
+
+"One who could view," he writes, "Nature in her entirety, from first to
+last, and then reflect upon the manner in which these two
+substances--the living and the inanimate--act and react upon one
+another, would see that every living being is a mould which casts into
+its own shape those substances upon which it feeds; that it is this
+assimilation which constitutes the growth of the body, whose development
+is not simply an augmentation of volume, but an extension in all its
+dimensions, a penetration of new matter into all parts of its mass: he
+would see that these parts augment proportionately with the whole, and
+the whole proportionately with these parts, while general configuration
+remains the same until the full development is accomplished.... He would
+see that man, the quadruped, the cetacean, the bird, reptile, insect,
+tree, plant, herb, all are nourished, grow, and reproduce themselves on
+this same system, and that though their manner of feeding and of
+reproducing themselves may appear so different, this is only because the
+general and common cause upon which these operations depend can only
+operate in the individual agreeably with the form of each species.
+Travelling onward (for it has taken the human mind ages to arrive at
+these great truths, from which all others are derived), he would compare
+living forms, give them names to distinguish them, and other names to
+connect them with each other. Taking his own body as the model with
+which all living forms should be compared, and having measured them,
+explained them thoroughly, and compared them in all their parts, he
+would see that there is but small difference between the forms of living
+beings; that by dissecting the ape he could arrive at the anatomy of
+man, and that taking some other animal we find always the same ultimate
+plan of organization, the same senses, the same viscera, the same bones,
+the same flesh, the same movements of the fluids, the same play and
+action of the solids; he would find all of them with a heart, veins,
+arteries, in all the same organs of circulation, respiration, digestion,
+nutrition, secretion; in all of them a solid frame, composed of pieces
+put together in nearly the same manner; and he would find this system
+always the same, from man to the ape, from the ape to the quadrupeds,
+from the quadrupeds to the cetacea, birds, fishes, reptiles; this system
+or plan then, I say, if firmly laid hold of and comprehended by the
+human mind, is a true copy of nature; it is the simplest and most
+general point of view from which we can consider her, and if we extend
+our view, and go on from what lives to what vegetates, we may see this
+plan--which originally did but vary almost imperceptibly--change its
+scope and descend gradually from reptiles to insects, from insects to
+worms, from worms to zoophytes, from zoophytes to plants, and yet
+keeping ever the same fundamental unity in spite of differences of
+detail, insomuch that nutrition, development, and reproduction remain
+the common traits of all organic bodies; traits eternally essential and
+divinely implanted; which time, far from effacing or destroying, does
+but make plainer and plainer continually."
+
+This is the writer who can see nothing in common between the horse and
+the zebra except that each has a solid hoof.[114] He continues:--
+
+"If from this grand tableau of resemblances, in which the living
+universe presents itself to our eyes as though it were a single family,
+we pass to a tableau rather of the differences between living forms, we
+shall see that, with the exception of some of the greater species, such
+as the elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, tiger, lion, which must each
+have their separate place, the other races seem all to blend with
+neighbouring forms, and to fall into groups of likenesses, greater or
+lesser, and of genera which our nomenclators represent to us by a
+network of shapes, of which some are held together by the feet, others
+by the teeth, horns, and skin, and others by points of still minor
+importance. And even those whose form strikes us as most perfect, as
+approaching most nearly to our own--even the apes--require some
+attention before they can be distinguished from one another, for the
+privilege of being an isolated species has been assigned less to form
+than to size; and man himself, though of a separate species and
+differing infinitely from all or any others, has but a medium size, and
+is less isolated and has nearer neighbours than have the greater
+animals. If we study the Orang-outang with regard only to his
+configuration, we might regard him, with equal justice, as either the
+highest of the apes or as the lowest of mankind, because, with the
+exception of the soul, he wants nothing of what we have ourselves, and
+because, as regards his body, he differs less from man than he does from
+other animals which are still called apes."[115]
+
+The want of a soul Buffon maintains to be the only essential difference
+between the Orang-outang and man--"his body, limbs, senses, brain and
+tongue are the same as ours. He can execute whatever movements man can
+execute; yet he can neither think nor speak, nor do any action of a
+distinctly human character. Is this merely through want of training? or
+may it not be through wrong comparison on our own parts? We compare the
+wild ape in the woods to the civilized citizen of our great towns. No
+wonder the ape shows to disadvantage. He should be compared with the
+hideous Hottentot rather, who is himself almost as much above the lowest
+man, as the lowest man is above the Orang-outang."[116]
+
+The passage is a much stronger one than I have thought it fit to quote.
+The reader can refer to it for himself. After reading it I entertain no
+further doubt that Buffon intended to convey the impression that men and
+apes are descended from common ancestors. He was not, however, going to
+avow this conclusion openly.
+
+"I admit," he continues, "that if we go by mere structure the ape might
+be taken for a variety of the human race; the Creator did not choose to
+model mankind upon an entirely distinct system from the other animals:
+He comprised their form and man's under a plan which is in the main
+uniform."[117] Buffon then dwells upon the possession of a soul by man;
+"even the lowest creature," he avers, "which had this, would have become
+man's rival."
+
+"The ape then is purely an animal, far from being a variety of our own
+species, he does not even come first in the order of animals, since he
+is not the most intelligent: the high opinion which men have of the
+intelligence of apes is a prejudice based only upon the resemblance
+between their outward appearance and our own."[118] But the undiscerning
+were not only to be kept quiet, they were to be made happy. With this
+end, if I am not much mistaken, Buffon brings his chapter on the
+nomenclature of apes to the following conclusion:--
+
+"The ape, which the philosopher and the uneducated have alike regarded
+as difficult to define, and as being at best equivocal, and midway
+between man and the lower animals, proves in fact to be an animal and
+nothing more; he is masked externally in the shape of man, but
+internally he is found incapable of thought, and of all that constitutes
+man; apes are below several of the other animals in respect of qualities
+corresponding to their own, and differ essentially from man, in nature,
+temperament, the time which must be spent upon their gestation and
+education, in their period of growth, duration of life, and in fact in
+all those profounder habits which constitute what is called the 'nature'
+of any individual existence."[119] This is handsome, and leaves the more
+timorous reader in full possession of the field.
+
+Buffon is accordingly at liberty in the following chapter to bring
+together every fact he can lay his hands on which may point the
+resemblance between man and the Orang-outang most strongly; but he is
+careful to use inverted commas here much more freely than is his wont.
+Having thus made out a strong case for the near affinity between man and
+the Orang-outang, and having thrown the responsibility on the original
+authors of the passages he quotes, he excuses himself for having quoted
+them on the ground that "everything may seem important in the history of
+a brute which resembles man so nearly," and then insists upon the points
+of difference between the Orang-outang and ourselves. They do not,
+however, in Buffon's hands come to much, until the end of the chapter,
+when, after a _résumé_ dwelling on the points of resemblance, the
+differences are again emphatically declared to have the best of it.
+
+I need not follow Buffon through his description of the remaining
+monkeys. It comprises 250 pp., and is confined to details with which we
+have no concern; but the last chapter--"De la Dégénération des
+Animaux"--deserves much fuller quotation than my space will allow me to
+make from it. The chapter is very long, comprising, as I have said, over
+sixty quarto pages. It is impossible, therefore, for me to give more
+than an outline of its contents.
+
+
+_Causes or Means of the Transformation of Species._
+
+The human race is declared to be the one most capable of modification,
+all its different varieties being descended from a common stock, and
+owing their more superficial differences to changes of climate, while
+their profounder ones, such as woolly hair, flat noses, and thick lips,
+are due to differences of diet, which again will vary with the nature of
+the country inhabited by any race. Changes will be exceedingly gradual;
+it will take centuries of unbroken habit to bring about modifications
+which can be transmitted with certainty so as to eventuate in national
+characteristics.[120] It is a pleasure to find that here, too, habit is
+assigned as the main cause which underlies heredity.
+
+Modification will be much prompter with animals. When compelled to
+abandon their native land, they undergo such rapid and profound
+modification, that at first sight they can hardly be recognized as the
+same race, and cannot be detected in their disguise till after the most
+careful inspection, and on grounds of analogy only. Domestication will
+produce still more surprising results; the stigmata of their captivity,
+the marks of their chains, can be seen upon all those animals which man
+has enslaved; the older and more confirmed the servitude, the deeper
+will be its scars, until at length it will be found impossible to
+rehabilitate the creature and restore to it its lost attributes.
+
+"Temperature of climate, quality of food, and the ills of slavery--here
+are the three main causes of the alteration and degeneration of animals.
+The consequences of each of these should be particularly considered, so
+that by examining Nature as she is to-day we may thus perceive what she
+was in her original condition."[121]
+
+I have more than once admitted that there is a wide difference between
+this opinion, which assigns modification to the direct influence of
+climate, food, and other changed conditions of life, and that of Dr.
+Erasmus Darwin, which assigns only an indirect effect to these, while
+the direct effect is given to changed actions in consequence of changed
+desires; but it is surprising how nearly Buffon has approached the later
+and truer theory, which may perhaps have been suggested to Dr. Darwin by
+the following pregnant passage--as pregnant, probably, to Buffon himself
+as to another:--
+
+"The camel is the animal which seems to me to have felt the weight of
+slavery most profoundly. He is born with wens upon his back and
+callosities upon his knees and chest; these callosities are the
+unmistakable results of rubbing, for they are full of pus and of
+corrupted blood. The camel never walks without carrying a heavy burden,
+and the pressure of this has hindered, for generations, the free
+extension and uniform growth of the muscular parts of the back; whenever
+he reposes or sleeps his driver compels him to do so upon his folded
+legs, so that little by little this position becomes habitual with him.
+All the weight of his body bears, during several hours of the day
+continuously, upon his chest and knees, so that the skin of these parts,
+pressed and rubbed against the earth, loses its hair, becomes bruised,
+hardened, and disorganized.
+
+"The llama, which like the camel passes its life beneath burdens, and
+also reposes only by resting its weight upon its chest, has similar
+callosities, which again are perpetuated in successive generations.
+Baboons, and pouched monkeys, whose ordinary position is a sitting one,
+whether waking or sleeping, have callosities under the region of the
+haunches, and this hard skin has even become inseparable from the bone
+against which it is being continually pressed by the weight of the body;
+in the case, however, of these animals the callosities are dry and
+healthy, for they do not come from the constraint of trammels, nor from
+the burden of a foreign weight, but are the effects only of the natural
+habits of the animal, which cause it to continue longer seated than in
+any other position. There are callosities of these pouched monkeys which
+resemble the double sole of skin which we have ourselves under our feet;
+this sole is a natural hardness which our continued habit of walking or
+standing upright will make thicker or thinner according to the greater
+or less degree of friction to which we subject our feet."[122]
+
+This involves the whole theory of Dr. Darwin.
+
+Wild animals would not change either their food or climate if left to
+themselves, and in this case they would not vary, but either man or some
+other enemies have harassed most of them into migrations; "those whose
+nature was sufficiently flexible to lend itself to the new situation
+spread far and wide, while others have had no resource but the deserts
+in the neighbourhood of their own countries."[123]
+
+Since food and climate, and still less man's empire over them, can have
+but little effect upon wild animals, Buffon refers their principal
+varieties in great measure to their sexual habits, variations being much
+less frequent among animals that pair and breed slowly, than among those
+which do not mate and breed more freely. After running rapidly over
+several animals, and discussing the flexibility or inflexibility of
+their organizations, he declares the elephant to be the only one on
+which a state of domestication has produced no effect, inasmuch as "it
+refuses to breed under confinement, and cannot therefore transmit the
+badges of its servitude to its descendants."[124]
+
+Here is an example of Buffon's covert manner, in the way he maintains
+that descent with modification may account not only for specific but for
+generic differences.
+
+"But after having taken a rapid survey of the varieties which indicate
+to us the alterations that each species has undergone, there arises a
+broader and more important question, how far, namely, species themselves
+can change--how far there has been an older degeneration, immemorial
+from all antiquity, which has taken place in every family, or, if the
+term is preferred, _in all the genera_ under which those species are
+comprehended which neighbour one another without presenting points of
+any very profound dissimilarity? We have only a few isolated species,
+such as man, which form at once the species and the whole genus; the
+elephant, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, and the giraffe form genera,
+or simple species, which go down in a single line, with no collateral
+branches. All other races appear to form families, in which we may
+perceive a common source or stock from which the different branches seem
+to have sprung in greater or less numbers according as the individuals
+of each species are smaller and more fecund."[125]
+
+I can see no explanation of the introduction of this passage unless that
+it is intended to raise the question whether modification may be not
+only specific but generic, the point of the paragraph lying in the
+words "dans chaque famille, _ou si l'on veut, dans chacun des genres_."
+We are told in the next paragraph, that if we choose to look at the
+matter in this light, well--in that case--we ought to see not only the
+ass and the horse, but _the zebra too_, as members of the same family;
+"the number of their points of resemblance being infinitely greater than
+those in respect of which they differ."[126] Thus, at the close of his
+work on the quadrupeds, he thinks it well, as at the commencement
+seventeen years earlier, to emphasize--in his own quiet way--his
+perception that the principles on which he has been insisting should be
+carried much farther than he has chosen to carry them.
+
+His conclusion is, that "after comparing all the animals and bringing
+them each under their proper genus, we shall find the two hundred
+species we have already described to be reducible into a sufficiently
+small number of families or main stocks from which it is not impossible
+that all the others may be derived."[127]
+
+The chapter closes thus:--
+
+"To account for the origin of these animals" (certain of those peculiar
+to America), "we must go back to the time when the two continents were
+not yet separated, and call to mind the earliest geological changes. At
+the same time, we must consider the two hundred existing species of
+quadrupeds as reduced to thirty-eight families. And though this is not
+at all the state of Nature as she is in our time, and as she has been
+represented in this volume, and though, in fact, it is a condition which
+we can only arrive at by induction, and by analogies almost as
+difficult to lay hold of as is the time which has effaced the greater
+number of their traces, I shall, nevertheless, endeavour to ascend to
+these first ages of Nature by the aid of facts and monuments which yet
+remain to us, and to represent the epochs which these facts seem to
+indicate."[128]
+
+The fifteenth volume contains a description of a few more monkeys, as
+also of some animals which Buffon had never actually seen, a great part
+being devoted to indices.
+
+
+_Supplement._
+
+The first four volumes of the Supplement to Buffon's 'Natural History,'
+1774-1789, contain little which throws additional light upon his
+opinions concerning the mutability of species. At the beginning,
+however, of the fifth volume I find the following:--
+
+"On comparing these ancient records of the first ages of life [fossils]
+with the productions of to-day, we see with sufficient clearness that
+the essential form has been preserved without alteration in its
+principal parts: there has been no change whatever in the general type
+of each species; the plan of the inner parts has been preserved without
+variation. However long a time we may imagine for the succession of
+ages, whatever number of generations we may suppose, the individuals of
+to-day present to us in each genus the same forms as they did in the
+earliest ages; and this is more especially true of the greater species,
+whose characters are more invariable and nature more fixed; for the
+inferior species have, as we have said, experienced in a perceptible
+manner all the effects of different causes of degeneration. Only it
+should be remarked in regard to these greater species, such as the
+elephant and hippopotamus, that in comparing their fossil remains with
+the existing forms we find the earlier ones to have been larger. Nature
+was then in the full vigour of her youth, and the interior heat of the
+earth gave to her productions all the force and all the extent of which
+they were capable ... if there have been lost species, that is to say
+animals which existed once, but no longer do so, these can only have
+been animals which required a heat greater than that of our present
+torrid zone."[129]
+
+The context proves Buffon to have been thinking of such huge creatures
+as the megatherium and mastodon, but his words seem to limit the
+extinction of species to the denizens of a hot climate which had turned
+colder. It is not at all likely that Buffon meant this, as the passage
+quoted at p. 146 of this work will suffice to show. The whole paragraph
+is ironical.
+
+I can see nothing to justify the conclusion drawn from this passage by
+Isidore Geoffroy, that Buffon had modified his opinions, and was
+inclined to believe in a more limited mutability than he had done a few
+years earlier. His exoteric position is still identical with what it was
+in the outset, and his esoteric may be seen from the spirit which is
+hardly concealed under the following:--
+
+"I shall be told that analogy points towards the belief that our own
+race has followed the same path, and dates from the same period as
+other species; that it has spread itself even more widely than they; and
+that if man's creation has a later date than that of the other animals,
+nothing shows that he has not been subjected to the same laws of nature,
+the same alterations, and the same changes as they. We will grant that
+the human species does not differ essentially from others in the matter
+of bodily organs, and that, in respect of these, our lot has been much
+the same as that of other animals."[130]
+
+
+_Plants under Domestication._
+
+"If more modern and even recent examples are required in order to prove
+man's power over the vegetable kingdom, it is only necessary to compare
+our vegetables, flowers, and fruits with the same species such as they
+were a hundred and fifty years ago; this can be done with much ease and
+certainty by running the eye over the great collection of coloured
+drawings begun in the time of Gaston of Orleans, and continued to the
+present day at the Jardin du Roi. We find with surprise that the finest
+flowers of that date, as the ranunculuses, pinks, tulips, bear's ears,
+&c., would be rejected now, I do not say by our florists, but by our
+village gardeners. These flowers, though then already cultivated, were
+still not far above their wild condition. They had a single row of
+petals only, long pistils, colours hard and false; they had little
+velvety texture, variety, or gradation of tints, and, in fact, presented
+all the characteristics of untamed nature. Of herbs there was a single
+kind of endive, and two of lettuce--both bad--while we can now reckon
+more than fifty lettuces and endives, all excellent. We can even name
+the very recent dates of our best pippins and kernel fruits--all of them
+differing from those of our forefathers, which they resemble in name
+only. In most cases things remain while names change; here, on the
+contrary, it is the names that have been constant while the things have
+varied.[131]
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"It is not that every one of these good varieties did not arise from the
+same wild stock; but how many attempts has not man made on Nature before
+he succeeded in getting them. How many millions of germs has he not
+committed to the earth, before she has rewarded him by producing them?
+It was only by sowing, tending, and bringing to maturity an almost
+infinite number of plants of the same kind that he was able to recognize
+some individuals with fruits sweeter and better than others; and this
+first discovery, which itself involves so much care, would have remained
+for ever fruitless if he had not made a second, which required as much
+genius as the first required patience--I mean the art of grafting those
+precious individuals, which, unfortunately, cannot continue a line as
+noble as their own, nor themselves propagate their rare and admirable
+qualities? And this alone proves that these qualities are purely
+individual, and not specific, for the pips or stones of these excellent
+fruits bring forth the original wild stock, so that they do not form
+species essentially different from this. Man, however, by means of
+grafting, produces what may be called secondary species, which he can
+propagate at will; for the bud or small branch which he engrafts upon
+the stock contains within itself the individual quality which cannot be
+transmitted by seed, but which needs only to be developed in order to
+bring forth the same fruits as the individual from which it was taken in
+order to be grafted on to the wild stock. The wild stock imparts none of
+its bad qualities to the bud, for it did not contribute to the forming
+thereof, being, as it were, a wet nurse, and no true mother.
+
+"In the case of animals, the greater number of those features which
+appear individual, do not fail to be transmitted to offspring, in the
+same way as specific characters. It was easier then for man to produce
+an effect upon the natures of animals than of plants. The different
+breeds in each animal species are variations that have become constant
+and hereditary, while vegetable species on the other hand present no
+variations that can be depended on to be transmitted with certainty.
+
+"In the species of the fowl and the pigeon alone, a large number of
+breeds have been formed quite recently, which are all constant, and in
+other species we daily improve breeds by crossing them. From time to
+time we acclimatize and domesticate some foreign and wild species. All
+these examples of modern times prove that man has but tardily discovered
+the extent of his own power, and that he is not even yet sufficiently
+aware of it. It depends entirely upon the exercise of his intelligence;
+the more, therefore, he observes and cultivates nature the more means he
+will find of making her subservient to him, and of drawing new riches
+from her bosom without diminishing the treasures of her inexhaustible
+fecundity."[132]
+
+
+_Birds._
+
+In the preface to his volumes upon birds, Buffon says that these are not
+only much more numerous than quadrupeds, but that they also exhibit a
+far larger number of varieties, and individual variations.
+
+"The diversities," he declares, "which arise from the effects of climate
+and food, of domestication, captivity, transportation, voluntary and
+compulsory migration--all the causes in fact of alteration and
+degeneration--unite to throw difficulties in the way of the
+ornithologist."[133]
+
+He points out the infinitely keener vision of birds than that of man and
+quadrupeds, and connects it with their habits and requirements.[134] He
+does not appear to consider it as caused by those requirements, though
+it is quite conceivable that he saw this, but thought he had already
+said enough. He repeatedly refers to the effects of changed climate and
+of domestication, but I find nothing in the first volume which modifies
+the position already taken by him in regard to descent with
+modification: it is needless, therefore, to repeat the few passages
+which are to be found bearing at all upon the subject. The chapter on
+the birds that cannot fly, contains a sentence which seems to be the
+germ that has been developed, in the hands of Lamarck, into the
+comparison between nature and a tree. Buffon says that the chain of
+nature is not a single long chain, but is comparable rather to something
+woven, "which at certain intervals throws out a branch sideways that
+unites it with the strands of some other weft."[135] On the following
+page there is a passage which has been quoted as an example of Buffon's
+contempt for the men of science of his time. The writer maintains that
+the most lucid arrangement of birds, would have been to begin with those
+which most resembled quadrupeds. "The ostrich, which approaches the
+camel in the shape of its legs, and the porcupine in the quills with
+which its wings are armed, should have immediately followed the
+quadrupeds, but philosophy is often obliged to make a show of yielding
+to popular opinions, and _the tribe of naturalists_ is both numerous and
+impatient of any disturbance of its methods. It would only, then, have
+regarded this arrangement as an unreasonable innovation caused by a
+desire to contradict and to be singular."[136]
+
+It is, I believe, held not only by "_le peuple des naturalistes_," but
+by most sensible persons, that the proposed arrangement would not have
+been an improvement. I find, however, in the preface to the third volume
+on birds that M. Gueneau de Montbeillard described all the birds from
+the ostrich to the quail, so the foregoing passage is perhaps his and
+not Buffon's. If so, the imitation is fair, but when we reflect upon it
+we feel uncertain whether it is or is not beneath Buffon's dignity.
+
+Here, as often with pictures and music, we cannot criticise justly
+without taking more into consideration than is actually before us. We
+feel almost inclined to say that if the passage is by Buffon it is
+probably right, and if by M. Gueneau de Montbeillard, probably wrong. It
+must also be remembered that, as we learn from the preface already
+referred to, Buffon was seized at this point in his work with a long and
+painful illness, which continued for two years; a single hasty passage
+in so great a writer may well be pardoned under such circumstances.
+
+Looking through the third and remaining volumes on birds, the greater
+part of which was by Gueneau de Montbeillard, and bearing in mind that
+in point of date they are synchronous with some of those upon quadrupeds
+from which I have already extracted as much as my space will allow, and
+not seeing anything on a rapid survey which promises to throw new light
+upon the author's opinions, I forbear to quote further. I therefore
+leave Buffon with the hope that I have seen him more justly than some
+others have done, but with the certainty that the points I have caught
+and understood are few in comparison with those that I have missed.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[65] 'Hist. Nat.,' tom. i. p. 13, 1749.
+
+[66] Ibid.
+
+[67] Ibid. p. 16.
+
+[68] Tom. i. p. 21.
+
+[69] Ibid. p. 23.
+
+[70] Tom. ii. p. 9, 1749.
+
+[71] Ibid. p. 10.
+
+[72] Tom. iv. p. 31, 1753.
+
+[73] Tom. iv. p. 55.
+
+[74] Tom. iv. p. 98, 1753.
+
+[75] Ibid.
+
+[76] Tom. viii. p. 283, &c., 1760.
+
+[77] Tom. iv. p. 102, 1760.
+
+[78] Tom. iv. p. 103, 1753.
+
+[79] Dr. Darwin, 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 183, 1796.
+
+[80] Ibid. p. 184.
+
+[81] Dr. Darwin,'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 186.
+
+[82] Tom. v. p. 63, 1755.
+
+[83] Ibid. p. 64.
+
+[84] Tom. v. p. 103, 1755.
+
+[85] Tom. v. p. 104, 1755.
+
+[86] Tom. v. pp. 192-195, 1755.
+
+[87] Tom. v. p. 195.
+
+[88] Tom. v. pp. 196, 197.
+
+[89] This passage would seem to be the one which has suggested the
+following to the author of 'The Vestiges of Creation':--
+
+"He [the Deity] has endowed the families which enjoy His bounty with an
+almost infinite fecundity, ... but the limitation of the results of this
+fecundity ... is accomplished in a befitting manner by His ordaining
+that certain other animals shall have endowments sure so to act as to
+bring the rest of animated beings to a proper balance" (p. 317, ed.
+1853).
+
+[90] Tom. vi. p. 252, 1756.
+
+[91] 'Discours sur la Nature des Animaux,' vol. iv. and p. 113 of
+this vol.
+
+[92] Tom. vii. p. 9, 1758.
+
+[93] Tom. vii. p. 10, 1758.
+
+[94] Tom. vii. p. 12, 1758.
+
+[95] Tom. vii. p. 14, 1758
+
+[96] Tom. vii. p. 15, 1758.
+
+[97] Tom. vii. p. 19, 1758.
+
+[98] Tom. vii. p. 23, 1758. See Sténon's Discourse upon this subject.
+
+[99] Tom. ix. p. 10, 1761.
+
+[100] Tom. ix. p. 11, 1761.
+
+[101] Tom. ix. p. 68, 1761.
+
+[102] Ibid. p. 96, 1761.
+
+[103] Tom. ix. p. 107 and following pages (during which he rails at the
+new world generally), 1761.
+
+[104] Tom. ix. p. 127, 1761.
+
+[105] Tom. xi. p. 290, 1764 (misprinted on title-page 1754).
+
+[106] Ibid. p. 296.
+
+[107] Ibid. p. 363.
+
+[108] Ibid. p. 363.
+
+[109] Tom. xi. p. 370, 1764.
+
+[110] Ibid. xii., preface, iv. 1764.
+
+[111] Tom. xiii., preface, x. 1765.
+
+[112] Tom. xiii., preface, iv. 1765.
+
+[113] Ibid. xiii. p. 37.
+
+[114] See p. 80 of this volume.
+
+[115] Tom. xiv. p. 30, 1766.
+
+[116] Tom. xiv. p. 31, 1766.
+
+[117] Ibid. p. 32, 1766.
+
+[118] Tom. xiv. p. 38, 1766.
+
+[119] Ibid. p. 42, 1766.
+
+[120] Tom. xiv. p. 316, 1766.
+
+[121] Ibid. p. 317.
+
+[122] Tom. xiv. p. 326, 1766.
+
+[123] Ibid. p. 327.
+
+[124] Tom. xiv. p. 333.
+
+[125] Ibid. p. 335, 1766.
+
+[126] See p. 80 of this volume.
+
+[127] Tom. xiv. p. 358, 1766.
+
+[128] Tom. xiv. p. 374, 1766.
+
+[129] 'Hist. Nat.,' Sup. tom. v. p. 27, 1778.
+
+[130] Sup. tom. v. p. 187, 1778.
+
+[131] Sup. tom. v. p. 250, 1778.
+
+[132] Sup. tom. v. p. 253, 1778.
+
+[133] 'Oiseaux,' tom. i., preface, v. 1770.
+
+[134] Ibid. pp. 9-11.
+
+[135] 'Oiseaux,' tom. i. pp. 394, 395.
+
+[136] Ibid. p. 396, 1771.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+SKETCH OF DR. ERASMUS DARWIN'S LIFE.
+
+
+Proceeding now to the second of the three founders of the theory of
+evolution, I find, from a memoir by Dr. Dowson, that Dr. Erasmus Darwin
+was born at Elston, near Newark, in Nottinghamshire, on the 12th of
+December, 1731, being the seventh child and fourth son of Robert Darwin,
+"a private gentleman, who had a taste for literature and science, which
+he endeavoured to impart to his sons. Erasmus received his early
+education at Chesterfield School, and later on was entered at St. John's
+College, Cambridge, where he obtained a scholarship of about 16_l._ a
+year, and distinguished himself by his poetical exercises, which he
+composed with uncommon facility. He took the degree of M.B. there in
+1755, and afterwards prepared himself for the practice of medicine by
+attendance on the lectures of Dr. Hunter in London, and a course of
+studies in Edinburgh.
+
+"He first settled as a physician at Nottingham; but meeting with no
+success there, he removed in the autumn of 1756, his twenty-fifth year,
+to Lichfield, where he was more fortunate; for a few weeks after his
+arrival, to use the words of Miss Seward, 'he brilliantly opened his
+career of fame.' A young gentleman of family and fortune lay sick of a
+dangerous fever. A physician who had for many years possessed the
+confidence of Lichfield and the neighbourhood attended, but at length
+pronounced the case hopeless, and took his leave. Dr. Darwin was then
+called in, and by 'a reverse and entirely novel kind of treatment' the
+patient recovered."[137]
+
+Of Dr. Darwin's personal appearance Miss Seward says:--
+
+"He was somewhat above the middle size; his form athletic, and inclined
+to corpulence; his limbs were too heavy for exact proportion; the traces
+of a severe smallpox disfigured features and a countenance which, when
+they were not animated by social pleasure, were rather saturnine than
+sprightly; a stoop in the shoulders, and the then professional
+appendage--a large full-bottomed wig--gave at that early period of life
+an appearance of nearly twice the years he bore. Florid health and the
+earnest of good humour, a funny smile on entering a room and on first
+accosting his friends, rendered in his youth that exterior agreeable, to
+which beauty and symmetry had not been propitious.
+
+"He stammered extremely, but whatever he said, whether gravely or in
+jest, was always well worth waiting for, though the inevitable
+impression it made might not be always pleasant to individual self-love.
+Conscious of great native elevation above the general standard of
+intellect, he became early in life sore upon opposition, whether in
+argument or conduct, and always resented it by sarcasm of very keen
+edge. Nor was he less impatient of the sallies of egotism and vanity,
+even when they were in so slight a degree that strict politeness would
+rather tolerate than ridicule them. Dr. Darwin seldom failed to present
+their caricature in jocose but wounding irony. If these ingredients of
+colloquial despotism were discernible in _unworn_ existence, they
+increased as it advanced, fed by an ever growing reputation within and
+without the pale of medicine."[138]
+
+I imagine that this portrait is somewhat too harshly drawn. Dr. Darwin's
+taste for English wines is the worst trait which I have been able to
+discover in his character. On this head Miss Seward tells us that "he
+despised the prejudice which deems foreign wines more wholesome than the
+wines of the country. 'If you must drink wine,' said he, 'let it be
+home-made.'" "It is well known," she continues, "that Dr. Darwin's
+influence and example have sobered the county of Derby; that
+intemperance in fermented fluid of every species is almost unknown among
+its gentlemen,"[139] which, if he limited them to cowslip wine, is
+hardly to be wondered at.
+
+Dr. Dowson, quoting Miss Edgeworth, says that Dr. Darwin attributed
+almost all the diseases of the upper classes to the too great use of
+fermented liquors. "This opinion he supported in his writings with the
+force of his eloquence and reason; and still more in conversation by all
+those powers of wit, satire, and peculiar humour, which never appeared
+fully to the public in his works, but which gained him strong
+ascendancy in private society.... When he heard that my father was
+bilious, he suspected that this must be the consequence of his having,
+since his residence in Ireland, and in compliance with the fashion of
+the country, indulged too freely in drinking. His letter, I remember,
+concluded with, 'Farewell, my dear friend; God keep you from whisky--if
+He can.'"[140]
+
+On the other hand, Dr. Darwin seems to have been a very large eater.
+"Acid fruits with sugar, and all sorts of creams and butter were his
+luxuries; but he always ate plentifully of animal food. This liberal
+alimentary regimen he prescribed to people of every age where unvitiated
+appetite rendered them capable of following it; even to infants."
+
+Dr. Dowson writes:--
+
+"I have mentioned already that he had in his carriage a receptacle for
+paper and pencils, with which he wrote as he travelled, and in one
+corner a pile of books; but he had also a receptacle for a knife, fork,
+and spoon, and in the other corner a hamper, containing fruit and
+sweetmeats, cream and sugar. He provided also for his horses by having a
+large pail lashed to his carriage for watering them, as well as hay and
+oats to be eaten on the road. Mrs. Schimmelpenninck says that when he
+came on a professional visit to her father's house they had, as was the
+custom whenever he came, 'a luncheon-table set out with hothouse fruits
+and West India sweetmeats, clotted cream, stilton cheese, &c. While the
+conversation went on, the dishes in his vicinity were rapidly emptied,
+and what,' she adds, 'was my astonishment when, at the end of the three
+hours during which the meal had lasted, he expressed his joy at hearing
+the dressing bell, and hoped dinner would soon be announced.' This was
+not mere gluttony; he thought an abundance, or what most people would
+consider a superabundance of food, conducive to health. '_Eat or be
+eaten_' is said to have been often his medical advice. He had especially
+a very high opinion of the nutritive value of sugar, and said 'that if
+ever our improved chemistry should discover the art of making sugar from
+fossil or aerial matter without the assistance of vegetation, food for
+animals would then become as plentiful as water, and mankind might live
+upon the earth as thick as blades of grass, with no restraint to their
+numbers but want of room.'--Botanic Garden, vol. i. p. 470."[141]
+
+"Professional generosity," says Miss Seward, "distinguished Dr. Darwin's
+practice. Whilst resident in Lichfield he always cheerfully gave to the
+priest and lay vicars of its cathedral and their families _his advice_,
+but never took fees from any of them. Diligently also did he attend the
+health of the poor in that city, and afterwards at Derby, and supplied
+their necessities by food, and all sort of charitable assistance. In
+each of those towns _his_ was the cheerful board of almost open-housed
+hospitality, without extravagance or parade; generosity, wit, and
+science were his household gods."[142]
+
+Of his first marriage the following account is given:--
+
+"In 1757 he married Miss Howard, of the Close of Lichfield, a blooming
+and lovely young lady of eighteen.... Mrs. Darwin's own mind, by nature
+so well endowed, strengthened and expanded in the friendship,
+conversation, and confidence of so beloved a preceptor. But alas! upon
+her too early youth, and too delicate constitution, the frequency of her
+maternal situation, during the first five years of her marriage, had
+probably a baneful effect. The potent skill and assiduous cares of _him_
+before whom disease daily vanished from the frame of _others_, could not
+expel it radically from that of her he loved. It was, however, kept at
+bay during thirteen years.
+
+"Upon the distinguished happiness of those years she spoke with fervour
+to two intimate female friends in the last week of her existence, which
+closed at the latter end of the summer 1770. 'Do not weep for my
+impending fate,' said the dying angel with a smile of unaffected
+cheerfulness. 'In the short term of my life a great deal of happiness
+has been comprised. The maladies of my frame were peculiar; those of my
+head and stomach which no medicine could eradicate, were spasmodic and
+violent; and required stronger measures to render them supportable while
+they lasted than my constitution could sustain without injury. The
+periods of exemption from those pains were frequently of several days'
+duration, and in my intermissions I felt no indications of malady. Pain
+taught me the value of ease, and I enjoyed it with a glow of spirit,
+seldom, perhaps, felt by the habitually healthy. While Dr. Darwin
+combated and assuaged my disease from time to time, his indulgence to
+all my wishes, his active desire to see me amused and happy, proved
+incessant. His house, as you know, has ever been the resort of people of
+science and merit. If, from my husband's great and extensive practice, I
+had much less of his society than I wished, yet the conversation of his
+friends, and of my own, was ever ready to enliven the hours of his
+absence. As occasional malady made me doubly enjoy health, so did those
+frequent absences give a zest even to delight, when I could be indulged
+with his company. My three boys have ever been docile and affectionate.
+Children as they are, I could trust them with important secrets, so
+sacred do they hold every promise they make. They scorn deceit and
+falsehood of every kind, and have less selfishness than generally
+belongs to childhood. Married to any other man, I do not suppose I could
+have lived a third part of the years which I have passed with Dr.
+Darwin; he has prolonged my days, and he has blessed them.'
+
+"Thus died this superior woman, in the bloom of life, sincerely
+regretted by all who knew how to value her excellence, and
+_passionately_ regretted by the selected few whom she honoured with her
+personal and confidential friendship."[143]
+
+I find Miss Seward's pages so fascinating, that I am in danger of
+following her even in those parts of her work which have no bearing on
+Dr. Darwin. I must, however, pass over her account of Mr. Edgeworth and
+of his friend Mr. Day, the author of 'Sandford and Merton,' "which, by
+wise parents, is put into every youthful hand," but the description of
+Mr. Day's portrait cannot be omitted.
+
+"In the course of the year 1770, Mr. Day stood for a full-length picture
+to Mr. Wright, of Derby. A strong likeness and a dignified portrait were
+the result. Drawn in the open air, the surrounding sky is tempestuous,
+lurid, dark. He stands leaning his left arm against a column inscribed
+to Hambden (_sic_). Mr. Day looks upwards, as enthusiastically
+meditating on the contents of a book held in his dropped right hand. The
+open leaf is the oration of that virtuous patriot in the senate, against
+the grant of ship money, demanded by King Charles I. A flash of
+lightning plays in Mr. Day's hair, and illuminates the contents of the
+volume. The poetic fancy and what were _then_ the politics of the
+original, appear in the choice of subject and attitude. Dr. Darwin sat
+to Mr. Wright about the same period. _That_ was a simply contemplative
+portrait, of the most perfect resemblance."[144]
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"In the year 1768, Dr. Darwin met with an accident of irretrievable
+injury to the human frame. His propensity to mechanics had unfortunately
+led him to construct a very singular carriage. It was a platform with a
+seat fixed upon a very high pair of wheels, and supported in the front
+upon the back of the horse, by means of a kind of proboscis which,
+forming an arch, reached over the hind-quarters of the horse, and passed
+through a ring, placed on an upright piece of iron, which worked in a
+socket fixed in the saddle. The horse could thus move from one side of
+the road to the other, quartering, as it is called, at the will of the
+driver, whose constant attention was necessarily employed to regulate a
+piece of machinery contrived, but _not well_ contrived, for that
+purpose."
+
+I cannot help the reader to understand the foregoing description. "From
+this whimsical carriage, however, the doctor was several times thrown,
+and the last time he used it had the misfortune, from a similar
+accident, to break the patella of his right knee, which caused, as it
+must always cause, an incurable weakness in the fractured part, and a
+lameness not very discernible, indeed, when walking on even
+ground."[145]
+
+Miss Seward presently tells a story which reads as though it might have
+been told by Plutarch of some Greek or Roman sage. Much as we must
+approve of Dr. Darwin's habitual sobriety, we shall most of us be agreed
+that a few more such stories would have been cheaply purchased by a
+corresponding number of lapses on the doctor's part.
+
+Miss Seward writes:--
+
+"Since these memoirs commenced, an odd anecdote of Dr. Darwin's early
+residence at Lichfield, was narrated to a friend of the author by a
+gentleman, who was of the party in which it happened. Mr. Sneyd, then of
+Bishton, and a few more gentlemen of Staffordshire, prevailed upon the
+doctor to join them in an expedition by water from Burton to Nottingham,
+and on to Newark. They had cold provisions on board, and plenty of wine.
+It was midsummer; the day ardent and sultry. The noon-tide meal had
+been made, and the glass had gone gaily round. It was one of those _few_
+instances in which the medical votary of the Naiads transgressed his
+general and strict sobriety," in which, in fact, he may be said to
+have--remembered himself.
+
+"If not absolutely intoxicated, his spirits were in a high state of
+vinous exhilaration. On the boat approaching Nottingham, within the
+distance of a few fields, he surprised his companions by stepping,
+without any previous notice, from the boat into the middle of the river,
+and swimming to shore. They saw him get upon the bank, and walk coolly
+over the meadows towards the town: they called to him in vain, but he
+did not once turn his head.
+
+"Anxious lest he should take a dangerous cold by remaining in his wet
+clothes, and uncertain whether or not he intended to desert the party,
+they rowed instantly to the town at which they had not designed to have
+touched, and went in search of their river-god.
+
+"In passing through the market-place they saw him standing upon a tub,
+encircled by a crowd of people, and resisting the entreaties of an
+apothecary of the place, one of his old acquaintances, who was
+importuning him to his house, and to accept other raiments till his own
+could be dried.
+
+"The party on pressing through the crowd were surprised to hear him
+speaking without any degree of his usual stammer:--'Have I not told you,
+my friend, that I had drank a considerable quantity of wine before I
+committed myself to the river. You know my general sobriety, and as a
+professional man you _ought_ to know that the _unusual_ existence of
+internal stimulus would, in its effects upon the system, counteract the
+_external_ cold and moisture.'"
+
+"Then perceiving his companions near him, he nodded, smiled, and waived
+his hand, as enjoining them silence, thus, without hesitation,
+addressing the populace:--
+
+"'Ye men of Nottingham, listen to me. You are ingenious and industrious
+mechanics. By your industry life's comforts are procured for yourselves
+and families. If you lose your health the power of being industrious
+will forsake you. _That_ you know, but you may _not_ know that to
+breathe fresh and changed air constantly, is not less necessary to
+preserve health than sobriety itself. Air becomes unwholesome in a few
+hours if the windows are shut. Open those of your sleeping rooms
+whenever you quit them to go to your workshops. Keep the windows of your
+workshops open whenever the weather is not insupportably cold. I have no
+_interest_ in giving you this advice; remember what I, your countryman
+and a physician, tell you. If you would not bring infection and disease
+upon yourselves, and to your wives and little ones, change the air you
+breathe, change it many times a day, by opening your windows.'
+
+"So saying, he stepped down from the tub, and, returning with his party
+to their boat, they pursued their voyage."[146]
+
+Could any missionary be more perfectly sober and sensible, or more alive
+to the immorality of trying to effect too sudden a modification in the
+organisms he was endeavouring to influence? If the men of Nottingham
+want a statue in their market-place, I would respectfully suggest that a
+subject is here afforded them.
+
+     *     *     *     *     *
+
+"Dr. Johnson was several times at Lichfield on visits to Mrs. Lucy
+Porter, his daughter-in-law, while Dr. Darwin was one of the
+inhabitants. They had one or two interviews, but never afterwards sought
+each other. Mutual and strong dislike subsisted between them. It is
+curious that in Johnson's various letters to Mrs. Thrale, now Mrs.
+Piozzi, published by that lady after his death, many of them dated from
+Lichfield, the name of Darwin cannot be found, nor, indeed, that of any
+of the ingenious and lettered people who lived there; while of its mere
+common-life characters there is frequent mention, with many hints of
+Lichfield's intellectual barrenness, while it could boast a Darwin and
+other men of classical learning, poetic talents, and liberal
+information."[147]
+
+Here there follows a pleasant sketch of the principal Lichfield
+notabilities, which I am compelled to omit.
+
+"_These_ were the men," exclaims Miss Seward, "whose intellectual
+existence passed unnoticed by Dr. Johnson in his depreciating estimate
+of Lichfield talents. But Johnson liked only _worshippers_. Archdeacon
+Vyse, Mr. Seward, and Mr. Robinson paid all the respect and attention to
+Dr. Johnson, on these his visits to their town, due to his great
+abilities, his high reputation, and to whatever was estimable in his
+_mixed_ character; but they were not in the herd that 'paged his heels,'
+and sunk in servile silence under the force of his dogmas, when their
+hearts and their judgments bore _contrary_ testimony.
+
+"Certainly, however, it was an arduous hazard to the feelings of the
+company to oppose in the slightest degree Dr. Johnson's opinions. His
+stentor lungs; that combination of wit, humour, and eloquence, which
+'could make the _worse_ appear the _better_ reason,' that sarcastic
+contempt of his antagonist, never suppressed or even softened by the due
+restraints of good breeding, were sufficient to close the lips in his
+presence, of men who could have met him in fair argument, on _any_
+ground, literary or political, moral or characteristic.
+
+"Where Dr. Johnson was, Dr. Darwin had no chance of being heard, though
+at least his equal in genius, his superior in science; nor, indeed, from
+his impeded utterance, in the company of any overbearing declaimer; and
+he was too intellectually great to be an humble listener to Johnson.
+Therefore he shunned him on having experienced what manner of man he
+was. The surly dictator felt the mortification, and revenged it by
+_affecting_ to avow his disdain of powers too distinguished to be
+objects of _genuine_ scorn.
+
+"Dr. Darwin, in his turn, was not much more just to Dr. Johnson's
+genius. He uniformly spoke of him in terms which, had they been
+deserved, would have justified Churchill's 'immane Pomposo' as an
+appellation of _scorn_; since if his person was huge, and his manners
+pompous and violent, so were his talents vast and powerful, in a degree
+from which only prejudice and resentment could withhold respect.
+
+"Though Dr. Darwin's hesitation in speaking precluded his flow of
+colloquial eloquence, it did not impede, or at all lessen, the force of
+that conciser quality, _wit_. Of satiric wit he possessed a very
+peculiar species. It was neither the dead-doing broadside of Dr.
+Johnson's satire, nor the aurora borealis of Gray ... whose arch yet coy
+and quiet fastidiousness of taste and feeling, as recorded by Mason,
+glanced bright and cold through his conversation, while it seemed
+difficult to define its nature; and while its effects were rather
+_perceived_ than _felt_, exciting surprise more than mirth, and never
+awakening the pained sense of being the object of its ridicule. That
+unique in humorous verse, the Long Story, is a complete and beautiful
+specimen of Gray's singular vein.
+
+"Darwinian wit is not more easy to be defined; instances will best
+convey an idea of its character to those who never conversed with its
+possessor.
+
+"Dr. Darwin was conversing with a brother botanist concerning the plant
+kalmia, then a just imported stranger in our greenhouses and gardens. A
+lady who was present, concluding he had seen it, which in fact he had
+not, asked the doctor what were the colours of the plant. He replied,
+'Madam, the kalmia has precisely the colours of a seraph's wing.' So
+fancifully did he express his want of consciousness concerning the
+appearance of a flower, whose name and rareness were all he knew of the
+matter.
+
+"Dr. Darwin had a large company at tea. His servant announced a
+stranger, lady and gentleman. The female was a conspicuous figure,
+ruddy, corpulent, and tall. She held by the arm a little, meek-looking,
+pale, effeminate man, who, from his close adherence to the side of the
+lady, seemed to consider himself as under her protection.
+
+"'Dr. Darwin, I seek you not as a physician, but as a _Belle Esprit_. I
+make this husband of mine,' and she looked down with a side glance upon
+the animal, 'treat me every summer with a tour through one of the
+British counties, to explore whatever it contains worth the attention of
+ingenious people. On arriving at the several inns in our route I always
+search out the man of the vicinity most distinguished for his genius and
+taste, and introduce myself, that he may direct as the objects of our
+examination, whatever is curious in nature, art, or science. Lichfield
+will be our headquarters during several days. Come, doctor, whither must
+we go; what must we investigate to-morrow, and the next day, and the
+next? Here are my tablets and pencil.'
+
+"'You arrive, madam, at a fortunate juncture. To-morrow you will have an
+opportunity of surveying an annual exhibition perfectly worthy your
+attention. To-morrow, madam, you will go to Tutbury bull-running.'
+
+"The satiric laugh with which he stammered out the last word more keenly
+pointed this sly, yet broad rebuke to the vanity and arrogance of her
+speech. She had been up amongst the boughs, and little expected they
+would break under her so suddenly, and with so little mercy. Her large
+features swelled, and her eyes flashed with anger--'I was recommended to
+a man of genius, and I find him insolent and ill-bred.' Then, gathering
+up her meek and alarmed husband, whom she had loosed when she first
+spoke, under the shadow of her broad arm and shoulder, she strutted out
+of the room.
+
+"After the departure of this curious couple, his guests told their host
+he had been very unmerciful. 'I chose,' replied he, 'to avenge the cause
+of the little man, whose nothingness was so ostentatiously displayed by
+his lady-wife. Her vanity has had a smart emetic. If it abates the
+symptoms, she will have reason to thank her physician who administered
+without hope of a fee.'"[148]
+
+"In the spring of 1778 the children of Colonel and Mrs. Pole of Radburn,
+in Derbyshire, had been injured by a dangerous quantity of the cicuta,
+injudiciously administered to them in the hooping-cough by a physician
+of the neighbourhood. Mrs. Pole brought them to the house of Dr. Darwin
+in Lichfield, remaining with them there a few weeks, till by his art the
+poison was expelled from their constitutions and their health restored.
+
+"Mrs. Pole was then in the full bloom of her youth and beauty. Agreeable
+features; the glow of health; a fine form, tall and graceful; playful
+sprightliness of manner; a benevolent heart, and maternal affection, in
+all its unwearied cares and touching tenderness, contributed to inspire
+Dr. Darwin's admiration, and to secure his esteem."[149]
+
+"In the autumn of this year" (1778) "Mrs. Pole of Radburn was taken ill;
+her disorder a violent fever. Dr. Darwin was called in, and never
+perhaps since the death of Mrs. Darwin, prescribed with such deep
+anxiety. Not being requested to continue in the house during the ensuing
+night, which he apprehended might prove critical, he passed the
+remaining hours till day-dawn beneath a tree opposite her apartment,
+watching the passing and repassing lights in the chamber. During the
+period in which a life so passionately valued was in danger, he
+paraphrased Petrarch's celebrated sonnet, narrating a dream whose
+prophecy was accomplished by the death of Laura. It took place the night
+on which the vision arose amid his slumber. Dr. Darwin extended the
+thought of that sonnet into the following elegy:--
+
+    "Dread dream, that, hovering in the midnight air,
+      Clasp'd with thy dusky wing my aching head,
+    While to imagination's startled ear
+      Toll'd the slow bell, for bright Eliza dead.
+
+    "Stretched on her sable bier, the grave beside,
+      A snow-white shroud her breathless bosom bound,
+    O'er her wan brow the mimic lace was tied,
+      And loves and virtues hung their garlands round.
+
+    "From those cold lips did softest accents flow?
+      Round that pale mouth did sweetest dimples play?
+    On this dull cheek the rose of beauty blow,
+      And those dim eyes diffuse celestial day?
+
+    "Did this cold hand, unasking Want relieve,
+      Or wake the lyre to every rapturous sound?
+    How sad for other's woe this breast would heave!
+      How light this heart for other's transport bound!
+
+    "Beats not the bell again?--Heavens, do I wake?
+      Why heave my sighs, why gush my tears anew?
+    Unreal forms my trembling doubts mistake,
+      And frantic sorrow fears the vision true.
+
+    "Dreams to Eliza bend thy airy flight,
+      Go, tell my charmer all my tender fears,
+    How love's fond woes alarm the silent night,
+      And steep my pillow in unpitied tears."
+
+Unwilling as I am to extend this memoir, I must give Miss Seward's
+criticism on the foregoing.
+
+"The second verse of this charming elegy affords an instance of Dr.
+Darwin's too exclusive devotion to distinct picture in poetry; that it
+sometimes betrayed him into bringing objects so precisely to the eye as
+to lose in such precision their power of striking forcibly on the heart.
+The pathos in the second verse is much injured by the words 'mimic
+lace,' which allude to the perforated borders on the shroud. The
+expression is too minute for the solemnity of the subject. Certainly it
+cannot be natural for a shocked and agitated mind to observe, or to
+describe with such petty accuracy. Besides, the allusion is not
+sufficiently obvious. The reader pauses to consider what the poet means
+by 'mimic lace.' Such pauses deaden sensation and break the course of
+attention. A friend of the doctor's pleaded greatly that the line might
+run thus:--
+
+    "On her wan brow the _shadowy crape_ was tied;"
+
+but the alteration was rejected. Inattention to the rules of grammar in
+the first verse was also pointed out to him at the same time. The dream
+is addressed:
+
+    "Dread dream, that clasped my aching head,"
+
+but nothing is said to it, and therefore the sense is left unfinished,
+while the elegy proceeds to give a picture of the lifeless beauty. The
+same friend suggested a change which would have remedied the defect.
+Thus:--
+
+    "Dread _was the dream_ that in the midnight air
+      Clasped with its dusky wing my aching head,
+    While to" &c., &c.
+
+"Hence not only the grammatic error would have been done away, but the
+grating sound produced by the near alliteration of the harsh _dr_ in
+'_dr_ead _dr_eam' removed, by placing those words at a greater distance
+from each other.
+
+"This alteration was, for the same reason, rejected. The doctor would
+not spare the word _hovering_, which he said strengthened the picture;
+but surely the image ought not to be elaborately precise, by which a
+dream is transformed into an animal with black wings."[150]
+
+Then Mrs. Pole got well, and the doctor wrote more verses and Miss
+Seward more criticism. It was not for nothing that Dr. Johnson came down
+to Lichfield.
+
+     *     *     *     *     *
+
+In 1780 Colonel Pole died, and his widow, still young, handsome, witty,
+and--for those days--rich, was in no want of suitors.
+
+"Colonel Pole," says Miss Seward, "had numbered twice the years of his
+fair wife. His temper was said to have been peevish and suspicious; yet
+not beneath those circumstances had her kind and cheerful attentions to
+him grown cold or remiss. He left her a jointure of 600_l._ per annum, a
+son to inherit his estate, and two female children amply portioned.
+
+"Mrs. Pole, it has already been remarked, had much vivacity and sportive
+humour, with very engaging frankness of temper and manners. Early in her
+widowhood she was rallied in a large company upon Dr. Darwin's passion
+for her, and was asked what she would do with her captive philosopher.
+'He is not very fond of churches, I believe,' said she, 'and even if he
+would go there for my sake, I shall scarcely follow him. He is too old
+for me.' 'Nay, Madam,' was the answer, 'what are fifteen years on the
+right side?' She replied, with an arch smile, 'I have had so _much_ of
+that right side.'
+
+"This confession was thought inauspicious for the doctor's hopes, but it
+did not prove so. The triumph of intellect was complete."[151]
+
+Mrs. Pole had taken a strong dislike to Lichfield, and had made it a
+condition of her marriage that Dr. Darwin should not reside there after
+he had married her. In 1781, therefore, immediately after his marriage,
+he removed to Derby, and continued to live there till a fortnight before
+his death.
+
+Here he wrote 'The Botanic Garden' and a great part of the 'Zoonomia.'
+Those who wish for a detailed analysis of 'The Botanic Garden' can
+hardly do better than turn to Miss Seward's pages. Opening them at
+random, I find the following:--
+
+"The mention of Brindley, the father of commercial canals, has propriety
+as well as happiness. Similitude for their course to the sinuous track
+of a serpent, produces a fine picture of a gliding animal of that
+species, and it is succeeded by these supremely happy lines:--
+
+    "'So with strong arms immortal Brindley leads
+    His long canals, and parts the velvet meads;
+    Winding in lucid lines, the watery mass
+    Mines the firm rock, or loads the deep morass;'[152]
+      &c. &c. &c.
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"The mechanism of the pump is next described with curious ingenuity.
+Common as is the machine, it is not unworthy a place in this splendid
+composition, as being, after the sinking of wells, the earliest of those
+inventions, which in situations of exterior aridness gave ready
+accession to water. This familiar object is illustrated by a picture of
+Maternal Beauty administering sustenance to her infant."[153]
+
+Here we will leave the poetical part of the 'Botanic Garden.' The notes,
+however, to which are "still," as Dr. Dowson says, "instructive and
+amusing," and contain matter which, at the time they were written, was
+for the most part new.
+
+Of the 'Zoonomia' there is no occasion to speak here, as a sufficient
+number of extracts from those parts that concern us as bearing upon
+evolution will be given presently.
+
+On the 18th of April, 1802, Dr. Darwin had written "one page of a very
+sprightly letter to Mr. Edgeworth, describing the Priory and his
+purposed alterations there, when the fatal signal was given. He rang the
+bell and ordered the servant to send Mrs. Darwin to him. She came
+immediately, with his daughter, Miss Emma Darwin. They saw him shivering
+and pale. He desired them to send to Derby for his surgeon, Mr. Hadley.
+They did so, but all was over before he could arrive.
+
+"It was reported at Lichfield that, perceiving himself growing rapidly
+worse, he said to Mrs. Darwin, 'My dear, you must bleed me instantly.'
+'Alas! I dare not, lest--' 'Emma, will you? There is no time to be
+lost.' 'Yes, my dear father, if you will direct me.' At that moment he
+sank into his chair and expired."[154]
+
+Dr. Dowson gives the letter to Mr. Edgeworth, which is as follows:--
+
+     "Dear Edgeworth,
+
+     "I am glad to find that you still amuse yourself with mechanism, in
+     spite of the troubles of Ireland.
+
+     "The _use_ of turning aside or downwards the claw of a table, I
+     don't see; as it must then be reared against a wall, for it will
+     not stand alone. If the use be for carriage, the feet may shut up,
+     like the usual brass feet of a reflecting telescope.
+
+     "We have all been now removed from Derby about a fortnight, to the
+     Priory, and all of us like our change of situation. We have a
+     pleasant house, a good garden, ponds full of fish, and a pleasing
+     valley, somewhat like Shenstone's--deep, umbrageous, and with a
+     talkative stream running down it. Our house is near the top of the
+     valley, well screened by hills from the east and north, and open to
+     the south, where at four miles distance we see Derby tower.
+
+     "Four or more strong springs rise near the house, and have formed
+     the valley which, like that of Petrarch, may be called Val Chiusa,
+     as it begins, or is shut at the situation of the house. I hope you
+     like the description, and hope farther that yourself and any part
+     of your family will sometimes do us the pleasure of a visit.
+
+     "Pray tell the authoress" (Miss Maria Edgeworth) "that the
+     water-nymphs of our valley will be happy to assist her next novel.
+
+     "My bookseller, Mr. Johnson, will not begin to print the 'Temple of
+     Nature' till the price of paper is fixed by Parliament. I suppose
+     the present duty is paid...."
+
+At these words Dr. Darwin's pen stopped. What followed was written on
+the opposite side of the paper by another hand.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[137] 'Sketch, &c., of Erasmus Darwin,' pp. 3, 4.
+
+[138] Miss Seward's 'Memoirs of Dr. Darwin,' p. 3.
+
+[139] Ibid.
+
+[140] Dr. Dowson's 'Sketch of Dr. Erasmus Darwin,' p. 50.
+
+[141] Dr. Dowson's 'Sketch of Dr. Darwin,' p. 53.
+
+[142] Miss Seward's 'Memoirs,' &c., p. 6.
+
+[143] 'Memoirs,' &c., p. 14.
+
+[144] 'Memoirs,' &c., p. 21.
+
+[145] 'Memoirs,' &c., p. 62.
+
+[146] 'Memoirs,' &c., p. 68.
+
+[147] Miss Seward's 'Memoirs,' p. 69.
+
+[148] 'Memoirs,' &c., p. 84.
+
+[149] Ibid., p. 105.
+
+[150] 'Memoirs,' &c., p. 120.
+
+[151] 'Memoirs,' &c., p. 149.
+
+[152] 'Memoirs,' &c., p. 249.
+
+[153] 'Memoirs,' &c., p. 250.
+
+[154] 'Memoirs,' &c., p. 426.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+PHILOSOPHY OF DR. ERASMUS DARWIN.
+
+
+Considering the wide reputation enjoyed by Dr. Darwin at the beginning
+of this century, it is surprising how completely he has been lost sight
+of. The 'Botanic Garden' was translated into Portuguese in 1803; the
+'Loves of the Plants' into French and Italian in 1800 and 1805; while,
+as I have already said, the 'Zoonomia' had appeared some years earlier
+in Germany. Paley's 'Natural Theology' is written throughout at the
+'Zoonomia,' though he is careful, _more suo_, never to mention this work
+by name. Paley's success was probably one of the chief causes of the
+neglect into which the Buffonian and Darwinian systems fell in this
+country. Dr. Darwin is as reticent about teleology as Buffon, and
+presumably for the same reason, but the evidence in favour of design was
+too obvious; Paley, therefore, with his usual keen-sightedness seized
+upon this weak point, and had the battle all his own way, for Dr. Darwin
+died the same year as that in which the 'Natural Theology' appeared. The
+unfortunate failure to see that evolution involves design and purpose as
+necessarily and far more intelligibly than the theological view of
+creation, has retarded our perception of many important facts for
+three-quarters of a century.
+
+However this may be, Dr. Darwin's name has been but little before the
+public during the controversies of the last thirty years. Mr. Charles
+Darwin, indeed, in the "historical sketch" which he has prefixed to the
+later editions of his 'Origin of Species,' says, "It is curious how
+largely my grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, anticipated the views and
+erroneous grounds of opinion of Lamarck in his 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. pp.
+500-510, published in 1794."[155] And a few lines lower Mr. Darwin adds,
+"It is rather a singular instance of the manner in which similar views
+arise at about the same time, that Goethe in Germany, and Geoffroy St.
+Hilaire (as we shall immediately see) in France, came to the same
+conclusion on the 'Origin of Species' in the years 1794-1796."
+Acquaintance with Buffon's work will explain much of the singularity,
+while those who have any knowledge of the writings of Dr. Darwin and
+Étienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire will be aware that neither would admit the
+other as "coming to the same conclusion," or even nearly so, as himself.
+Dr. Darwin goes beyond his successor, Lamarck, while Étienne Geoffroy
+does not even go so far as Dr. Darwin's predecessor, Buffon, had thought
+fit to let himself be known as going. I have found no other reference to
+Dr. Darwin in the 'Origin of Species,' except the two just given from
+the same note. In the first edition I find no mention of him.
+
+The chief fault to be found with Dr. Darwin's treatise on evolution is
+that there is not enough of it; what there is, so far from being
+"erroneous," is admirable. But so great a subject should have had a book
+to itself, and not a mere fraction of a book. If his opponents, not
+venturing to dispute with him, passed over one book in silence, he
+should have followed it up with another, and another, and another, year
+by year, as Buffon and Lamarck did; it is only thus that men can expect
+to succeed against vested interests. Dr. Darwin could speak with a
+freedom that was denied to Buffon. He took Buffon at his word as well as
+he could, and carried out his principles to what he conceived to be
+their logical conclusion. This was doubtless what Buffon had desired and
+reckoned on, but, as I have said already, I question how far Dr. Darwin
+understood Buffon's humour; he does not present any of the phenomena of
+having done so, and therefore I am afraid he must be said to have missed
+it.
+
+Like Buffon, Dr. Darwin had no wish to see far beyond the obvious; he
+missed good things sometimes, but he gained more than he lost; he knew
+that it is always on the margin, as it were, of the self-evident that
+the greatest purchase against the nearest difficulty is obtainable. His
+life was not one of Herculean effort, but, like the lives of all those
+organisms that are most likely to develop and transmit a useful
+modification, it was one of well-sustained activity; it was a
+long-continued keeping open of the windows of his own mind, much after
+the advice he gave to the Nottingham weavers. Dr. Darwin knew, and, I
+imagine, quite instinctively, that nothing tends to oversight like
+overseeing. He does not trouble himself about the origin of life; as
+for the perceptions and reasoning faculties of animals and plants, it is
+enough for him that animals and plants do things which we say involve
+sensation and consciousness when we do them ourselves or see others do
+them. If, then, plants and animals appear as if they felt and
+understood, let the matter rest there, and let us say they feel and
+understand--being guided by the common use of language, rather than by
+any theories concerning brain and nervous system. If any young writer
+happens to be in want of a subject, I beg to suggest that he may find
+his opportunity in a 'Philosophy of the Superficial.'
+
+Though Dr. Darwin was more deeply impressed than Buffon with the oneness
+of personality between parents and offspring, so that these latter are
+not "new" creatures, but "elongations of the parents," and hence "may
+retain some of the habits of the parent system," he did not go on to
+infer definitely all that he might easily have inferred from such a
+pregnant premiss. He did not refer the repetition by offspring, of
+actions which their parents have done for many generations, but which
+they can never have seen those parents do, to the memory (in the strict
+sense of the word) of their having done those actions when they were in
+the persons of their parents; which memory, though dormant until
+awakened by the presence of associated ideas, becomes promptly kindled
+into activity when a sufficient number of these ideas are reproduced.
+
+This, I gather, is the theory put forward by Professor Hering, of whose
+work, however, I know no more than is told us by Professor Ray
+Lankester in an article which, appeared in 'Nature,' July 13th, 1876.
+This theory seems to be adopted by Professor Haeckel, and to receive
+support from Professor Ray Lankester himself. Knowing no German, I have
+been unable to make myself acquainted with Professor Hering's position
+in detail, but its similarity to, if not identity with, that taken by
+myself subsequently, but independently, in 'Life and Habit,' seems
+sufficiently established by the following extracts; it is to be wished,
+however, that a full account of this lecture were accessible to English
+readers. The extracts are as follows:--
+
+"Professor Hering has the merit of introducing some striking phraseology
+into his treatment of the subject which serves to emphasize the leading
+idea. He points out that since all transmission of 'qualities' from cell
+to cell in the growth and repair of one and the same organ, or from
+parent to offspring, is a transmission of vibrations or affections of
+material particles, whether these qualities manifest themselves as form,
+or as a facility for entering on a given series of vibrations, we may
+speak of all such phenomena as 'memory,' whether it be the conscious
+memory exhibited by the nerve cells of the brain or the unconscious
+memory we call habit, or the inherited memory we call instinct; or
+whether, again, it be the reproduction of parental form and minute
+structure. All equally may be called the 'memory of living matter.' From
+the earliest existence of protoplasm to the present day the memory of
+living matter is continuous. Though individuals die, the universal
+memory of living matter is carried on.
+
+"Professor Hering, in short, helps us to a comprehensive conception of
+the nature of heredity and adaptation, by giving us the term 'memory'
+conscious or unconscious, for the continuity of Mr. Herbert Spencer's
+polar forces, or polarities of physiological units.
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"The undulatory movement of the plastidules is the key to the mechanical
+explanation of all the essential phenomena of life. The plastidules are
+liable to have their undulations affected by every external force, and,
+once modified, the movement does not return to its pristine condition.
+By assimilation they continually increase to a certain point in size,
+and then divide, and thus perpetuate in the undulatory movement of
+successive generations, the impressions or resultants due to the action
+of external agencies on individual plastidules. This is Memory. All
+plastidules possess memory; and Memory which we see in its ultimate
+analysis is identical with reproduction, is the distinguishing feature
+of the plastidule; is that which it alone of all molecules possesses, in
+addition to the ordinary properties of the physicist's molecule; is, in
+fact, that which distinguishes it as vital. To the sensitiveness of the
+movement of plastidules is due Variability--to their unconscious Memory
+the power of Hereditary Transmission. As we know them to-day they may
+'have learnt little, and forgotten nothing' in one organism, and 'have
+learnt much, and forgotten much' in another; but in all, their memory if
+sometimes fragmentary, yet reaches back to the dawn of life upon the
+earth.--E. Ray Lankester."
+
+Nothing can well be plainer and more uncompromising than the above.
+Professor Hering would, I gather, no less than myself, refer the
+building of its nest by a bird to the intense--but unconscious, owing to
+its very perfection and intensity--recollection by the bird of the nests
+it built when it was in the persons of its ancestors; this memory would
+begin to stimulate action when the surrounding associations, such as
+temperature, state of vegetation, &c., reminded it of the time when it
+had been in the habit of beginning to build in countless past
+generations. Dr. Darwin does not go so far as this. He says that wild
+birds choose spring as their building time "from their _acquired_
+knowledge that the mild temperature of the air is more convenient for
+hatching their eggs," and a little lower down he speaks of the fact that
+graminivorous animals generally produce their young in spring, as "part
+of the traditional knowledge which they learn _from the example_ of
+their parents."[156]
+
+Again he says, that birds "seem to be instructed how to build their
+nests _from their observation_ of that in which they were educated, and
+from their knowledge of those things that are most agreeable to their
+touch in respect to warmth, cleanliness, and stability."
+
+Had Dr. Darwin laid firmly hold of two superficial facts concerning
+memory which we can all of us test for ourselves--I mean its dormancy
+until kindled by the return of a sufficient number of associated ideas,
+and its unselfconsciousness upon becoming intense and perfect--and had
+he connected these two facts with the unity of life through successive
+generations--an idea which plainly haunted him--he would have been
+saved from having to refer instinct to imitation, in the face of the
+fact that in a thousand instances the creature imitating can never have
+seen its model, save when it was a part of its parents,--seeing what
+they saw, doing what they did, feeling as they felt, and remembering
+what they remembered.
+
+Miss Seward tells us that Dr. Darwin read his chapter on instinct "to a
+lady who was in the habit of rearing canary birds. She observed that the
+pair which he then saw building their nest in her cage, were a male and
+female, who had been hatched and reared in that very _cage_, and were
+not in existence when the mossy cradle was fabricated in which _they_
+first saw light." She asked him, and quite reasonably, "how, upon his
+principle of imitation, he could account for the nest he then saw
+building, being constructed even to the precise disposal of every hair
+and shred of wool upon the model of _that_ in which the pair were born,
+and on which every other canary bird's nest is constructed, when the
+proper materials are furnished. That of the pyefinch," she added, "is of
+much compacter form, warmer, and more comfortable. Pull one of these
+nests to pieces for its materials; and place another nest before these
+canary birds as a pattern, and see if they will make the slightest
+attempt to imitate their model! No, the result of their labour will,
+upon instinctive hereditary impulse, be exactly the slovenly little
+mansion of their race, the same with that which their parents built
+before themselves were hatched. The Doctor could not do away the force
+of that single fact, with which his system was incompatible, yet he
+maintained that system with philosophic sturdiness, though experience
+brought confutation from a thousand sources."[157]
+
+As commonly happens in such disputes, both were right and both were
+wrong. The lady was right in refusing to refer instinct to imitation,
+and the Doctor was right in maintaining reason and instinct to be but
+different degrees of perfection of the same mental processes. Had he
+substituted "memory" for "imitation," and asked the lady to define
+"sameness" or "personal identity," he would have soon secured his
+victory.
+
+The main fact, compared with which all else is a matter of detail, is
+the admission that instinct is only reason become habitual. This
+admission involves, consciously or unconsciously, the admission of all
+the principles contended for in 'Life and Habit'; principles which, if
+admitted, make the facts of heredity intelligible by showing that they
+are of the same character as other facts which we call intelligible, but
+denial of which makes nonsense of half the terms in common use
+concerning it. For the view that instinct is habitual reason involves
+sameness of personality and memory as common to parents and offspring;
+it involves also the latency of that memory till rekindled by the return
+of a sufficient number of its associated ideas, and points the
+unconsciousness with which habitual actions are performed. These
+principles being grasped, the infertility _inter se_ of widely distant
+species, the commonly observed sterility of hybrids, the sterility of
+certain animals and plants under confinement, the phenomena of old age
+as well as those of growth, and the principle which underlies longevity
+and alternate generations, follow logically and coherently, as I showed
+in 'Life and Habit.' Moreover, we find that the terms in common use show
+an unconscious sense that some such view as I have insisted on was
+wanted and would come, for we find them made and to hand already; few if
+any will require altering; all that is necessary is to take common words
+according to their common meanings.
+
+Dr. Darwin is very good on this head. Here, as everywhere throughout his
+work, if things or qualities appear to resemble one another sufficiently
+and without such traits of unlikeness, on closer inspection, as shall
+destroy the likeness which was apparent at first, he connects them, all
+theories notwithstanding. I have given two instances of his manner of
+looking at instinct and reason.[158] "If these are not," he concludes,
+"deductions _from their own previous experience, or observation_, all
+the actions of mankind must be resolved into instincts."[159]
+
+If by "previous experience" we could be sure that Dr. Darwin
+persistently meant "previous experience in the persons of their
+ancestors," he would be in an impregnable position. As it is, we feel
+that though he had caught sight of the truth, and had even held it in
+his hands, yet somehow or other it just managed to slip through his
+fingers.
+
+Again he writes:--
+
+"So flies burn themselves in candles, deceived like mankind by the
+misapplication of their knowledge."
+
+Again:--
+
+"An ingenious philosopher has lately denied that animals can enter into
+contracts, and thinks this an essential difference between them and the
+human creature: but does not daily observation convince us that they
+form contracts of friendship with each other and with mankind? When
+puppies and kittens play together is there not a tacit contract that
+they will not hurt each other? And does not your favourite dog expect
+you should give him his daily food for his services and attention to
+you? And thus barters his love for your protection? In the same manner
+that all contracts are made among men that do not understand each
+other's arbitrary language."[160]
+
+One more extract from a chapter full of excellent passages must suffice.
+
+"One circumstance I shall relate which fell under my own eye, and showed
+the power of reason in a wasp, as it is exercised among men. A wasp on a
+gravel walk had caught a fly nearly as large as himself; kneeling on the
+ground, I observed him separate the tail and the head from the body
+part, to which the wings were attached. He then took the body part in
+his paws, and rose about two feet from the ground with it; but a gentle
+breeze wafting the wings of the fly turned him round in the air, and he
+settled again with his prey upon the gravel. I then distinctly observed
+him cut off with his mouth first one of the wings and then the other,
+after which he flew away with it, unmolested by the wind.
+
+"Go, proud reasoner, and call the worm thy sister!"[161]
+
+Dr. Darwin's views on the essential unity of animal and vegetable life
+are put forward in the following admirable chapter on "Vegetable
+Animation," which I will give in full, and which is confirmed in all
+important respects by the latest conclusions of our best modern
+scientists, so, at least, I gather from Mr. Francis Darwin's interesting
+lecture.[162]
+
+"I. 1. The fibres of the vegetable world, as well as those of the
+animal, are excitable into a variety of motion by irritations of
+external objects. This appears particularly in the mimosa or sensitive
+plant, whose leaves contract on the slightest injury: the _Dionæa
+muscipula_, which was lately brought over from the marshes of America,
+presents us with another curious instance of vegetable irritability; its
+leaves are armed with spines on their upper edge, and are spread on the
+ground around the stem; when an insect creeps on any of them in its
+passage to the flower or seed, the leaf shuts up like a steel rat-trap,
+and destroys its enemy.[163]
+
+"The various secretions of vegetables as of odour, fruit, gum, resin,
+wax, honey, seem brought about in the same manner as in the glands of
+animals; the tasteless moisture of the earth is converted by the hop
+plant into a bitter juice; as by the caterpillar in the nutshell, the
+sweet powder is converted into a bitter powder. While the power of
+absorption in the roots and barks of vegetables is excited into action
+by the fluids applied to their mouths like the lacteals and lymphatics
+of animals.
+
+"2. The individuals of the vegetable world may be considered as inferior
+or less perfect animals; a tree is a congeries of many living buds, and
+in this respect resembles the branches of the coralline, which are a
+congeries of a multitude of animals. Each of these buds of a tree has
+its proper leaves or petals for lungs, produces its viviparous or its
+oviparous offspring in buds or seeds; has its own roots, which,
+extending down the stem of the tree, are interwoven with the roots of
+the other buds, and form the bark, which is the only living part of the
+stem, is annually renewed and is superinduced upon the former bark,
+which then dies, and, with its stagnated juices gradually hardening into
+wood, forms the concentric circles which we see in blocks of timber.
+
+"The following circumstances evince the individuality of the buds of
+trees. First, there are many trees whose whole internal wood is
+perished, and yet the branches are vegete and healthy. Secondly, the
+fibres of the bark of trees are chiefly longitudinal, resembling roots,
+as is beautifully seen in those prepared barks that were lately brought
+from Otaheita. Thirdly, in horizontal wounds of the bark of trees, the
+fibres of the upper lip are always elongated downwards like roots, but
+those of the lower lip do not approach to meet them. Fourthly, if you
+wrap wet moss round any joint of a vine, or cover it with moist earth,
+roots will shoot out from it. Fifthly, by the inoculation or engrafting
+of trees many fruits are produced from one stem. Sixthly, a new tree is
+produced from a branch plucked from an old one and set in the ground.
+Whence it appears that the buds of deciduous trees are so many annual
+plants, that the bark is a contexture of the roots of each individual
+bud, and that the internal wood is of no other use but to support them
+in the air, and that thus they resemble the animal world in their
+individuality.
+
+"The irritability of plants, like that of animals, appears liable to be
+increased or decreased by habit; for those trees or shrubs which are
+brought from a colder climate to a warmer, put out their leaves and
+blossoms a fortnight sooner than the indigenous ones.
+
+"Professor Kalm, in his travels in New York, observes that the apple
+trees brought from England blossom a fortnight sooner than the native
+ones. In our country, the shrubs that are brought a degree or two from
+the north are observed to flourish better than those which come from the
+south. The Siberian barley and cabbage are said to grow larger in this
+climate than the similar more southern vegetables; and our hoards of
+roots, as of potatoes and onions, germinate with less heat in spring,
+after they have been accustomed to the winter's cold, than in autumn,
+after the summer's heat.
+
+"II. The stamens and pistils of flowers show evident marks of
+sensibility, not only from many of the stamens and some pistils
+approaching towards each other at the season of impregnation, but from
+many of them closing their petals and calyxes during the cold part of
+the day. For this cannot be ascribed to irritation, because cold means
+a defect of the stimulus of heat; but as the want of accustomed stimuli
+produces pain, as in coldness, hunger, and thirst of animals, these
+motions of vegetables in closing up their flowers must be ascribed to
+the disagreeable sensation, and not to the irritation of cold. Others
+close up their leaves during darkness, which, like the former, cannot be
+owing to irritation, as the irritating material is withdrawn.
+
+"The approach of the anthers in many flowers to the stigmas, and of the
+pistils of some flowers to the anthers, must be ascribed to the passion
+of love, and hence belongs to sensation, not to irritation.
+
+"III. That the vegetable world possesses some degree of voluntary powers
+appears from their necessity to sleep, which we have shown in Section
+XVIII. to consist in the temporary abolition of voluntary power. This
+voluntary power seems to be exerted in the circular movement of the
+tendrils of the vines, and other climbing vegetables; or in the efforts
+to turn the upper surfaces of their leaves, or their flowers, to the
+light.
+
+"IV. The associations of fibrous motions are observable in the vegetable
+world as well as in the animal. The divisions of the leaves of the
+sensitive plant have been accustomed to contract at the same time from
+the absence of light; hence, if by any other circumstance, as a slight
+stroke or injury, one division is irritated into contraction, the
+neighbouring ones contract also from their motions being associated with
+those of the irritated part. So the various stamina of the class of
+syngenesia have been accustomed to contract together in the evening, and
+thence if you stimulate any one of them with a pin, according to the
+experiment of M. Colvolo, they all contract from their acquired
+associations.
+
+"To evince that the collapsing of the sensitive plant is not owing to
+any mechanical vibrations propagated along the whole branch when a
+single leaf is struck with the finger, a leaf of it was slit with sharp
+scissors, with as little disturbance as possible, and some seconds of
+time passed before the plant seemed sensible of the injury, and then the
+whole branch collapsed as far as the principal stem. This experiment was
+repeated several times with the least possible impulse to the plant.
+
+"V. 1. For the numerous circumstances in which vegetable buds are
+analogous to animals, the reader is referred to the additional notes at
+the end of 'Botanic Garden,' Part I. It is there shown that the roots of
+vegetables resemble the lacteal system of animals; the sap vessels in
+the early spring, before their leaves expand, are analogous to the
+placental vessels of the foetus; that the leaves of land plants
+resemble lungs, and those of aquatic plants the gills of fish; that
+there are other systems of vessels resembling the vena portarum of
+quadrupeds, or the aorta of fish; that the digestive power of vegetables
+is similar to that of animals converting the fluids which they absorb
+into sugar;[164] that their seeds resemble the eggs of animals, and
+their buds and bulbs their viviparous offspring; and lastly, that the
+anthers and stigmas are real animals attached to their parent tree like
+polypi or coral insects, but capable of spontaneous motion; that they
+are affected with the passion of love, and furnished with powers of
+reproducing their species, and are fed with honey like the moths and
+butterflies which plunder their nectaries.[165]
+
+"The male flowers of Vallisneria approach still nearer to apparent
+animality, as they detach themselves from the parent plant, and float on
+the surface of the water to the female ones.[166] Other flowers of the
+classes of monoecia and dioecia, and polygamia discharge the
+fecundating farina, which, floating in the air, is carried to the stigma
+of the female flowers, and that at considerable distances. Can this be
+effected by any specific attraction? Or, like the diffusion of the
+odorous particles of flowers, is it left to the currents of the winds,
+and the accidental miscarriages of it counteracted by the quantity of
+its production?
+
+"2. This leads us to a curious inquiry, whether vegetables have ideas of
+external things? As all our ideas are originally received by our senses,
+the question may be changed to whether vegetables possess any organs of
+sense? Certain it is that they possess a sense of heat and cold, another
+of moisture and dryness, and another of light and darkness, for they
+close their petals occasionally from the presence of cold, moisture, or
+darkness. And it has been already shown that these actions cannot be
+performed simply from irritation, because cold and darkness are negative
+quantities, and on that account sensation, or volition are implied, and
+in consequence a sensorium or union of their nerves. So when we go into
+the light we contract the iris; not from any stimulus of the light on
+the fine muscles of the iris, but from its motions being associated with
+the sensation of too much light upon the retina, which could not take
+place without a sensorium or centre of union of the nerves of the iris,
+with those of vision.[167]
+
+"Besides these organs of sense, which distinguish cold, moisture, and
+darkness, the leaves of mimosa, and of dionæa, and of drosera, and the
+stamens of many flowers, as of the berbery, and the numerous class of
+syngenesia, are sensible to mechanic impact, that is, they possess a
+sense of touch, as well as a common sensorium, by the medium of which
+their muscles are excited into action. Lastly, in many flowers the
+anthers, when mature, approach the stigma, in others the female organ
+approaches to the male. In a plant of collinsonia, a branch of which is
+now before me, the two yellow stamens are about three-eighths of an inch
+high, and diverge from each other at an angle of about fifteen degrees,
+the purple style is half an inch high, and in some flowers is now
+applied to the stamen on the right hand, and in others to that of the
+left; and will, I suppose, change place to-morrow in those, where the
+anthers have not yet effused their powder.
+
+"I ask by what means are the anthers in many flowers and stigmas in
+other flowers directed to find their paramours? How do either of them
+know that the other exists in their vicinity? Is this curious kind of
+storge produced by mechanic attraction, or by the sensation of love? The
+latter opinion is supported by the strongest analogy, because a
+reproduction of the species is the consequence; and then another organ
+of sense must be wanted to direct these vegetable amourettes to find
+each other, one probably analogous to our sense of smell, which in the
+animal world directs the new-born infant to its source of nourishment,
+and they may thus possess a faculty of perceiving as well as of
+producing odours.
+
+"Thus, besides a kind of taste at the extremity of their roots, similar
+to that of the extremities of our lacteal vessels, for the purpose of
+selecting their proper food, and besides different kinds of irritability
+residing in the various glands, which separate honey, wax, resin, and
+other juices from their blood; vegetable life seems to possess an organ
+of sense to distinguish the variations of heat, another to distinguish
+the varying degrees of moisture, another of light, another of touch, and
+probably another analogous to our sense of smell. To these must be added
+the indubitable evidence of their passion of love, and I think we may
+truly conclude that they are furnished with a common sensorium for each
+bud, and that they must occasionally repeat those perceptions, either in
+their dreams or waking hours, and consequently possess ideas of so many
+of the properties of the external world, and of their own
+existence."[168]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[155] 'Origin of Species,' note on p. xiv.
+
+[156] 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 170.
+
+[157] Miss Seward's 'Memoirs,' &c., p. 491.
+
+[158] See p. 116 of this volume.
+
+[159] 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 184.
+
+[160] 'Zoonomia,' p. 171.
+
+[161] 'Zoonomia,' p. 187.
+
+[162] 'Nature,' March 14 and 21, 1878.
+
+[163] See 'Botanic Garden,' part ii., note on Silene.
+
+[164] 'On the Digestive Powers of Plants.' See Mr. Francis Darwin's
+lecture, already referred to.
+
+[165] See 'Botanic Garden, part i., add. note, p. xxxix.
+
+[166] Ibid., part ii., art. "Vallisneria."
+
+[167] See 'Botanic Garden,' part i. cant 3, l. 440.
+
+[168] 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 107.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+FULLER QUOTATIONS FROM THE 'ZOONOMIA.'
+
+
+The following are the passages in the 'Zoonomia' which have the most
+important bearing on evolution:--
+
+"The ingenious Dr. Hartley, in his work on man, and some other
+philosophers have been of opinion, that our immortal part acquires
+during this life certain habits of action or of sentiment which become
+for ever indissoluble, continuing after death in a future state of
+existence; and add that if these habits are of the malevolent kind, they
+must render their possessor miserable even in Heaven. I would apply this
+ingenious idea to the generation or production of the embryon or new
+animal, which partakes so much of the form and propensities of its
+parent.
+
+"_Owing to the imperfection of language the offspring is termed a new
+animal, but is in truth a branch or elongation of the parent, since a
+part of the embryon-animal is, or was, a part of the parent, and
+therefore in strict language, cannot be said to be entirely new at the
+time of its production; and, therefore, it may retain some of the habits
+of the parent system._
+
+"At the earliest period of its existence the embryon would seem to
+consist of a living filament with certain capabilities of irritation,
+sensation, volition, and association, and also with some acquired
+habits or propensities peculiar to the parents; the former of these are
+in common with other animals; the latter seem to distinguish or produce
+the kind of animal, whether man or quadruped, with the similarity of
+feature or form to the parent."[169]
+
+     *     *     *     *     *
+
+Going on to describe the gradual development of the embryo, Dr. Darwin
+continues:--
+
+"As the want of this oxygenation of the blood is perpetual (as appears
+from the incessant necessity of breathing by lungs or gills), the
+vessels become extended by the efforts of pain or desire to seek this
+necessary object of oxygenation, and to remove the disagreeable
+sensations which this want occasions."[170]
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"The lateral production of plants by wires, while each new plant is thus
+chained to its parent, and continues to put forth another and another as
+the wire creeps onward on the ground, is exactly resembled by the
+tape-worm or tænia, so often found in the bowels, stretching itself in a
+chain quite from the stomach to the rectum. Linnæus asserts 'that it
+grows old at one extremity, while it continues to generate younger ones
+at the other, proceeding _ad infinitum_ like a sort of grass; the
+separate joints are called gourd worms, and propagate new joints like
+the parent without end, each joint being furnished with its proper mouth
+and organs of digestion.'"[171]
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"Many ingenious philosophers have found so great difficulty in
+conceiving the manner of the reproduction of animals, that they have
+supposed all the numerous progeny to have existed in miniature in the
+animal originally created; and that these infinitely minute forms are
+only evolved or distended, as the embryon increases in the womb. This
+idea, besides its being unsupported by any analogy we are acquainted
+with, ascribes a greater tenuity to organized matter than we can readily
+admit; as these included embryons are supposed each of them to consist
+of the various and complicate parts of animal bodies, they must possess
+a much greater degree of minuteness than that which was ascribed to the
+devils which tempted St. Anthony, of whom 20,000 were said to have been
+able to dance a saraband on the point of the finest needle without
+incommoding one another."[172]
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"I conceive the primordium or rudiment of the embryon as secreted from
+the blood of the parent to consist of a simple living filament as a
+muscular fibre; which I suppose to be an extremity of a nerve of
+locomotion, as a fibre of the retina is an extremity of a nerve of
+sensation; as, for instance, one of the fibrils which compose the mouth
+of an absorbent vessel. I suppose this living filament of whatever form
+it may be, whether sphere, cube, or cylinder, to be endued with the
+capability of being excited into action by certain kinds of stimulus. By
+the stimulus of the surrounding fluid in which it is received from the
+male it may bend into a ring, and thus form the beginning of a tube.
+Such moving filaments and such rings are described by those who have
+attended to microscopic animalculæ. This living ring may now embrace or
+absorb a nutritive particle of the fluid in which it swims; and by
+drawing it into its pores, or joining it by compression to its
+extremities, may increase its own length or crassitude, and by degrees
+the living ring may become a living tube.
+
+"With this new organization, or accretion of parts, new kinds of
+irritability may commence; for so long as there was but one living organ
+it could only be supposed to possess irritability; since sensibility may
+be conceived to be an extension of the effect of irritability over the
+rest of the system. These new kinds of irritability and of sensibility
+in consequence of new organization appear from variety of facts in the
+more mature animals; thus ... the lungs must be previously formed before
+their exertions to obtain fresh air can exist; the throat, or
+oesophagus, must be formed previous to the sensation or appetites of
+hunger and thirst, one of which seems to reside at the upper end and the
+other at the lower end of that canal."[173]
+
+It seems to me Dr. Darwin is wrong in supposing that the organ must have
+preceded the power to use it. The organ and its use--the desire to do
+and the power to do--have always gone hand in hand, the organism finding
+itself able to do more according as it advanced its desires, and
+desiring to do more simultaneously with any increase in power, so that
+neither appetency nor organism can claim precedence, but power and
+desire must be considered as Siamese twins begotten together, conceived
+together, born together, and inseparable always from each other. At the
+same time they are torn by mutual jealousy; each claims, with some vain
+show of reason, to have been the elder brother; each intrigues
+incessantly from the beginning to the end of time to prevent the other
+from outstripping him; each is in turn successful, but each is doomed to
+death with the extinction of the other.
+
+"So inflamed tendons and membranes, and even bones, acquire new
+sensations; and the parts of mutilated animals, as of wounded snails and
+polypi and crabs, are reproduced; and at the same time acquire
+sensations adapted to their situation. Thus when the head of a snail is
+reproduced after decollation with a sharp razor, those curious
+telescopic eyes are also reproduced, and acquire their sensibility to
+light, as well as their adapted muscles for retraction on the approach
+of injury.
+
+"With every change, therefore, of organic form or addition of organic
+parts, I suppose a new kind of irritability or of sensibility to be
+produced; such varieties of irritability or of sensibility exist in our
+adult state in the glands; every one of which is furnished with an
+irritability or a taste or appetency, and a consequent mode of action
+peculiar to itself.
+
+"In this manner I conceive the vessels of the jaws to produce those of
+the teeth; those of the fingers to produce the nails; those of the skin
+to produce the hair; in the same manner as afterwards, about the age of
+puberty, the beard and other great changes in the form of the body and
+disposition of the mind are produced in consequence of new developments;
+for, if the animal is deprived of these developments, those changes do
+not take place. These changes I believe to be formed not by elongation
+or distension of primeval stamina, but by apposition of parts; as the
+mature crab fish when deprived of a limb, in a certain space of time,
+has power to regenerate it; and the tadpole puts forth its feet after
+its long exclusion from the spawn, and the caterpillar in changing into
+a butterfly acquires a new form with new powers, new sensations, and new
+desires."[174]
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"From hence I conclude that with the acquisition of new parts, new
+sensations and new desires, as well as new powers are produced; and this
+by accretion to the old ones and not by distension of them. And finally,
+that the most essential parts of the system, as the brain for the
+purpose of distributing the powers of life, and the placenta for the
+purpose of oxygenating the blood, and the additional absorbent vessels,
+for the purpose of acquiring aliment, are first formed by the
+irritations above mentioned, and by the pleasurable sensations attending
+those irritations, and by the exertions in consequence of painful
+sensations similar to those of hunger and suffocation. After these an
+apparatus of limbs for future uses, or for the purpose of moving the
+body in its present natant state, and of lungs for future respiration,
+and of _testes_ for future reproduction, are formed by the irritations
+and sensations and consequent exertions of the parts previously
+existing, and to which the new parts are to be attached.[175]
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"The embryon" must "be supposed to be a living filament, which acquires
+or makes new parts, with new irritabilities as it advances in its
+growth."[176]
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"From this account of reproduction it appears that all animals have a
+similar origin, viz. a single living filament; and that the difference
+of their forms and qualities has arisen only from the different
+irritabilities and sensibilities, or voluntarities, or associabilities,
+of this original living filament, and perhaps in some degree from the
+different forms of the particles of the fluids by which it has at first
+been stimulated into activity."[177]
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"All animals, therefore, I contend, have a similar cause of their
+organization, originating from a single living filament, endued with
+different kinds of irritabilities and sensibilities, or of animal
+appetencies, which exist in every gland, and in every moving organ of
+the body, and are as essential to living organism as chemical affinities
+are to certain combinations of inanimate matter.
+
+"If I might be indulged to make a simile in a philosophical work, I
+should say that the animal appetencies are not only perhaps less
+numerous originally than the chemical affinities, but that, like these
+latter, they change with every fresh combination; thus vital air and
+azote, when combined, produce nitrous acid, which now acquires the
+property of dissolving silver; so that with every new additional part to
+the embryon, as of the throat or lungs, I suppose a new animal appetency
+to be produced."[178]
+
+     *     *     *     *     *
+
+Here, again, it should be insisted on that neither can the "additional
+part" precede "the appetency," nor the appetency precede the additional
+part for long together--the two advance nearly _pari passu_; sometimes
+the power a little ahead of the desire, stimulates the desire to an
+activity it would not otherwise have known; as those who have more money
+than they once had, feel new wants which they would not have known if
+they had not obtained the power to gratify them; sometimes, on the other
+hand, the desire is a little more active than the power, and pulls the
+power up to itself by means of the effort made to gratify the desire--as
+those who want a little more of this or that than they have money to pay
+for, will try all manner of shifts to earn the additional money they
+want, unless it is so much in excess of their present means that they
+give up the endeavour as hopeless; but whichever gets ahead, immediately
+sets to work to pull the other level with it, the getting ahead either
+of power or desire being exclusively the work of external agencies,
+while the coming up level of the other is due to agencies that are
+incorporate with the organism itself. Thus an unusually abundant supply
+of food, due to causes entirely beyond the control of the individual, is
+an external agency; it will immediately set power a little ahead of
+desire. On this the individual will eat as much as it can--thus learning
+_pro tanto_ to be able to eat more, and to want more under ordinary
+circumstances--and will also breed rapidly up to the balance of the
+abundance. This is the work of the agencies incorporate in the organism,
+and will bring desire level with power again. Famine, on the other hand,
+puts desire ahead of power, and the incorporate agencies must either
+bring power up by resource and invention, or must pull desire back by
+eating less, both as individuals, and as the race, that is to say, by
+breeding less freely; for breeding is an assimilation of outside matter
+so closely akin to feeding, that it is only the feeding of the race, as
+against that of the individual.
+
+I do not think the reader will find any clearer manner of picturing to
+himself the development of organism than by keeping the normal growth of
+wealth continually in his mind. He will find few of the phenomena of
+organic development which have not their counterpart in the acquisition
+of wealth. Thus a too sudden acquisition, owing to accidental and
+external circumstances and due to no internal source of energy, will be
+commonly lost in the next few generations. So a sudden sport due to a
+lucky accident of soil will not generally be perpetuated if the
+offspring plant be restored to its normal soil. Again, if the advance in
+power carry power suddenly far beyond any past desire, or be far greater
+than any past-remembered advance of power beyond desire--then desire
+will not come up level easily, but only with difficulty and all manner
+of extravagance, such as is likely to destroy the power itself. Demand
+and Supply are also good illustrations.
+
+But to return to Dr. Darwin.
+
+"When we revolve in our minds," he writes, "first the great changes
+which we see naturally produced in animals after their nativity, as in
+the production of the butterfly with painted wings from the crawling
+caterpillar; or of the respiring frog from the subnatant tadpole; from
+the boy to the bearded man, from the infant girl to the woman,--in both
+which cases mutilation will prevent due development.
+
+"Secondly, when we think over the great changes introduced into various
+animals by artificial or accidental cultivation, as in horses, which we
+have exercised for the different purposes of strength or swiftness, in
+carrying burthens or in running races, or in dogs which have been
+cultivated for strength and courage, as the bull-dog; or for acuteness
+of his sense of smell, as the hound or spaniel; or for the swiftness of
+his foot, as the greyhound; or for his swimming in the water or for
+drawing snow sledges, as the rough-haired dogs of the north; or, lastly,
+as a play dog for children, as the lapdog; with the changes of the forms
+of the cattle which have been domesticated from the greatest antiquity,
+as camels and sheep, which have undergone so total a transformation that
+we are now ignorant from what species of wild animal they had their
+origin. Add to these the great changes of shape and colour which we
+daily see produced in smaller animals from our domestication of them, as
+rabbits or pigeons, or from the difference of climates and even of
+seasons; thus the sheep of warm climates are covered with hair instead
+of wool; and the hares and partridges of the latitudes which are long
+buried in snow become white during the winter months; add to these the
+various changes produced in the forms of mankind by their early modes of
+exertion, or by the diseases occasioned by their habits of life, both of
+which become hereditary, and that through many generations. Those who
+labour at the anvil, the oar, or the loom, as well as those who carry
+sedan chairs or who have been educated to dance upon the rope, are
+distinguishable by the shape of their limbs; and the diseases occasioned
+by intoxication deform the countenance with leprous eruptions, or the
+body with tumid viscera, or the joints with knots and distortions.
+
+"Thirdly, when we enumerate the great changes produced in the species of
+animals before their nativity, as, for example, when the offspring
+reproduces the effects produced upon the parent by accident or
+cultivation; or the changes produced by the mixture of species, as in
+mules; or the changes produced probably by the exuberance of nourishment
+supplied to the fetus, as in monstrous births with additional limbs;
+many of these enormities of shape are propagated and continued as a
+variety at least, if not as a new species of animal. I have seen a breed
+of cats with an additional claw on every foot; of poultry also with an
+additional claw, and with wings to their feet; and of others without
+rumps. Mr. Buffon mentions a breed of dogs without tails which are
+common at Rome and Naples--which he supposes to have been produced by a
+custom long established of cutting their tails close off. There are many
+kinds of pigeons admired for their peculiarities which are more or less
+thus produced and propagated.[179]
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"When we consider all these changes of animal form and innumerable
+others which may be collected from the books of natural history, we
+cannot but be convinced that the fetus or embryon is formed by
+apposition of new parts, and not by the distention of a primordial nest
+of germs included one within another like the cups of a conjurer.
+
+"Fourthly, when we revolve in our minds the great similarity of
+structure which obtains in all the warm-blooded animals, as well
+quadrupeds, birds, and amphibious animals, as in mankind; from the mouse
+and bat to the elephant and whale; one is led to conclude that they have
+alike been produced from a similar living filament. In some this
+filament in its advance to maturity has acquired hands and fingers with
+a fine sense of touch, as in mankind. In others it has acquired claws or
+talons, as in tigers and eagles. In others, toes with an intervening web
+or membrane, as in seals and geese. In others it has acquired cloven
+hoofs, as in cows and swine; and whole hoofs in others, as in the horse:
+while in the bird kind this original living filament has put forth wings
+instead of arms or legs, and feathers instead of hair. In some it has
+protruded horns on the forehead instead of teeth in the fore part of the
+upper jaw; in others, tusks instead of horns; and in the others, beaks
+instead of either. And all this exactly as is seen daily in the
+transmutation of the tadpole, which acquires legs and lungs when he
+wants them, and loses his tail when it is no longer of service to him.
+
+"Fifthly, from their first rudiment or primordium to the termination of
+their lives, all animals undergo perpetual transformations; _which are
+in part produced by their own exertions in consequence of their desires
+and aversions, of their pleasures and their pains, or of irritations or
+of associations; and many of these acquired forms or propensities are
+transmitted to their posterity_.
+
+"As air and water are supplied to animals in sufficient profusion, the
+three great objects of desire which have changed the forms of many
+animals by their desires to gratify them are those of lust, hunger, and
+security. A great want of one part of the animal world has consisted in
+the desire of the exclusive possession of the females; and these have
+acquired weapons to combat each other for this purpose, as the very
+thick, shield-like, horny skin on the shoulder of the boar is a defence
+only against animals of his own species who strike obliquely upwards,
+nor are his tusks for other purposes except to defend himself, as he is
+not naturally a carnivorous animal. So the horns of the stag are sharp
+to offend his adversary, but are branched for the purpose of parrying or
+receiving the thrust of horns similar to his own, and have therefore
+been formed for the purpose of combating other stags, for the exclusive
+possession of the females; who are observed like the ladies in the times
+of chivalry to attend the car of the victor.
+
+"The birds which do not carry food to their young, and do not therefore
+marry, are armed with spurs for the purpose of fighting for the
+exclusive possession of the females, as cocks and quails. It is certain
+that these weapons are not provided for their defence against other
+adversaries, because the females of these species are without this
+armour. The final cause of this contest among the males seems to be
+_that the strongest and most active animal should propagate the species,
+which should thence become improved_."[180]
+
+Dr. Darwin would have been on stronger ground if he had said that the
+_effect_ of the contest among the males was that the fittest should
+survive, and hence transmit any fit modifications which had occurred to
+them as vitally true, rather than that the desire to attain this end had
+caused the contest; but either way the sentence just given is sufficient
+to show that he was not blind to the fact that the fittest commonly
+survive, and to the consequences of this fact. The use, however, of the
+word "thence," as well as of the expression "final cause," is loose, as
+Dr. Darwin would no doubt readily have admitted. Improvement in the
+species is due quite as much, by Dr. Darwin's own showing, to the causes
+which have led to such and such an animal's making itself the fittest,
+as to the fact that if fittest it will be more likely to survive and
+transmit its improvement. There have been two factors in modification;
+the one provides variations, the other accumulates them; neither can
+claim exclusive right to the word "thence," as though the modification
+was due to it and to it only. Dr. Darwin's use of the word "thence"
+here is clearly a slip, and nothing else; but it is one which brings him
+for the moment into the very error into which his grandson has fallen
+more disastrously.
+
+"Another great want," he continues, "consists in the means of procuring
+food, which has diversified the forms of all species of animals. Thus
+the nose of the swine has become hard for the purpose of turning up the
+soil in search of insects and of roots. The trunk of the elephant is an
+elongation of the nose for the purpose of pulling down the branches of
+trees for his food, and for taking up water without bending his knees.
+Beasts of prey have acquired strong jaws or talons. Cattle have acquired
+a rough tongue and a rough palate to pull off the blades of grass, as
+cows and sheep. Some birds have acquired harder beaks to crack nuts, as
+the parrot. Others have acquired beaks to break the harder seeds, as
+sparrows. Others for the softer kinds of flowers, or the buds of trees,
+as the finches. Other birds have acquired long beaks to penetrate the
+moister soils in search of insects or roots, as woodcocks, and others
+broad ones to filtrate the water of lakes and to retain aquatic insects.
+All which seem to have been gradually produced during many generations
+_by the perpetual endeavour of the creature to supply the want of food,
+and to have been delivered to their posterity with constant improvement
+of them for the purposes required_.
+
+"The third great want among animals is that of security, which seems to
+have diversified the forms of their bodies and the colour of them; these
+consist in the means of escaping other animals more powerful than
+themselves. Hence some animals have acquired wings instead of legs, as
+the smaller birds, for purposes of escape. Others, great length of fin
+or of membrane, as the flying fish and the bat. Others have acquired
+hard or armed shells, as the tortoise and the _Echinus marinus_.
+
+"Mr. Osbeck, a pupil of Linnæus, mentions the American frog-fish,
+_Lophius Histrio_, which inhabits the large floating islands of sea-weed
+about the Cape of Good Hope, and has fulcra resembling leaves, that the
+fishes of prey may mistake it for the sea-weed, which it inhabits.[181]
+
+"The contrivances for the purposes of security extend even to
+vegetables, as is seen in the wonderful and various means of their
+concealing or defending their honey from insects and their seeds from
+birds. On the other hand, swiftness of wing has been acquired by hawks
+and swallows to pursue their prey; and a proboscis of admirable
+structure has been acquired by the bee, the moth, and the humming bird
+for the purpose of plundering the nectaries of flowers. _All which seem
+to have been formed by the original living filament, excited into action
+by the necessities of the creatures which possess them_, and on which
+their existence depends.
+
+"From thus meditating on the great similarity of the structure of the
+warm-blooded animals, and at the same time of the great changes they
+undergo both before and after their nativity; and by considering in how
+minute a portion of time many of the changes of animals above described
+have been produced; would it be too bold to imagine that in the great
+length of time since the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of ages
+before the commencement of the history of mankind--would it be too bold
+to imagine that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living
+filament, which the Great First Cause endued with animality, with the
+power of attaining new parts, attended with new propensities, directed
+by irritations, sensations, volitions, and associations; and thus
+possessing the faculty of continuing to improve, by its own inherent
+activity, and of delivering down those improvements by generation to its
+posterity world without end!
+
+"Sixthly, the cold-blooded animals, as the fish tribes, which are
+furnished with but one ventricle of the heart, and with gills instead of
+lungs, and with fins instead of feet or wings, bear a great similarity
+to each other; but they differ nevertheless so much in their general
+structure from the warm-blooded animals, that it may not seem probable
+at first view that the same living filament could have given origin to
+this kingdom of animals, as to the former. Yet are there some creatures
+which unite or partake of both these orders of animation, as the whales
+and seals; and more particularly the frog, who changes from an aquatic
+animal furnished with gills to an aerial one furnished with lungs.
+
+"The numerous tribes of insects without wings, from the spider to the
+scorpion, from the flea to the lobster; or with wings, from the gnat or
+the ant to the wasp and the dragon-fly, differ so totally from each
+other, and from the red-blooded classes above described, both in the
+forms of their bodies and in their modes of life; besides the organ of
+sense, which they seem to possess in their antennæ or horns, to which
+it has been thought by some naturalists that other creatures have
+nothing similar; that it can scarcely be supposed that this nature of
+animals could have been produced by the same kind of living filament as
+the red-blooded classes above mentioned. And yet the changes which many
+of them undergo in their early state to that of their maturity, are as
+different as one animal can be from another. As those of the gnat, which
+passes his early state in water, and then stretching out his new wings
+and expanding his new lungs, rises in the air; as of the caterpillar and
+bee-nymph, which feed on vegetable leaves or farina, and at length
+bursting from their self-formed graves, become beautiful winged
+inhabitants of the skies, journeying from flower to flower, and
+nourished by the ambrosial food of honey.
+
+"There is still another class of animals which are termed vermes by
+Linnæus, which are without feet or brain, and are hermaphrodites, as
+worms, leeches, snails, shell-fish, coralline insects, and sponges,
+which possess the simplest structure of all animals, and appear totally
+different from those already described. The simplicity of their
+structure, however, can afford no argument against their having been
+produced from a single living filament, as above contended.
+
+"Last of all, the various tribes of vegetables are to be enumerated
+amongst the inferior orders of animals. Of these the anthers and stigmas
+have already been shown to possess some organs of sense, to be nourished
+by honey, and to have the power of generation like insects, and have
+thence been announced amongst the animal kingdom in Section XIII.; and
+to these must be added the buds and bulbs, which constitute the
+viviparous offspring of vegetation. The former I suppose to be beholden
+to a single living filament for their seminal or amatorial procreation;
+and the latter to the same cause for their lateral or branching
+generation, which they possess in common with the polypus, tænia, and
+volvox, and the simplicity of which is an argument in favour of the
+similarity of its cause.
+
+"Linnæus supposes, in the introduction to his natural orders, that very
+few vegetables were at first created, and that their numbers were
+increased by their intermarriages, and adds, 'Suaderet hæc Creatoris
+leges a simplicibus ad composita.' Many other changes appear to have
+arisen in them by their perpetual contest for light and air above
+ground, and for food or moisture beneath the soil. As noted in the
+'Botanic Garden,' Part II., note on Cuscuta. Other changes of vegetables
+from climate or other causes are remarked in the note on Curcuma in the
+same work. From these one might be led to imagine that each plant at
+first consisted of a single bulb or flower to each root, as the
+gentianella and daisy, and that in the contest for air and light, new
+buds grew on the old decaying flower-stem, shooting down their elongated
+roots to the ground, and that in process of ages tall trees were thus
+formed, and an individual bulb became a swarm of vegetables. Other
+plants which in this contest for light and air were too slender to rise
+by their own strength, learned by degrees to adhere to their neighbours,
+either by putting forth roots like the ivy, or by tendrils like the
+vine, or by spiral contortions like the honeysuckle, or by growing upon
+them like the mistleto, and taking nourishment from their barks, or by
+only lodging or adhering on them and deriving nourishment from the air
+as tillandsia.
+
+"Shall we then say that the vegetable living filament was originally
+different from that of each tribe of animals above described? And that
+the productive living filament of each of those tribes was different
+from the other? Or as the earth and ocean were probably peopled with
+vegetable productions long before the existence of animals; and many
+families of these animals, long before other families of them, shall we
+conjecture _that one and the same kind of living filament is and has
+been the cause of all organic life_?[182]
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"The late Mr. David Hume in his posthumous works places the powers of
+generation much above those of our boasted reason, and adds, that reason
+can only make a machine, as a clock or a ship, but the power of
+generation makes the maker of the machine; and probably from having
+observed that the greatest part of the earth has been formed out of
+organic recrements, as the immense beds of limestone, chalk, marble,
+from the shells of fish; and the extensive provinces of clay, sandstone,
+ironstone, coals, from decomposed vegetables; all of which have been
+first produced by generation, or by the secretion of organic life; he
+concludes that the world itself might have been generated rather than
+created; that it might have been gradually produced from very small
+beginnings, increasing by the activity of its inherent principles,
+rather than by a sudden evolution of the whole by the Almighty fire.
+What a magnificent idea of the infinite power of the great Architect!
+The Cause of causes! Parent of parents! Ens entium!"[183]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[169] 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 484.
+
+[170] Ibid. p. 485.
+
+[171] Ibid. p. 493.
+
+[172] 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 494.
+
+[173] 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 497.
+
+[174] 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 498.
+
+[175] 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 500.
+
+[176] Ibid. p. 501.
+
+[177] Ibid. p. 502.
+
+[178] 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 503.
+
+[179] 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 505.
+
+[180] 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 507.
+
+[181] 'Voyage to China,' p. 113.
+
+[182] 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 511.
+
+[183] 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 513.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+MEMOIR OF LAMARCK.
+
+
+I take the following memoir of Lamarck entirely from the biographical
+sketch prefixed by M. Martins to his excellent edition of the
+'Philosophie Zoologique.'[184] From this sketch I find that "Lamarck was
+born August 1, 1744, at Barenton, in Picardy, being the eleventh child
+of Pierre de Monet, squire of the place, a man of old family, but poor.
+His father intended him for the Church, the ordinary resource of younger
+sons at that time, and accordingly placed him under the care of the
+Jesuits at Amiens. But this was not his vocation: the annals of his
+family spoke all to him of military glory; his eldest brother had died
+in the breaches at the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom; two others were still
+serving in the army, and France was exhausting her energies in an
+unequal struggle. His father would not yield to his wishes, but on his
+death, in 1760, Lamarck was left free to take his own line, and made his
+way at once--upon a very bad horse--to the army of Germany, then
+encamped at Lippstadt in Westphalia.
+
+"He was the bearer of a letter written by Madame de Lameth, one of his
+neighbours in the country, and recommending him to M. de Lastic, colonel
+of the regiment of Beaujolais. This gentleman, on seeing before him a
+lad of seventeen, whose somewhat stunted growth made him look still
+younger than he really was, sent the youth immediately to his own
+quarters. The next day a battle was immediately impending, and M. de
+Lastic, on passing his regiment in review, saw his protégé in the first
+rank of a company of grenadiers. The French army was under the orders of
+the Marshal de Broglie and of the Prince de Soubise; the allied troops
+were commanded by Ferdinand of Brunswick. The two French generals were
+beaten owing to their divided counsels, and Lamarck's company, almost
+annihilated by the enemy's fire, was forgotten in the confusion of the
+retreat. All the officers, commissioned and non-commissioned, were
+killed, and only fourteen men out of the whole company remained alive:
+the eldest proposed to retreat, but Lamarck, improvising himself as
+commander, declared that they ought not to retire without orders.
+Presently the colonel seeing that this company did not rally sent an
+orderly officer who made his way up to it by protected paths. Next day
+Lamarck was made an officer, and shortly afterwards lieutenant.
+
+"Fortunately for science," continues M. Martins, "this brilliant _début_
+was not to decide his career. After peace had been signed he was sent
+into garrison at Toulon and Monaco, where an inflammation of the
+lymphatic ganglions of the neck necessitated an operation which left him
+deeply scarred for life.
+
+"The vegetation in the neighbourhood of Toulon and Monaco now arrested
+the young officer's attention. He had already derived some little
+knowledge of botany from the '_Traité des Plantes usuelles_' of Chomel.
+Having retired from the service, and having nothing beyond his modest
+pension of four hundred francs a year, he took a situation at Paris with
+a banker; but drawn irresistibly to the study of nature, he used to
+study from his attic window the forms and movements of clouds, and made
+himself familiar with the plants in the Jardin du Roi or in the public
+gardens. He began to feel that he was on his right path, and understood,
+as Voltaire said of Condorcet, that discoveries of permanent value could
+make him no less illustrious than military glory.
+
+"Dissatisfied with the botanical systems of his time, in six months he
+wrote his '_Flore française_,' preceded by the '_Clé dichotomique_,'
+with the help of which it is easy even for a beginner to arrive with
+certainty at the name of the plant before him." Of this work, M. Martins
+tells us in a note, that the second edition, published by Candolle in
+1815, is still the standard work on French plants.
+
+"In 1778 Rousseau had brought botany into vogue. Women and men of
+fashion took to it. Buffon had the three volumes of '_Flore française_'
+printed at the royal press, and in the following year Lamarck entered
+the Academy of Sciences. Buffon being anxious that his son should
+travel, gave him Lamarck for his companion and tutor. He thus made a
+trip through Holland, Germany, and Hungary, and became acquainted with
+Gleditsch at Berlin, with Jacquin at Vienna, and with Murray at
+Gottingen.
+
+"The '_Encyclopédie méthodique_,' begun by Diderot and D'Alembert, was
+not yet completed. For this work Lamarck wrote four volumes, describing
+all the then known plants whose names began with the letters from A to
+P. This great work was completed by Poiret, and comprises twelve
+volumes, which appeared between the years 1783 and 1817. A still more
+important work, also part of the Encyclopedia, and continually quoted by
+botanists, is the '_Illustration des Genres_.' In this work Lamarck
+describes two thousand _genera_, and illustrates them, according to the
+title-page, with nine hundred engravings. Only a botanist can form any
+idea of the research in collections, gardens, and books, which such a
+work must have involved. But Lamarck's activity was inexhaustible.
+Sonnerat returned from India in 1781 with a very large number of dried
+plants; no one except Lamarck thought it worth while to inspect them,
+and Sonnerat, charmed with his enthusiasm, gave him the whole
+magnificent collection.
+
+"In spite, however, of his incessant toil, Lamarck's position continued
+to be most precarious. He lived by his pen, as a publisher's hack, and
+it was with difficulty that he obtained even the poorly paid post of
+keeper of the king's cabinet of dried plants. Like most other
+naturalists he had thus to contend with incessant difficulties during a
+period of fifteen years.
+
+"At length fortune bettered his condition while changing the direction
+of his labours. France was now under the Convention; what Carnot had
+done for the army Lakanal undertook to do for the natural sciences. At
+his suggestion a museum of natural history was established. Professors
+had been found for all the chairs save that of Zoology; but in that time
+of enthusiasm, so different from the present, France could find men of
+war and men of science wherever and whenever she had need of them.
+Étienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire was twenty-one years old, and was engaged
+in the study of mineralogy under Haüy. Daubenton said to him, 'I will
+undertake the responsibility for your inexperience. I have a father's
+authority over you. Take this professorship, and let us one day say that
+you have made zoology a French science.' Geoffroy accepted, and
+undertook the higher animals. Lakanal knew that a single professor could
+not suffice for the task of arranging the collections of the entire
+animal kingdom, and as Geoffroy was to class the vertebrate animals
+only, there remained the invertebrata--that is to say, insects,
+molluscs, worms, zoophytes--in a word, what was then the chaos of the
+unknown. 'Lamarck,' says M. Michelet, 'accepted the unknown.' He had
+devoted some attention to the study of shells with Bruguières, but he
+had still everything to learn, or I should perhaps say rather,
+everything to create in that unexplored territory into which Linnæus had
+declined to enter, and into which he had thus introduced none of the
+order he had so well known how to establish among the higher animals.
+
+"Lamarck began his course of lectures at the museum in 1794, after a
+year's preparation, and at once established that great division of
+animals into vertebrate and invertebrate, which science has ever since
+recognized.
+
+"Dividing the vertebrate animals--as Linnæus had already divided
+them--into mammals, birds, reptiles, and fishes, he divided the
+invertebrates into molluscs, insects, worms, echinoderms, and polyps. In
+1799 he separated the crustacea from the insects, with which they had
+been classed hitherto; in 1800 he established the arachnids as a class
+distinct from the insects; in 1802 that of the annelids, a subdivision
+of the worms, and that of the radiata as distinct from the polyps. Time
+has approved the wisdom of these divisions, founded all of them upon the
+organic type of the creatures themselves--that is to say, upon the
+rational method introduced into zoology by Cuvier, Lamarck, and Geoffroy
+St. Hilaire.
+
+"This introduction being devoted only to Lamarck's labours as a
+naturalist, we will pass over certain works in which he treats of
+physics and chemistry. These attempts--errors of a powerful mind which
+thought itself able by the help of pure reason to establish truths which
+rest only upon experience--attempts, moreover, which were some of them
+but resuscitations of exploded theories, such as that of
+'phlogistic'--had not even the honour of being refuted: they did not
+deserve to be so, and should be a warning to all those who would write
+upon a subject without the necessary practical knowledge.
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"At the beginning of this century there was not yet any such science as
+geology. People observed but little, and in lieu of observation made
+theories to embrace the entire globe. Lamarck made his in 1802, and
+twenty-three years later the judicious Cuvier still yielded to the
+prevailing custom in publishing his 'Discoveries on the Earth's
+Revolutions.'
+
+"Lamarck's merit was to have discovered that there had been no
+catastrophes, but that the gradual action of forces during thousands of
+ages accounted for the changes observable upon the face of the earth,
+better than any sudden and violent perturbations. 'Nature,' he writes,
+'has no difficulty on the score of time; she has it always at command;
+it is with her a boundless space in which she has room for the greatest
+as for the smallest operations.'"
+
+Here we must not forget Buffon's fine passage, "Nature's great workman
+is Time," &c. See page 103.
+
+"Lamarck," continues M. Martins, "was the first to distinguish littoral
+from ocean fossils, but no one accepts his theory that oceans make their
+beds deeper owing to the action of the tides, and distribute themselves
+differently over the earth's surface without any change of level of the
+different parts of that surface.
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"Settling down to a single branch of science, in consequence of his
+professorship, Lamarck now devoted himself to the twofold labour of
+lecturing and classifying the collections at the museum. In 1802 he
+published his 'Considerations on the Organization of Living Bodies'; in
+1809 his '_Philosophie Zoologique_,' a development of the
+'Considerations'; and from 1816 to 1822 his Natural History of the
+invertebrate animals, in seven volumes. This is his great work, and,
+being entirely a work of description and classification, was received
+with the unanimous approbation of the scientific world. His 'Fossil
+Shells of the Neighbourhood of Paris'--a work in which his profound
+knowledge of existing shells enabled him to class with certainty the
+remains of forms that had disappeared thousands of ages ago--met also
+with a favourable reception.
+
+"Lamarck was fifty years old before he began to study zoology; and
+prolonged microscopic examinations first fatigued and at length
+enfeebled his eyesight. The clouds which obscured it gradually
+thickened, and he became quite blind. Married four times, the father of
+seven children, he saw his small patrimony and even his earlier savings
+swallowed up by one of those hazardous investments with which promoters
+impose on the credulity of the public. His small endowment as professor
+alone protected him from destitution. Men of science whom his reputation
+as a botanist and zoologist had attracted near him, wondered at the
+manner in which he was neglected.
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"He passed the last ten years of his laborious life in darkness, tended
+only by the affectionate care of his two daughters. The eldest wrote
+from his dictation part of the sixth and seventh volumes of his work on
+the invertebrate animals. From the time her father became confined to
+his room his daughter never left the house; and when first she did so
+after his death, she was distressed by the fresh air to which she had
+been so long a stranger.
+
+"Lamarck died December 18, 1829, at the age of eighty-five. Latreille
+and Blainville were his successors at the museum. The incredible
+activity of the first professor had so greatly increased the number of
+the known invertebrata that it was found necessary to endow two
+professors, where one had originally been sufficient.
+
+"His two daughters were left penniless. In the year 1832 I myself saw
+Mlle. Cornélie de Lamarck earning a scanty pittance by fastening dried
+plants on to paper, in the museum of which her father had been a
+professor. Many a species named and described by him must have passed
+under her eyes and increased the bitterness of her regret."[185]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[184] Paris, 1873.
+
+[185] Introduction Biographique to M. Martins' edition of the 'Phil.
+Zool.,' pp. ix-xx.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+GENERAL MISCONCEPTION CONCERNING LAMARCK--HIS PHILOSOPHICAL POSITION.
+
+
+"If Cuvier," says M. Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire,[186] "is the modern
+successor of Linnæus, so is Lamarck of Buffon. But Cuvier does not go so
+far as Linnæus, and Lamarck goes much farther than Buffon. Lamarck,
+moreover, took his own line, and his conjectures are not only much
+bolder, or rather more hazardous, but they are profoundly different from
+Buffon's.
+
+"It is well known that the vast labours of Lamarck were divided between
+botany and physical science in the eighteenth century, and between
+zoology and natural philosophy in the nineteenth; it is, however, less
+generally known that Lamarck was long a partisan of the immutability of
+species. It was not till 1801, when he was already old, that he freed
+himself from the ideas then generally prevailing. But Lamarck, having
+once made up his mind, never changed it; in his ripe age he exhibits all
+the ardour of youth in propagating and defending his new convictions.
+
+"In the three years, 1801, 1802, 1803, he enounced them twice in his
+lectures, and three times in his writings.[187] He returns to the
+subject and states his views precisely in 1806,[188] and in 1809 he
+devotes a great part of his principal work, the 'Philosophie
+Zoologique,' to their demonstration.[189] Here he might have rested and
+have quietly awaited the judgment of his peers; but he is too much
+convinced; he believes the future of science to depend so much upon his
+doctrine that to his dying day he feels compelled to explain it further
+and insist upon it. When already over seventy years of age he enounces
+it again, and maintains it as firmly as ever in 1815, in his 'Histoire
+des Animaux sans Vertèbres,' and in 1820 in his 'Système des
+Connaissances Positives.'[190]
+
+"This doctrine, so dearly cherished by its author, and the conception,
+exposition, and defence of which so laboriously occupied the second half
+of his scientific career, has been assuredly too much admired by some,
+who have forgotten that Lamarck had a precursor, and that that precursor
+was Buffon. It has, on the other hand, been too severely condemned by
+others who have involved it in its entirety in broad and sweeping
+condemnation. As if it were possible that so great labour on the part of
+so great a naturalist should have led him to 'a fantastic conclusion'
+only--to a 'flighty error,' and, as has been often said, though not
+written, to 'one absurdity the more.' Such was the language which
+Lamarck heard during his protracted old age, saddened alike by the
+weight of years and blindness; this was what people did not hesitate to
+utter over his grave yet barely closed, and what, indeed, they are still
+saying--commonly, too, without any knowledge of what Lamarck maintained,
+but merely repeating at second hand bad caricatures of his teaching.
+
+"When will the time come when we may see Lamarck's theory
+discussed--and, I may as well at once say, refuted in some important
+points--with at any rate the respect due to one of the most illustrious
+masters of our science? And when will this theory, the hardihood of
+which has been greatly exaggerated, become freed from the
+interpretations and commentaries by the false light of which so many
+naturalists have formed their opinion concerning it? If its author is to
+be condemned, let it be, at any rate, not before he has been
+heard."[191]
+
+It is not necessary for me to give the extracts from Lamarck which M.
+Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire quotes in order to show what he really
+maintained, inasmuch as they will be given at greater length in the
+following chapter; but I may perhaps say that I have not found M.
+Geoffroy refuting Lamarck in any essential point.
+
+Professor Haeckel says that to Lamarck "will always belong the immortal
+glory of having for the first time worked out the theory of descent as
+an independent scientific theory of the first order, and as the
+philosophical foundation of the whole science of Biology."
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"The 'Philosophie Zoologique,'" continues Professor Haeckel, "is the
+first connected exposition of the theory of descent carried out strictly
+into all its consequences; ... and with the exception of Darwin's work,
+which appeared exactly half a century later, we know of none which we
+could in this respect place by the side of the 'Philosophie Zoologique.'
+How far it was in advance of its time is perhaps best seen from the
+circumstance that it was not understood by most men, and for fifty years
+was not spoken of at all."[192]
+
+This is an exaggeration, both as regards the originality of Lamarck's
+work and the reception it has met with. It is probably more accurate to
+say with M. Martins that Lamarck's theory has "never yet had the honour
+of being discussed seriously,"[193] not, at least, in connection with
+the name of its originators.
+
+So completely has this been so that the author of the 'Vestiges of
+Creation,' even in the edition of 1860, in which he unreservedly
+acknowledges the adoption of Lamarck's views, not unfrequently speaks
+disparagingly of Lamarck himself, and never gives him his due meed of
+recognition. I am not, therefore, wholly displeased to find this author
+conceiving himself to have been treated by Mr. Charles Darwin with some
+of the injustice which he has himself inflicted on Lamarck.
+
+In the 1859 edition of the 'Origin of Species,' and in a very prominent
+place, Mr. Darwin says:--"The author of the 'Vestiges of Creation' would
+I presume say, that after a certain number of unknown generations, some
+bird had given birth to a woodpecker, and some plant to a misseltoe, and
+that these had been produced perfect as we now see them."[194] This is
+the only allusion to the 'Vestiges' which I have found in the first
+edition of the 'Origin of Species.'
+
+Those who have read the 1853 edition of the 'Vestiges' will not be
+surprised to find the author rejoining, in his edition of 1860, that it
+was to be regretted Mr. Darwin should have read the 'Vestiges' "nearly
+as much amiss as though, like its declared opponents, he had an interest
+in misunderstanding it." And a little lower he adds that Mr. Darwin's
+book in no essential respect contradicts the 'Vestiges'; "on the
+contrary, while adding to its explanations of nature, it expresses
+substantially the same general ideas."[195] It is right to say that the
+passage thus objected to is not to be found in later editions of the
+'Origin of Species,' while in the historical sketch we now read as
+follows:--"In my opinion it (the 'Vestiges of Creation') has done
+excellent service in this country by calling attention to the subject,
+removing prejudice, and in thus preparing the ground for the reception
+of analogous views."
+
+Mr. Darwin, the main part of whose work on the 'Origin of Species' is
+taken up with supporting the theory of descent with modification (which
+frequently in the recapitulation chapter of the 'Origin of Species' he
+seems to treat as synonymous with natural selection), has fallen into
+the common error of thinking that Lamarck can be ignored or passed over
+in a couple of sentences. I only find Lamarck's name twice in the 1859
+edition of the 'Origin,' once on p. 242, where Mr. Darwin writes: "I am
+surprised that no one has advanced this demonstrative case of neuter
+insects, against the well-known doctrine of Lamarck;" and again, p. 427,
+where Lamarck is stated to have been the first to call attention to the
+"very important distinction between real affinities and analogical or
+adaptive resemblances." How far from demonstrative is the particular
+case which in 1859 Mr. Darwin considered so fatal to "the well-known
+doctrine of Lamarck"--which should surely, one would have thought,
+include the doctrine of descent with modification, which Mr. Darwin is
+himself supporting--I have attempted to show in 'Life and Habit,' but
+had perhaps better recapitulate briefly here.
+
+Mr. Darwin writes: "In the simpler case of neuter insects all of one
+caste, _which, as I believe, have been rendered different from the
+fertile males and females through natural selection_...."[196] He thus
+attributes the sterility and peculiar characteristics, we will say, of
+the common hive working bees--"neuter insects all of one caste"--to
+natural selection. Now, nothing is more certain than that these
+characteristics--sterility, a cavity in the thigh for collecting wax, a
+proboscis for gathering honey, &c.--are due to the treatment which the
+eggs laid by the queen bee receive after they have left her body. Take
+an egg and treat it in a certain way, and it becomes a working bee;
+treat the same egg in a certain other way, and it becomes a queen. If
+the bees are in danger of becoming queenless they take eggs which were
+in the way of being developed into working bees, and change their food
+and cells, whereon they develop into queens instead. How Mr. Darwin
+could attribute the neutralization of the working bees--an act which is
+obviously one of abortion committed by the body politic of the hive on a
+balance of considerations--to the action of what he calls "natural
+selection," and how, again, he could suppose that what he was advancing
+had any but a confirmatory bearing upon Lamarck's position, is
+incomprehensible, unless the passage in question be taken as a mere
+slip. That attention has been called to it is plain, for the words "the
+well-known doctrine of Lamarck" have been changed in later editions into
+"the well-known doctrine of inherited habit as advanced by
+Lamarck,"[197] but this correction, though some apparent improvement on
+the original text, does little indeed in comparison with what is wanted.
+
+Mr. Darwin has since introduced a paragraph concerning Lamarck into the
+"historical sketch," already more than once referred to in these pages.
+In this he summarises the theory which I am about to lay before the
+reader, by saying that Lamarck "upheld the doctrine that all species,
+including man, are descended from other species." If Lamarck had been
+alive he would probably have preferred to see Mr. Darwin write that he
+upheld "the doctrine of descent with modification as the explanation of
+all differentiations of structure and instinct." Mr. Darwin continues,
+that Lamarck "seems" to have been chiefly led to his conclusion on the
+gradual change of species, "by the difficulty of distinguishing species
+and varieties, by the almost perfect gradation of forms in certain
+groups, and by the analogy of domestic productions."
+
+Lamarck would probably have said that though he did indeed turn--as Mr.
+Darwin has done, and as Buffon and Dr. Darwin had done before him--to
+animals and plants under domestication, in illustration and support of
+the theory of descent with modification; and that though he did also
+insist, as so many other writers have done, on the arbitrary and
+artificial nature of the distinction between species and varieties, he
+was mainly led to agree with Buffon and Dr. Darwin by a broad survey of
+the animal kingdom, with the details also of which few naturalists have
+ever been better acquainted.
+
+"Great," says Mr. Darwin, "is the power of steady
+misrepresentation,"--and greatly indeed has the just fame of Lamarck
+been eclipsed in consequence; "but," as Mr. Darwin finely continues,
+"the history of science shows that fortunately this power does not long
+endure."[198]
+
+That Lamarck anticipated it, was prepared to face it, and even felt that
+things were thus, after all, as they should be, will appear from the
+shrewd and pleasant passage which is to be found near the close of his
+preface:--
+
+"So great is the power of preconceived opinion, especially when any
+personal interest is enlisted on the same side as itself, that though
+it is hard to deduce new truths from the study of nature, it is still
+harder to get them recognized by other people.
+
+"These difficulties, however, are on the whole more beneficial than
+hurtful to the cause of science; for it is through them that a number of
+eccentric, though perhaps plausible speculations, perish in their
+infancy, and are never again heard of. Sometimes, indeed, valuable ideas
+are thus lost; but it is better that a truth, when once caught sight of,
+should have to struggle for a long time without meeting the attention it
+deserves, than that every outcome of a heated imagination should be
+readily received.
+
+"The more I reflect upon the numerous causes which affect our judgments,
+the more convinced I am that, with the exception of such physical and
+moral facts as no one can now throw doubt upon, all else is matter of
+opinion and argument; and we know well that there is hardly an argument
+to be found anywhere, against which another argument cannot plausibly be
+adduced. Hence, though it is plain that the various opinions of men
+differ greatly in probability and in the weight which should be attached
+to them, it seems to me that we are wrong when we blame those who differ
+from us.
+
+"Are we then to recognize no opinions as well founded but those which
+are generally received? Nay--experience teaches us plainly that the
+highest and most cultivated minds must be at all times in an exceedingly
+small minority. No one can dispute this. Authority should be told by
+weight and not by number--but in good truth authority is a hard thing
+to weigh.
+
+"Nor again--in spite of the many and severe conditions which a judgment
+must fulfil before it can be declared good--is it quite certain that
+those whom public opinion has declared to be authorities, are always
+right in the conclusions they arrive at.
+
+"Positive facts are the only solid ground for man; the deductions he
+draws from them are a very different matter. Outside the facts of nature
+all is a question of probabilities, and the most that can be said is
+that some conclusions are more probable than others."
+
+Lamarck's poverty was perhaps one main reason of the ease with which it
+was found possible to neglect his philosophical opinions. Science is not
+a kingdom into which a poor man can enter easily, if he happens to
+differ from a philosopher who gives good dinners, and has "his sisters
+and his cousins and his aunts" to play the part of chorus to him.
+Lamarck's two daughters do not appear to have been the kind of persons
+who could make effective sisters or cousins or aunts. Men of science are
+of like passions even with the other holy ones who have set themselves
+up in all ages as the pastors and prophets of mankind. The saint has
+commonly deemed it to be for the interests of saintliness that he should
+strain a point or two in his own favour--and the more so according as
+his reputation for an appearance of candour has been the better earned.
+If, then, Lamarck's opponents could keep choruses, while Lamarck had
+nothing to fall back upon but the merits of his case only, it is not
+surprising that he should have found himself neglected by the
+scientists of his own time. Moreover he was too old to have undertaken
+such an unequal contest. If he had been twenty years younger when he
+began it, he would probably have enjoyed his full measure of success
+before he died.
+
+Not that Lamarck can claim, as a thinker, to stand on the same level
+with Dr. Darwin, and still less so with Buffon. He attempted to go too
+fast and too far. Seeing that if we accept descent with modification,
+the question arises whether what we call life and consciousness may not
+themselves be evolved from some thing or things which looked at one time
+so little living and conscious that we call them inanimate--and being
+anxious to see his theory reach, and to follow it, as far back as
+possible, he speculates about the origin of life; having formed a theory
+thereon, he is more inclined to interpret the phenomena of lower animal
+life so as to make them fit in with his theory, than as he would have
+interpreted them if there had been no theory at stake.
+
+Thus his denial that sensation, and much more, intelligence and
+deliberate action, can exist without a brain and a nervous system, has
+led him to deny sensation, consciousness, and intelligence to many
+animals which act in such manner as would certainly have made him say
+that they feel and know what they are about, if he had formed no theory
+about brains and nervous systems.
+
+Nothing can be more different than the manners in which Lamarck and Dr.
+Darwin wrote on this head. Lamarck over and over again maintains that
+where there is no nervous system there can be no sensation. Combating,
+for example, the assertion of Cabanis, that to live is to feel, he says
+that "the greater number of the polypi and all the infusoria, having no
+nervous system, it must be said of them as also of worms, that to live
+is still not to feel; and so again of plants."[199]
+
+How different from this is the un-theory-ridden language of Dr. Darwin,
+quoted on p. 116 of this work.
+
+Lamarck again writes:--
+
+"The very imperfect animals of the lowest classes, having no nervous
+system, are simply irritable, have nothing but certain habits,
+experience no sensations, and never conceive ideas."
+
+This, in the face of the performances of the amoeba--a minute jelly
+speck, without any special organ whatever--in making its tests, cannot
+be admitted. Is it possible that Lamarck was in some measure misled by
+believing Buffon to be in earnest when he advanced propositions little
+less monstrous?
+
+"But," continues Lamarck, "the less imperfect animals which have a
+nervous system, though they have not the organ of intelligence, have
+instinct, habits, and proclivities; they feel sensations, and yet form
+no ideas whatever. I venture to say that where there is no organ for a
+faculty that faculty cannot exist."[200]
+
+Who can tell what ideas a worm does or does not form? We can watch its
+actions, and see that they are such as involve what we call design and a
+perception of its own interest. Under these circumstances it seems
+better to call the worm a reasonable creature with Dr. Darwin than to
+say with Lamarck that because worms do not appear to have that organ
+which he assumes to be the sole means of causing sensation and ideas,
+therefore they can neither feel nor think. Doubtless they cannot feel
+and think as many sensations and thoughts as we can, but our ideas of
+what they can and cannot feel must be formed through consideration of
+what we see them do, and must be biassed by no theories of what they
+ought to be able to feel or not feel.
+
+Again Lamarck, shortly after an excellent passage in which he points out
+that the lower animals gain by experience just as man does (and here
+probably he had in his mind the passage of Buffon referred to at p. 112
+of this work), nevertheless writes:--
+
+"If the facts and considerations put forward in this volume be held
+worthy of attention, it will follow necessarily that there are some
+animals which have neither reason nor instinct" (I should be glad to see
+one of these animals and to watch its movements), "such as those which
+have no power of feeling; that there are others which have instinct but
+no degree whatever of reason" (whereas from Dr. Darwin's premises it
+should follow, and would doubtless be readily admitted by him, that
+instinct is reason, but reason many times repeated made perfect, and
+finally repeated by rote; so that far from being prior to reason, as
+Lamarck here implies, it can only come long afterwards), "such as those
+which have a system enabling them to feel, but which still lack the
+organ of intelligence; and finally, that there are those which have not
+only instinct, but over and above this a certain degree of reasoning
+power, such as those creatures which have one system for sensations and
+another for acts involving intelligence. Instinct is with these last
+animals the motive power of almost all their actions, and they rarely
+use what little reason they have. Man, who comes next above them, is
+also possessed of instincts which inspire some of his actions, but he
+can acquire much reason, and can use it so as to direct the greater part
+of his actions."[201]
+
+All this will be felt to be less satisfactory than the simple directness
+of Dr. Darwin. It comes in great measure from following Buffon without
+being _en rapport_ with him. On the other hand, Lamarck must be admitted
+to have elaborated the theory of "descent with modification" with no
+less clearness than Dr. Darwin, and with much greater fulness of detail.
+There is no substantial difference between the points they wish to
+establish; Dr. Darwin has the advantage in that not content with
+maintaining that there will be a power of adaptation to the conditions
+of an animal's existence which will determine its organism, he goes on
+to say what the principal conditions are, and shows more lucidly than
+Lamarck has done (though Lamarck adopts the same three causes in a
+passage which will follow), that struggle, and consequently
+modification, will be chiefly conversant about the means of subsistence,
+of reproduction, and of self-protection. Nevertheless, though Dr. Darwin
+has said enough to show that he had the whole thing clearly before him,
+and could have elaborated it as finely as or better than Lamarck
+himself has done, if he had been so minded, yet the palm must be given
+to Lamarck on the score of what he actually did, and this I observe to
+be the verdict of history, for whereas Lamarck's name is still daily
+quoted, Dr. Darwin's is seldom mentioned, and never with the applause
+which it deserves.
+
+The resemblance between the two writers--that is to say, the complete
+coincidence of their views--is so remarkable that the question is forced
+upon us how far Lamarck knew the substance of Dr. Darwin's theory.
+Lamarck knew Buffon personally; he had been tutor to Buffon's son, and
+Buffon had three of Lamarck's volumes on the French Flora printed at the
+royal printing press;--how can we account for Lamarck's having had
+Buffon's theory of descent with modification before him for so many
+years, and yet remaining a partisan of immutability till 1801? Before
+this year we find no trace of his having accepted evolution;
+thenceforward he is one of the most ardent and constant exponents which
+this doctrine has ever had. What was it that repelled him in Buffon's
+system? How is it that in the 'Philosophie Zoologique' there is not, so
+far as I can remember, a single reference to Buffon, from whom, however,
+as we shall see, many paragraphs are taken with but very little
+alteration?
+
+I am inclined to think that the secret of this sudden conversion must be
+found in a French translation by M. Deleuze of Dr. Darwin's poem, 'The
+Loves of the Plants' which appeared in 1800. Lamarck--the most eminent
+botanist of his time--was sure to have heard of and seen this, and would
+probably know the translator, who would be able to give him a fair idea
+of the 'Zoonomia.'
+
+I will give a few of the passages which Lamarck would find in this
+translation. Speaking of Dr. Darwin, M. Deleuze says:--"Il falloit
+encore qu'un nouvel observateur, entrant dans la route qui venoit de
+s'ouvrir, s'y frayât des sentiers ignorés; que liant la physique
+végétale à la botanique il nous montrât dans les plantes, non seulement
+des corps organisés soumis à des lois constantes, mais des êtres doués
+sinon de sensibilité, au moins d'une irritabilité particulière, d'un
+principe de vie _qui leur fait exécuter des mouvements analogues à leurs
+besoins_....[202]
+
+"Il est des animaux et des plantes qui par le laps du tems paroissent
+avoir éprouvé des changemens dans leur organisation, _pour s'accommoder
+à de nouveaux genres de nourriture et aux moyens de se la procurer_.
+Peut-être les productions de la nature font elles des progrès vers la
+perfection. Cette idée appuyée par les observations modernes sur
+l'accroissement progressif des parties solides du globe, s'accorde avec
+la dignité et la providence du créateur de l'univers."[203]
+
+"La nature semble s'être fait un jeu d'établir entre tous les êtres
+organisés une sorte de guerre qui entretient leur activité: si elle a
+donné aux uns des moyens de défense, elle a donné aux autres des moyens
+d'attaque."[204]
+
+Turning to the 'Botanic Garden' itself, I find that this admirable
+sentence belongs to M. Deleuze, and not to Dr. Darwin, who, however, has
+said what comes to much the same thing,[205] as may be seen p. 227 of
+this volume. But the authorship is immaterial; whether the passage was
+by Dr. Darwin or M. Deleuze, it was, in all probability, known to
+Lamarck before his change of front.
+
+     *     *     *     *     *
+
+The note on Trapa Natans again[206] suggests itself as the source from
+which the passage in the 'Philosophie Zoologique' about the Ranunculus
+aquatilis is taken,[207] while one of the most important passages in the
+work, a summary, in fact, of the principal means of modification, seems
+to be taken, the first half of it from Buffon, and the second from Dr.
+Darwin. I have called attention to it on pp. 300, 301.
+
+We may then suppose that Lamarck failed to understand Buffon, and
+conceived that he ought either to have gone much farther, or not so far;
+not being yet prepared to go the whole length himself, he opposed
+mutability till Dr. Darwin's additions to Buffon's ostensible theory
+reached him, whereon he at once adopted them, and having received
+nothing but a few notes and hints, felt himself at liberty to work the
+theory out independently and claim it. In so original a work as the
+'_Philosophie Zoologique_' must always be considered, this may be
+legitimate, but I find in it, as Isidore Geoffroy seems also to have
+found, a little more claim to complete independence than is acceptable
+to one who is fresh from Buffon and Dr. Darwin.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[186] 'Hist. Nat. Gén.,' tom. ii. p. 404, 1859.
+
+[187] 'Système des Animaux sans Vertèbres,' Paris, in-8, an. ix. (1801);
+'Discours d'Ouverture,' p. 12, &c.; 'Recherches sur l'Organisation des
+Corps Vivants,' Paris, in-8, 1802, p. 50, &c.; 'Discours d'Ouverture
+d'un Cours de Zoologie pour l'an ix.,' Paris, in-8, 1803. This discourse
+is entirely devoted to the consideration of the question, "What is
+Species?"
+
+[188] 'Discours d'Ouverture d'un Cours de Zoologie,' 1806, Paris, in-8,
+p. 8, &c.
+
+[189] See following chapter.
+
+[190] 'Hist, des Anim. sans Vertèb.,' tom, i., Introduction, 1^re ed.,
+1815; 'Syst. des Conn. Positives,' Paris, in-8, 1820, 1^re part,
+2^me sect. ch. ii. p. 114, &c.
+
+[191] 'Hist. Nat. Gén.,' tom. ii. p. 407.
+
+[192] 'History of Creation,' English translation, vol. i. pp. 111, 112.
+
+[193] M. Martins' edition of the 'Philosophie Zoologique,' Paris, 1873.
+Introd., p. vi.
+
+[194] 'Origin of Species,' p. 3, 1859.
+
+[195] 'Vestiges of Creation,' ed. 1860, Proofs, Illustrations, &c., p.
+lxiv.
+
+[196] 'Origin of Species,' ed. 1, p. 239; ed. 6, p. 231.
+
+[197] 'Origin of Species,' ed. 1, p. 242; ed. 6, 1876, p. 233.
+
+[198] 'Origin of Species,' p. 421, ed. 1876.
+
+[199] 'Phil. Zool.,' vol. i. p. 404.
+
+[200] Ibid. vol. ii. p. 324.
+
+[201] 'Phil. Zool.,' vol. ii. p. 410.
+
+[202] 'Les Amours des Plantes,' Discours Prélim., p. 7. Paris, 1800.
+
+[203] Ibid., Notes du chant i., p. 202.
+
+[204] Ibid. p. 238.
+
+[205] 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 507.
+
+[206] 'Les Amours des Plantes,' p. 360.
+
+[207] Vol. i. p. 231, ed. M. Martins, 1873.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+SUMMARY OF THE 'PHILOSOPHIE ZOOLOGIQUE.'
+
+
+The first part of the '_Philosophie Zoologique_' is the one which deals
+with the doctrine of evolution or descent with modification. It is to
+this, therefore, that our attention will be confined. Yet only a
+comparatively small part of the three hundred and fifty pages which
+constitute Lamarck's first part are devoted to setting forth the reasons
+which led him to arrive at his conclusions--the greater part of the
+volume being occupied with the classification of animals, which we may
+again omit, as foreign to our purpose.
+
+I shall condense whenever I can, but I do not think the reader will find
+that I have left out much that bears upon the argument. I shall also use
+inverted commas while translating with such freedom as to omit several
+lines together, where I can do so without suppressing anything essential
+to the elucidation of Lamarck's meaning. I shall, however, throughout
+refer the reader to the page of the original work from which I am
+translating.
+
+"The common origin of bodily and mental phenomena," says Lamarck in his
+preliminary chapter, "has been obscured, because we have studied them
+chiefly in man, who, as the most highly developed of living beings,
+presents the problem in its most difficult and complicated aspect. If we
+had begun our study with that of the lowest organisms, and had proceeded
+from these to the more complex ones, we should have seen the progression
+which is observable in organization, and the successive acquisition of
+various special organs, with new faculties for every additional organ.
+We should thus have seen that sense of needs--originally hardly
+perceptible, but gradually increasing in intensity and variety--has led
+to the attempt to gratify them; that the actions thus induced, having
+become habitual and energetic, have occasioned the development of organs
+adapted for their performance; that the force which excites organic
+movements can in the case of the lowest animals exist outside them and
+yet animate them; that this force was subsequently introduced into the
+animals themselves, and fixed within them; and, lastly, that it gave
+rise to sensibility and, in the end, to intelligence."[208] The reader
+had better be on his guard here, and whenever Lamarck is speculating
+about the lowest forms of action and sensation. I have thought it well,
+however, to give enough of these speculations, as occasion arises, to
+show their tendency.
+
+"Sensation is not the proximate cause of organic movements. It may be so
+with the higher animals, but it cannot be shown to be so with plants,
+nor even with all known animals. At the outset of life there was none of
+that sensation which could only arise where organic beings had already
+attained a considerable development. Nature has done all by slow
+gradations, both organs and faculties being the outcome of a progressive
+development.[209]
+
+"The mere composition of an animal is but a small part of what deserves
+study in connection with the animal itself. The effects of its
+surroundings in causing new wants, the effects of its wants in giving
+rise to actions, those of its actions in developing habits and
+tendencies, the effects of use and disuse as affecting any organ, the
+means which nature takes to preserve and make perfect what has been
+already acquired--these are all matters of the highest importance.[210]
+
+"In their bearing upon these questions the invertebrate animals are more
+important and interesting than the vertebrate, for they are more in
+number, and being more in number are more varied; their variations are
+more marked, and the steps by which they have advanced in complexity are
+more easily observed.[211]
+
+"I propose, therefore, to divide this work into three parts, of which
+the first shall deal with the conventions necessary for the treatment of
+the subject, the importance of analogical structures, and the meaning
+which should be attached to the word species. I will point out on the
+one hand the evidence of a graduated descending scale, as existing
+between the highest and the lowest organisms; and, on the other, the
+effect of surroundings and habits on the organs of living beings, as the
+cause of their development or arrest of development. Lastly, I will
+treat of the natural order of animals, and show what should be their
+fittest classification and arrangement."[212]
+
+It seems unnecessary to give Lamarck's intentions with regard to his
+second and third parts, as they do not here concern us; they deal with
+the origin of life and mind.
+
+The first chapter of the work opens with the importance of bearing in
+mind the difference between the conventional and the natural, that is to
+say, between words and things. Here, as indeed largely throughout this
+part of his work, he follows Buffon, by whom he is evidently influenced.
+
+"The conventional deals with systems of arrangement, classification,
+orders, families, genera, and the nomenclature, whether of different
+sections or of individual objects.
+
+"An arrangement should be called systematic, or arbitrary, when it does
+not conform to the genealogical order taken by nature in the development
+of the things arranged, and when, by consequence it is not founded upon
+well-considered analogies. There is such a thing as a natural order in
+every department of nature; it is the order in which its several
+component items have been successively developed.[213]
+
+"Some lines certainly seem to have been drawn by Nature herself. It was
+hard to believe that mammals, for example, and birds, were not
+well-defined classes. Nevertheless the sharpness of definition was an
+illusion, and due only to our limited knowledge. The ornithorhynchus and
+the echidna bridge the gulf.[214]
+
+"Simplicity is the main end of any classification. If all the races, or
+as they are called, species, of any kingdom were perfectly known, and if
+the true analogies between each species, and between the groups which
+species form, were also known, so that their approximations to each
+other and the position of the several groups were in conformity with the
+natural analogies between them--then classes, orders, sections, and
+genera would be families, larger or smaller; for each division would be
+a greater or smaller section of a natural order or sequence.[215] But in
+this case it would be very difficult to assign the limits of each
+division; they would be continually subjected to arbitrary alteration,
+and agreement would only exist where plain and palpable gaps were
+manifest in our series. Happily, however, for classifiers there are, and
+will always probably remain, a number of unknown forms."[216]
+
+That the foregoing is still felt to be true by those who accept
+evolution, may be seen from the following passage, taken from Mr.
+Darwin's 'Origin of Species':--
+
+"As all the organic beings which have ever lived can be arranged within
+a few great classes; and as all within each class have, according to our
+theory, been connected together by fine gradations, the best, and if our
+collections were nearly perfect, the only possible arrangement would be
+genealogical: descent being the hidden bond of connection which
+naturalists have been seeking under the term of the Natural System. On
+this view, we can understand how it is that in the eyes of most
+naturalists, the structure of the embryo is even more important for
+classifications than that of the adult."[217]
+
+In his second chapter Lamarck deals with the importance of comparative
+anatomy, and the study of homologous structures. These indicate a sort
+of blood relationship between the individuals in which they are found,
+and are our safest guide to any natural system of classification. Their
+importance is not confined to the study of classes, families, or even
+species; they must be studied also in the individuals of each species,
+as it is thus only, that we can recognize either identity or difference
+of species. The results arrived at, however, are only trustworthy over a
+limited period, for though the individuals of any species commonly so
+resemble one another at any given time, as to enable us to generalize
+from them, at the date of our observing them, yet species are not fixed
+and immutable through all time: they change, though with such extreme
+slowness that we do not observe their doing so, and when we come upon a
+species that _has_ changed, we consider it as a new one, and as having
+always been such as we now see it.[218]
+
+"It is none the less true that when we compare the same kind of organs
+in different individuals, we can quickly and easily tell whether they
+are very like each other or not, and hence, whether the animals or
+plants in which they are found, should be set down as members of the
+same or of a different species. It is only therefore the general
+inference drawn from the apparent immutability of species, that has
+been too inconsiderately drawn.[219]
+
+"The analogies and points of agreement between living organisms, are
+always incomplete when based upon the consideration of any single organ
+only. But though still incomplete, they will be much more important
+according as the organ on which they are founded is an essential one or
+otherwise.
+
+"With animals, those analogies are most important which exist between
+organs most necessary for the conservation of their life. With plants,
+between their organs of generation. Hence, with animals, it will be the
+interior structure which will determine the most important analogies:
+with plants it will be the manner in which they fructify.[220]
+
+"With animals we should look to nerves, organs of respiration, and those
+of the circulation; with plants, to the embryo and its accessories, the
+sexual organs of their flowers, &c.[221] To do this, will set us on to
+the Natural Method, which is as it were a sketch traced by man of the
+order taken by Nature in her productions.[222] Nevertheless the
+divisions which we shall be obliged to establish, will still be
+arbitrary and artificial, though presenting to our view sections
+arranged in the order which Nature has pursued.[223]
+
+"What, then," he asks,[224] "_is_ species--and can we show that species
+has changed--however slowly?" He now covers some of the ground since
+enlarged upon in Mr. Darwin's second chapter, in which the arbitrary
+nature of the distinction between species and varieties is so well
+exposed. "I shall show," says Lamarck (in substance, but I am compelled
+to condense much), "that the habits by which we now recognize any
+species, are due to the conditions of life [_circonstances_] under which
+it has for a long time existed, and that these habits have had such an
+influence upon the structure of each individual of the species, as to
+have at length modified this structure, and adapted it to the habits
+which have been contracted.[225]
+
+"The individuals of any species," he continues, "certainly resemble
+their parents; it is a universal law of nature that all offspring should
+differ but little from its immediate progenitors, but this does not
+justify the ordinary belief that species never vary. Indeed, naturalists
+themselves are in continual difficulty as regards distinguishing species
+from varieties; they do not recognize the fact that species are only
+constant as long as the conditions in which they are placed are
+constant. Individuals vary and form breeds which blend so insensibly
+into the neighbouring species, that the distinctions made by naturalists
+between species and varieties, are for the most part arbitrary, and the
+confusion upon this head is becoming day by day more serious.[226]
+
+"Not perceiving that species will not vary as long as the conditions in
+which they are placed remain essentially unchanged, naturalists have
+supposed that each species was due to a special act of creation on the
+part of the Supreme Author of all things. Assuredly, nothing can exist
+but by the will of this Supreme Author, but can we venture to assign
+rules to him in the execution of his will? May not his infinite power
+have chosen to create an order of things which should evolve in
+succession all that we know as well as all that we do not know? Whether
+we regard species as created or evolved, the boundlessness of his power
+remains unchanged, and incapable of any diminution whatsoever. Let us
+then confine ourselves simply to observing the facts around us, and if
+we find any clue to the path taken by Nature, let us say fearlessly that
+it has pleased her Almighty Author that she should take this path.[227]
+
+"What applies to species applies also to genera; the further our
+knowledge extends, the more difficult do we find it to assign its exact
+limits to any genus. Gaps in our collections are being continually
+filled up, to the effacement of our dividing lines of demarcation. We
+are thus compelled to settle the limits of species and variety
+arbitrarily, and in a manner about which there will be constant
+disagreement. Naturalists are daily classifying new species which blend
+into one another so insensibly that there can hardly be found words to
+express the minute differences between them. The gaps that exist are
+simply due to our not having yet found the connecting species.
+
+"I do not, however, mean to say that animal life forms a simple and
+continuously blended series. Life is rather comparable to a
+ramification. In life we should see, as it were, a ramified continuity,
+if certain species had not been lost. The species which, according to
+this illustration, stands at the extremity of each bough, should bear a
+resemblance, at least upon one side, to the other neighbouring species;
+and this certainly is what we observe in nature.
+
+"Having arranged living forms in such an order as this, let us take one,
+and then, passing over several boughs, let us take another at some
+distance from it; a wide difference will now be seen between the species
+which the forms selected represent. Our earliest collections supplied us
+with such distantly allied forms only; now, however, that we have such
+an infinitely greater number of specimens, we can see that many of them
+blend one into the other without presenting noteworthy differences at
+any step."[228]
+
+This has been well extended by Mr. Darwin in a passage which
+begins:--"The affinities of all beings of the same class have sometimes
+been represented by a great tree. I believe that this simile largely
+speaks the truth."[229]
+
+"What, then," continues Lamarck, "can be the cause of all this? Surely
+the following: namely, that when individuals of any species change their
+situation, climate, mode of existence, or habits [conditions of life],
+their structure, form, organization, and in fact their whole being
+becomes little by little modified, till in the course of time it
+responds to the changes experienced by the creature."[230]
+
+In his preface Lamarck had already declared that "the thread which gives
+us a clue to the causes of the various phenomena of animal
+organization, in the manifold diversity of its developments, is to be
+found in the fact that Nature conserves in offspring all that their life
+and environments has developed in parents." Heredity--"the hidden bond
+of common descent"--tempered with the modifications induced by changed
+habits--which changed habits are due to new conditions and
+surroundings--this with Lamarck, as with Buffon and Dr. Darwin, is the
+explanation of the diversity of forms which we observe in nature. He now
+goes on to support this--briefly, in accordance with his design--but
+with sufficient detail to prevent all possibility of mistake about his
+meaning.
+
+"In the same climate differences in situation, and a greater or less
+degree of exposure, affect simply, in the first instance, the
+individuals exposed to them; but in the course of time, these repeated
+differences of surroundings in individuals which reproduce themselves
+continually under similar circumstances, induce differences which become
+part of their very nature; so that after many successive generations,
+these individuals, which were originally, we will say, of any given
+species, become transformed into a different one."[231]
+
+"Let us suppose that a grass growing in a low-lying meadow gets carried
+by some accident to the brow of a neighbouring hill, where the soil is
+still damp enough for the plant to be able to exist. Let it live here
+for many generations, till it has become thoroughly accustomed to its
+position, and let it then gradually find its way to the dry and almost
+arid soil of a mountain side; if the plant is able to stand the change
+and to perpetuate itself for many generations, it will have become so
+changed that botanists will class it as a new species."[232]
+
+"The same sort of process goes on in the animal kingdom, but animals are
+modified more slowly than plants."[233]
+
+The sterility of hybrids, to which Mr. Darwin devotes a great part of
+the ninth chapter of his 'Origin of Species,'[234] is then touched
+on--briefly, but sufficiently--as follows:--
+
+"The idea that species were fixed and immutable involved the belief that
+distinct species could not be fertile _inter se_. But unfortunately
+observation has proved, and daily proves, that this supposition is
+unfounded. Hybrids are very common among plants, and quite sufficiently
+so among animals to show that the boundaries of these so-called
+immutable species are not so well defined as has been supposed. Often,
+indeed, there is no offspring between the individuals of what are called
+distinct species, especially when they are widely different, and again,
+the offspring when produced is generally sterile; but when there is less
+difference between the parents, both the difficulty of breeding the
+hybrid, and its sterility when produced, are found to disappear. In this
+very power of crossing we see a source from which breeds, and ultimately
+species, may arise."[235]
+
+Mr. Darwin arrives at the same conclusion. He writes:--
+
+"We must, therefore, either give up the belief of the universal
+sterility of species when crossed, or we must look at this sterility in
+animals, not as an indelible characteristic, but as one capable of being
+removed by domestication.
+
+"Finally, on considering all the ascertained facts on the intercrossing
+of plants and animals, it may be concluded that some degree of
+sterility, both in first crosses and in hybrids, is an exceedingly
+general result, but that it cannot, under our present state of
+knowledge, be considered as absolutely universal."[236]
+
+Returning to Lamarck, we find him saying:--
+
+"The limits, therefore, of so-called species are not so constant and
+unvarying as is commonly supposed. Consider also the following. All
+living forms upon the face of the globe have been brought forth in the
+course of infinite time by the process of generation only. Nature has
+directly created none but the lowest organisms; these she is still
+producing every day, they being, as it were, the first sketches of life,
+and produced by what is called spontaneous generation. Organs have been
+gradually developed in these low forms, and these organs have in the
+course of time increased in diversity and complexity. The power of
+growth in each living body has given rise to various modes of
+reproduction, and thus progress, already acquired, has been preserved
+and handed down to offspring.[237] With sufficient time, favourable
+conditions of life [_circonstances_], successive changes in the surface
+of the globe, and the power of new surroundings and habits to modify the
+organs of living bodies, all animal and vegetable forms have been
+imperceptibly rendered such as we now see them. It follows that species
+will be constant only in relation to their environments, and cannot be
+as old as Nature herself.
+
+"But what are we to say of instinct? Can we suppose that all the tricks,
+cunning, artifices, precautions, patience, and skill of animals are due
+to evolution only? Must we not see here the design of an all-powerful
+Creator? No one certainly will assign limits to the Creator's power, but
+it is a bold thing to say that he did not choose to work in this way or
+that way, when his own handiwork declares to us that this is the way he
+chose. I find proof in Nature--meaning by nature the _ensemble_ of all
+that is,[238] but regarding her as herself the effect of an unknown
+first cause[239]--that she is the author of organization, life, and even
+sensation; that she has multiplied and diversified the organs and mental
+powers of the creatures which she sustains and reproduces; that she has
+developed in animals, through the sole instrumentality of sense of need
+as establishing and directing their habits, all actions and all habits,
+from the simplest up to those which constitute instinct, industry, and
+finally reason.[240]
+
+"Against this it is alleged that we have no reason to believe species to
+have changed within any known era. The skeletons of some Egyptian birds,
+preserved two or three thousand years ago, differ in no particular from
+the same kind of creatures at the present day. But this is what we
+should expect, inasmuch as the position and climate of Egypt itself do
+not appear to have changed. If the conditions of life have not varied,
+why should the species subjected to those conditions have done so?
+Moreover, birds can move about freely, and if one place does not suit
+them they can find another that does. All that these Egyptian mummies
+really prove is, that there were animals in Egypt two or three thousand
+years ago which are like the animals of to-day; but how short a space is
+two or three thousand years, as compared with the time which Nature has
+had at her disposal! A time infinitely great _quâ_ man, is still
+infinitely short _quâ_ Nature.[241]
+
+"If, however, we turn to animals under confinement, we find immediate
+proof that the most startling changes are capable of being produced
+after some generations of changed habits. In the sixth chapter we shall
+have occasion to observe the power of changed conditions
+[_circonstances_] to develop new desires in animals, and to induce new
+courses of action; we shall see the power which these new actions will
+have, after a certain amount of repetition, to engender new habits and
+tendencies; and we shall also note the effects of use and disuse in
+either fortifying and developing an organ, or in diminishing it and
+causing it to disappear. With plants under domestication, we shall find
+corresponding phenomena. Species will thus appear to be unchangeable for
+comparatively short periods only."[242]
+
+It is interesting to see that Mr. Darwin lays no less stress on the
+study of animals and plants under domestication than Buffon, Dr. Darwin,
+and Lamarck. Indeed, all four writers appear to have been in great
+measure led to their conclusions by this very study. "At the
+commencement of my investigations," writes Mr. Darwin, "it seemed to me
+probable that a careful study of domesticated animals and of cultivated
+plants would offer the best chance of making out this obscure problem.
+Nor have I been disappointed; in this and in all other perplexing cases,
+I have invariably found that our knowledge, imperfect though it be, of
+variation under domestication, afforded the best and safest clue. I may
+venture to express my conviction of the high value of such studies,
+though they have been very commonly neglected by naturalists."[243]
+
+In justice to the three writers whom I have named, it should be borne in
+mind that they also ventured to express their conviction of the high
+value of these studies. Buffon, indeed, as we have seen, gives animals
+under domestication the foremost place in his work. He does not treat of
+wild animals till he has said all he has to say upon our most important
+domesticated breeds,--on whose descent from one or two wild stocks he is
+never weary of insisting. It was doubtless because of the opportunities
+they afforded him for demonstrating the plasticity of living organism
+that the most important position in his work was assigned to them.
+
+Lamarck professes himself unable to make up his mind about extinct
+species; how far, that is to say, whole breeds must be considered as
+having died out, or how far the difference between so many now living
+and fossil forms is due to the fact that our living species are
+modified descendants of the fossil ones. Such large parts of the globe
+were still practically unknown in Lamarck's time, and the recent
+discovery of the ornithorhynchus has raised such hopes as to what might
+yet be found in Australia, that he was inclined to think that only such
+creatures as man found hurtful to him, as, for example, the megatherium
+and the mastodon, had become truly extinct, nor was he, it would seem,
+without a hope that these would yet one day be discovered. The climatic
+and geological changes that have occurred in past ages, would, he
+believed, account for all the difference which we observe between living
+and fossil forms, inasmuch as they would have changed the conditions
+under which animals lived, and therefore their habits and organs would
+have become correspondingly modified. He therefore rather wondered to
+find so much, than so little, resemblance between existing and fossil
+forms.
+
+Buffon took a juster view of this matter; it will be remembered that he
+concluded his remarks upon the mammoth by saying that many species had
+doubtless disappeared without leaving any living descendants, while
+others had left descendants which had become modified.
+
+Lamarck anticipated Lyell in supposing geological changes to have been
+due almost entirely to the continued operation of the causes which we
+observe daily at work in nature: thus he writes:--
+
+"Every observer knows that the surface of the earth has changed; every
+valley has been exalted, the crooked has been made straight, and the
+rough places plain; not even is climate itself stable. Hence changed
+conditions; and these involve changed needs and habits of life; if such
+changes can give rise to modifications or developments, it is clear that
+every living body must vary, especially in its outward character, though
+the variation can only be perceptible after several generations.
+
+"It is not surprising then that so few living species should be
+represented in the geologic record. It is surprising rather that we
+should find any living species represented at all.[244]
+
+"Catastrophes have indeed been supposed, and they are an easy way of
+getting out of the difficulty; but unfortunately, they are not supported
+by evidence. Local catastrophes have undoubtedly occurred, as
+earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, of which the effects can be
+sufficiently seen; but why suppose any universal catastrophe, when the
+ordinary progress of nature suffices to account for the phenomena?
+Nature is never _brusque_. She proceeds slowly step by step,
+and this with occasional local catastrophes will remove all our
+difficulties."[245]
+
+In his fourth chapter Lamarck points out that animals move themselves,
+or parts of themselves, not through impulsion or movement communicated
+to them as from one billiard ball to another, but by reason of a cause
+which excites their irritability, which cause is within some animals and
+forms part of them, while it is wholly outside of others.[246]
+
+I should again warn the reader to be on his guard against the opinion
+that any animals can be said to live if they have no "inward motion" of
+their own which prompts them to act. We cannot call anything alive which
+moves only as wind and water may make it move, but without any impulse
+from within to execute the smallest action and without any capacity of
+feeling. Such a creature does not look sufficiently like the other
+things which we call alive; it should be first shown to us, so that we
+may make up our minds whether the facts concerning it have been truly
+stated, and if so, what it most resembles; we may then classify it
+accordingly.
+
+"Some animals change their place by creeping, some by walking, some by
+running or leaping; others again fly, while others live in the water and
+swim.
+
+"The origin of these different kinds of locomotion is to be found in the
+two great wants of animal life: 1, the means of procuring food; 2, the
+search after mates with a view to reproduction.
+
+"Since then the power of locomotion was a matter affecting their
+individual self-preservation, as well as that of their race, the
+existence of the want led to the means of its being gratified."[247]
+
+Lamarck is practically at one with Dr. Erasmus Darwin, that modification
+will commonly travel along three main lines which spring from the need
+of reproduction, of procuring food, and (Dr. Darwin has added) the power
+of self-protection; but Dr. Darwin's treatment of this part of his
+subject is more lucid and satisfactory than Lamarck's, inasmuch as he
+immediately brings forward instances of various modifications which have
+in each case been due to one of the three main desires above specified,
+namely, reproduction, subsistence, and self-defence.
+
+Lamarck concludes the chapter with some passages which show that he was
+alive--as what Frenchman could fail to be after Buffon had written?--to
+the consequences which must follow from the geometrical ratio of
+increase, and to the struggle for existence, with consequent survival of
+the fittest, which must always be one of the conditions of any wild
+animal's existence. The paragraphs, indeed, on this subject are taken
+with very little alteration from Buffon's work. As Lamarck's theory is
+based upon the fact that it is on the nature of these conditions that
+the habits and consequently the structure of any animal will depend, he
+must have seen that the shape of many of its organs must vary greatly in
+correlation to the conditions to which it was subjected in the matter of
+self-protection. I do not see, then, that there is any substantial
+difference between the positions taken by Dr. Erasmus Darwin and by
+Lamarck in this respect.
+
+"Let us conclude," he writes, "by showing the means employed by nature
+to prevent the number of her creatures from injuring the conservation of
+what has been produced already, and of the general order which should
+subsist.[248]
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"In consequence of the extremely rapid rate of increase of the smaller,
+and especially of the most imperfect, animals, their numbers would
+become so great as to prove injurious to the conservation of breeds, and
+to the progress already made towards more perfect organization, unless
+nature had taken precautions to keep them down within certain fixed
+limits which she cannot exceed."[249]
+
+This seems to contain, and in a nutshell, as much of the essence of what
+Mr. Herbert Spencer and Mr. Charles Darwin have termed the survival of
+the fittest in the struggle for existence, as was necessary for
+Lamarck's purpose.
+
+To Lamarck, as to Dr. Darwin and Buffon, it was perfectly clear that the
+facts, that animals have to find their food under varying circumstances,
+and that they must defend themselves in all manner of varying ways
+against other creatures which would eat them if they could, were simply
+some of the conditions of their existence. In saying that the
+surrounding circumstances--which amount to the conditions of
+existence--determined the direction in which any plant or animal should
+be slowly modified, Lamarck includes as a matter of course the fact that
+the "stronger and better armed should eat the weaker," and thus survive
+and bear offspring which would inherit the strength and better armour of
+its parents. Nothing therefore can be more at variance with the truth
+than to represent Lamarck and the other early evolutionists as ignoring
+the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest; these are
+inevitably implied whenever they use the word "_circonstances_" or
+environment, as I will more fully show later on, and are also expressly
+called attention to by the greater number of them.[250]
+
+"Animals, except those which are herbivorous, prey upon one another; and
+the herbivorous are exposed to the attacks of the flesh-eating races.
+
+"_The strongest and best armed for attack eat the weaker_, and the
+greater kinds eat the smaller. Individuals of the same race rarely eat
+one another; they war only with other races than their own."[251]
+
+Dr. Darwin here again has the advantage over Lamarck; for he has pointed
+out how the males contend with one another for the possession of the
+females, which I do not find Lamarck to have done, though he would at
+once have admitted the fact. Lamarck continues:--
+
+"The smaller kinds of animals breed so numerously and so rapidly that
+they would people the globe to the exclusion of other forms of life, if
+nature had not limited their inconceivable multitude. As, however, they
+are the prey of a number of other creatures, live but a short time, and
+perish easily with cold, they are kept always within the proportions
+necessary for the maintenance both of their own and of other races.[252]
+
+"As regards the larger and stronger animals, they would become dominant,
+and be injurious to the conservation of many other races, if they could
+multiply in too great numbers. But as it is, they devour one another,
+and breed but slowly, and few at a birth, so that equilibrium is duly
+preserved among them. Man alone is the unquestionably dominant animal,
+but men war among themselves, so that it may be safely said the world
+will never be peopled to its utmost capacity."[253]
+
+In his fifth chapter Lamarck returns to the then existing arrangement
+and classification of animals.
+
+"Naturalists having remarked that many species, and some genera and even
+families present characters which as it were isolate them, it has been
+imagined that these approached or drew further from each other according
+as their points of agreement or difference seemed greater or less when
+set down as it were on a chart or map. They regard the small well-marked
+series which have been styled natural families, as groups which should
+be placed between the isolated species and their nearest neighbours so
+as to form a kind of reticulation. This idea, which some of our modern
+naturalists have held to be admirable, is evidently mistaken, and will
+be discarded on a profounder and more extended knowledge of
+organization, and more especially when the distinction has been duly
+drawn between what is due to the action of special conditions and to
+general advance of organization."[254]
+
+I take it that Lamarck is here attempting to express what Mr. Charles
+Darwin has rendered much more clearly in the following excellent
+passage:--
+
+"It should always be borne in mind what sort of intermediate forms must,
+on the theory [what theory?], have formerly existed. I have found it
+difficult when looking at any two species to avoid picturing to myself
+forms _directly_ intermediate between them. But this is a wholly false
+view; we should always look for forms intermediate between each species
+and a common but unknown progenitor; and the progenitor will generally
+have differed in some respects from all its modified descendants. To
+give a simple illustration: the fantail and pouter pigeons are both
+descended from the rock pigeon. If we possessed all the intermediate
+varieties which have ever existed, we should have an extremely close
+series, between both and the rock pigeon; but we should have no
+varieties directly intermediate between the fantail and the pouter;
+none, for instance, combining a tail somewhat expanded with a crop
+somewhat enlarged, the characteristic features of these two breeds.
+These two breeds, moreover, have become so much modified that, if we had
+no historical or indirect evidence regarding their origin, it would not
+have been possible to have determined, from a mere comparison of their
+structure with that of the rock pigeon C. livia, whether they had
+descended from this species, or from some other allied form, as C.
+oenas.
+
+"So with natural species, if we look to forms very distinct--for
+instance, to the horse and the tapir--we have no reason to suppose that
+links directly intermediate between them ever existed, but between each
+and an unknown common parent. The common parent will have had in its
+whole organization much general resemblance to the tapir and the horse;
+but in some points of structure it may have differed considerably from
+both, even perhaps more than they differ from each other. Hence in all
+such cases we should be unable to recognize the parent form of any two
+or more species, even if we closely compared the structure of the parent
+with that of its modified descendants, unless at the same time we had a
+nearly perfect chain of the intermediate links.
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"By the theory of natural selection [surely this is a slip for "by the
+theory of descent with modification"] all living species have been
+connected with the parent species of each genus, by differences not
+greater than we see between the natural and domestic varieties of the
+same species at the present day; and their parent species, now generally
+extinct, have in their turn been similarly connected with more ancient
+forms, and so on backwards, always converging to the common ancestor of
+each great class; so that the number of intermediate and transitional
+links between all living and extinct species must have been
+inconceivably great. But assuredly if this theory [the theory of descent
+with modification or that of "natural selection"?] be true, such have
+lived upon the earth."[255]
+
+To return, however, to Lamarck.
+
+"Though Nature," he continues, "in the course of long time has evolved
+all animals and plants in a true scale of progression, the steps of this
+scale can be perceived only in the principal groups of living forms; it
+cannot be perceived in species nor even in genera. The reason of this
+lies in the extreme diversity of the surroundings in which each
+different race of animals and plants has existed. These surroundings
+have often been out of harmony with the growing organization of the
+plants and animals themselves; this has led to anomalies, and, as it
+were, digressions, which the mere development of organization by itself
+could not have occasioned."[256] Or, in other words, to that divergency
+of type which is so well insisted on by Mr. Charles Darwin.
+
+"It is only therefore the principal groups of animal and vegetable life
+which can be arranged in a vertical line of descent; species and even
+genera cannot always be so--for these contain beings whose organization
+has been dependent on the possession of such and such a special system
+of essential organs.
+
+"Each great and separate group has its own system of essential organs,
+and it is these systems which can be seen to descend, within the limits
+of the group, from their most complex to their simplest form. But each
+organ, considered individually, does not descend by equally regular
+gradation; the gradations are less and less regular according as the
+organ is of less importance, and is more susceptible of modification by
+the conditions which surround it. Organs of small importance, and not
+essential to existence, are not always either perfected or degraded at
+an equal rate, so that in observing all the species of any class we find
+an organ in one species in the highest degree of perfection, while
+another organ, which in this same species is impoverished or very
+imperfect, is highly developed in another species of the same
+group."[257]
+
+The facts maintained in the preceding paragraph are in great measure
+supported by Mr. Charles Darwin, who, however, assigns their cause to
+natural selection.
+
+Mr. Darwin writes, "Ordinary specific characters are more variable than
+generic;" and again, a little lower down, "The points in which all the
+species of a genus resemble each other, and in which they differ from
+allied genera, are called generic characters; and these characters may
+be attributed to inheritance from a common progenitor, for it can rarely
+happen that natural selection will have modified several distinct
+species fitted to more or less widely different habits, in exactly the
+same manner; and as these so called generic characters have been
+inherited from before the period when the several species first branched
+off from their common progenitor, and subsequently have not varied or
+come to differ in any degree, or only in a slight degree, it is not
+probable that they should vary at the present day. On the other hand,
+the points in which species differ from other species of the same genus
+are called specific characters; and as these specific characters have
+varied and come to differ since the period when the species branched off
+from a common progenitor, it is probable that they should still often be
+in some degree variable, or at least more variable than those parts of
+the organization which have for a very long time remained
+constant."[258]
+
+The fact, then, that it is specific characters which vary most is agreed
+upon by both Lamarck and Mr. Darwin. Lamarck, however, maintains that it
+is these specific characters which are most capable of being affected by
+the habits of the creature, and that it is for this reason they will be
+most variable, while Mr. Darwin simply says they _are_ most variable,
+and that, this being so, the favourable variations will be preserved and
+accumulated--an assertion which Lamarck would certainly not demur to.
+
+"Irregular degrees of perfection," says Lamarck, "and degradation in the
+less essential organs, are due to the fact that these are more liable
+than the more essential ones to the influence of external circumstances:
+these induce corresponding differences in the more outward parts of the
+animal, and give rise to such considerable and singular difference in
+species, that instead of being able to arrange them in a direct line of
+descent, as we can arrange the main groups, these species often form
+lateral ramifications round about the main groups to which they belong,
+and in their extreme development are truly isolated."[259]
+
+In his summary of the second chapter of his 'Origin of Species,' Mr.
+Darwin well confirms this when he says, "In large genera the species are
+apt to be closely, but unequally, allied together, forming little
+clusters round other species."
+
+"A longer time," says Lamarck, "and a greater influence of surrounding
+conditions, is necessary in order to modify interior organs.
+Nevertheless we see that Nature does pass from one system to another
+without any sudden leap, when circumstances require it, provided the
+systems are not too far apart. Her method is to proceed from the more
+simple to the more complex.[260]
+
+"She does this not only in the race, but in the individual." Here
+Lamarck, like Dr. Erasmus Darwin, shows his perception of the importance
+of embryology in throwing light on the affinities of animals--as since
+more fully insisted on by the author of the 'Vestiges of Creation,' and
+by Mr. Darwin,[261] as well as by other writers. "Breathing through
+gills is nearer to breathing through lungs than breathing through
+trachea is. Not only do we see Nature pass from gills to lungs in
+families which are not too far apart, as may be seen by considering the
+case of fishes and reptiles; but she does so during the existence of a
+single individual, which may successively make use both of the one and
+of the other system. The frog while yet a tadpole breathes through
+gills; on becoming a frog it breathes through lungs; but we cannot find
+that Nature in any case passes from trachea to lungs."[262]
+
+Lamarck now rapidly reviews previous classifications, and propounds his
+own, which stands thus:--I. Vertebrata, consisting of Mammals, Birds,
+Fishes, and Reptiles. II. Invertebrata, consisting of Molluscs,
+Centipedes, Annelids, Crustacea, Arachnids, Insects, Worms, Radiata,
+Polyps, Infusoria.
+
+"The degradation of organism," he concludes, "in this descending scale
+is not perfectly even, and cannot be made so by any classification,
+nevertheless there is such evidence of sustained degradation in the
+principal groups as must point in the direction of some underlying
+general principle."[263]
+
+Lamarck's sixth chapter is headed "Degradation and Simplification of the
+Animal Chain as we proceed downwards from the most complex to the most
+simple Organisms."
+
+"This is a positive fact, and results from the operation of a constant
+law of nature; but a disturbing cause, which can be easily recognized,
+varies the regular operation of the law from one end to the other of the
+chain of life.[264]
+
+"We can see, nevertheless, that special organs become more and more
+simple the lower we descend; that they become changed, impoverished, and
+attenuated little by little; that they lose their local centres, and
+finally become definitely annihilated before we reach the lowest
+extremity of the chain.[265]
+
+"As has been said already, the degradation of organism is not always
+regular; such and such an organ often fails or changes suddenly, and
+sometimes in its changes assumes forms which are not allied with any
+others by steps that we can recognize. An organ may disappear and
+reappear several times before being entirely lost: but this is what we
+might expect, for the cause which has led to the evolution of living
+organisms has evolved many varieties, due to external influences.
+Nevertheless, looking at organization broadly, we observe a descending
+scale."[266]
+
+"If the tendency to progressive development was the only cause which had
+influenced the forms and organs of animals, development would have been
+regular throughout the animal chain; but it has not been so: Nature is
+compelled to submit her productions to an environment which acts upon
+them, and variation in environment will induce variation in organism:
+this is the true cause of the sometimes strange deviations from the
+direct line of progression which we shall have to observe.[267]
+
+"If Nature had only called aquatic beings into existence, and if these
+beings had lived always in the same climate, in the same kind of water,
+and at the same depth, the organization of these animals would doubtless
+have presented an even and regular scale of development. But there has
+been fresh water, salt water, running and stagnant water, warm and cold
+climates, an infinite variety of depth: animals exposed to these and
+other differences in their surroundings have varied in accordance with
+them.[268] In like manner those animals which have been gradually fitted
+for living in air instead of water have been subjected to an endless
+diversity in their surroundings. The following law, then, may be now
+propounded, namely:--
+
+"_That anomalies in the development of organism are due to the
+influences of the environment and to the habits of the creature._[269]
+
+"Some have said that the anomalies above mentioned are so great
+as to disprove the existence of any scale which should indicate
+descent; but the nearer we approach species, the smaller we see
+differences become, till with species itself we find them at times
+almost imperceptible."[270]
+
+Lamarck here devotes about seventy pages to a survey of the animal
+kingdom in its entirety, beginning with the mammals and ending with the
+infusoria. He points out the manner in which organ after organ
+disappears as we descend the scale, till we are left with a form which,
+though presenting all the characteristics of life, has yet no special
+organ whatever. I am obliged to pass this classification over, but do so
+very unwillingly, for it is illustrative of Lamarck, both at his best
+and at his worst.
+
+The seventh chapter is headed--
+
+"On the influence of their surroundings on the actions and habits of
+animals, and on the effect of these habits and actions in modifying
+their organization."
+
+"The effect of different conditions of our organization upon our
+character, tendencies, actions, and even our ideas, has been often
+remarked, but no attention has yet been paid to that of our actions and
+habits upon our organization itself. These actions and habits depend
+entirely upon our relations to the surroundings in which we habitually
+exist; we shall have occasion, therefore, to see how great is the effect
+of environment upon organization.
+
+"But for our having domesticated plants and animals we should never have
+arrived at the perception of this truth; for though the influence of the
+environment is at all times and everywhere active upon all living
+bodies, its effects are so gradual that they can only be perceived over
+long periods of time.[271]
+
+"Taking the chain of life in the inverse order of nature--that is to
+say, from man downwards--we certainly perceive a sustained but irregular
+degradation of organism, with an increasing simplicity both in organism
+and faculties.
+
+"This fact should throw light upon the order taken by nature, but it
+does not show us why the gradation is so irregular, nor why throughout
+its extent we find so many anomalies or digressions which have
+apparently no order at all in their manifold varieties.[272] The
+explanation of this must be sought for in the infinite diversity of
+circumstances under which organisms have been developed. On the one
+hand, there is a tendency to a regular progressive development; on the
+other, there is a host of widely different surroundings which tend
+continually to destroy the regularity of development.
+
+"It is necessary to explain what is meant by such expressions as 'the
+effect of its environment upon the form and organization of an animal.'
+It must not be supposed that its surroundings directly effect any
+modification whatever in the form and organization of an animal.[273]
+Great changes in surroundings involve great changes in the wants of
+animals, and these changes in their wants involve corresponding changes
+in their actions. If these new wants become permanent, or of very long
+duration, the animals contract new habits, which last as long as the
+wants which gave rise to them.[274] A great change in surroundings, if
+it persist for a long time, must plainly, therefore, involve the
+contraction of new habits. These new habits in their turn involve a
+preference for the employment of such and such an organ over such and
+such another organ, and in certain cases the total disuse of an organ
+which is no longer wanted. This is perfectly self-evident.[275]
+
+"On the one hand, new wants have rendered a part necessary, which part
+has accordingly been created by a succession of efforts: use has kept it
+in existence, gradually strengthening and developing it till in the end
+it attains a considerable degree of perfection. On the other, new
+circumstances having in some cases rendered such or such a part useless,
+disuse has led to its gradually ceasing to receive the development which
+the other parts attain to; on this it becomes reduced, and in time
+disappears.[276]
+
+"Plants have neither actions nor habits properly so called, nevertheless
+they change in a changed environment as much as animals do. This is due
+to changes in nutrition, absorption and transpiration, to degrees of
+heat, light, and moisture, and to the preponderance over others which
+certain of the vital functions attain to."
+
+Lamarck is led into the statement that plants have neither actions nor
+habits, by his theories about the nervous system and the brain. Plain
+matter-of-fact people will prefer the view taken by Buffon, Dr. Darwin,
+and, more recently, by Mr. Francis Darwin, that there is no radical
+difference between plants and animals.
+
+"The differences between well-nourished and ill-nourished plants become
+little by little very noticeable. If individuals, whether animal or
+vegetable, are continually ill-fed and exposed to hardships for several
+generations, their organization becomes eventually modified, and the
+modification is transmitted until a race is formed which is quite
+distinct from those descendants of the common parent stock which have
+been placed in favourable circumstances.[277] In a dry spring the meagre
+and stunted herbage seeds early. When, on the other hand, the spring is
+warm but with occasional days of rain, there is an excellent hay-crop.
+If, however, any cause perpetuates unfavourable circumstances, plants
+will vary correspondingly, first in appearance and general conditions,
+and then in several particulars of their actual character, certain
+organs having received more development than others, these differences
+will in the course of time become hereditary.[278]
+
+"Nature changes a plant or animal's surroundings gradually--man
+sometimes does so suddenly. All botanists know that plants vary so
+greatly under domestication that in time they become hardly
+recognizable. They undergo so much change that botanists do not at all
+like describing domesticated varieties. Wheat itself is an example.
+Where can wheat be found as a wild plant, unless it have escaped from
+some neighbouring cultivation? Where are our cauliflowers, our lettuces,
+to be found wild, with the same characters as they possess in our
+kitchen gardens?
+
+"The same applies to our domesticated breeds of animals. What a variety
+of breeds has not man produced among fowls and pigeons, of which we can
+find no undomesticated examples!"[279]
+
+The foregoing remarks on the effects of domestication seem to have been
+inspired by those given p. 123 and pp. 168, 169 of this volume.[280]
+
+"Some, doubtless, have changed less than others, owing to their having
+undergone a less protracted domestication, and a less degree of change
+in climate; nevertheless, though our ducks and geese, for example, are
+of the same type as their wild progenitors, they have lost the power of
+long and sustained flight, and have become in other respects
+considerably modified.[281]
+
+"A bird, after having been kept five or six years in a cage, cannot on
+being liberated fly like its brethren which have been always free. Such
+a change in a single lifetime has not effected any transmissible
+modification of type; but captivity, continued during many successive
+generations, would undoubtedly do so. If to the effects of captivity
+there be added also those of changed climate, changed food, and changed
+actions for the purpose of laying hold of food, these, united together
+and become constant, would in the course of time develop an entirely new
+breed."
+
+This, again, is almost identical with the passage from Buffon,[282] p.
+148 of this volume. See also pp. 169, 170.
+
+"Where can our many domestic breeds of dogs be found in a wild state?
+Where are our bulldogs, greyhounds, spaniels, and lapdogs, breeds
+presenting differences which, in wild animals, would be certainly called
+specific? These are all descended from an animal nearly allied to the
+wolf, if not from the wolf itself. Such an animal was domesticated by
+early man, taken at successive intervals into widely different climates,
+trained to different habits, carried by man in his migrations as a
+precious capital into the most distant countries, and crossed from time
+to time with other breeds which had been developed in similar ways.
+Hence our present multiform breeds."[283]
+
+Here, also, it is impossible to forget Buffon's passages on the dog,
+given pp. 121, 122. See also p. 223.
+
+"Observe the gradations which are found between the _ranunculus
+aquatilis_ and the _ranunculus hederaceus_: the latter--a land
+plant--resembles those parts of the former which grow above the surface
+of the water, but not those that grow beneath it.[284]
+
+"The modifications of animals arise more slowly than those of plants;
+they are therefore less easily watched, and less easily assignable to
+their true causes, but they arise none the less surely. As regards these
+causes, the most potent is diversity of the surroundings in which they
+exist, but there are also many others.[285]
+
+"The climate of the same place changes, and the place itself changes
+with changed climate and exposure, but so slowly that we imagine all
+lands to be stable in their conditions. This, however, is not true;
+climatic and other changes induce corresponding changes in environment
+and habit, and these modify the structure of the living forms which are
+subjected to them. Indeed, we see intermediate forms and species
+corresponding to intermediate conditions.
+
+"To the above causes must be ascribed the infinite variety of existing
+forms, independently of any tendency towards progressive
+development."[286]
+
+The reader has now before him a fair sample of "the well-known doctrine
+of inherited habit as advanced by Lamarck."[287] In what way, let me ask
+in passing, does "the case of neuter insects" prove "demonstrative"
+against it, unless it is held equally demonstrative against Mr. Darwin's
+own position? Lamarck continues:--
+
+"The character of any habitable quarter of the globe is _quâ_ man
+constant: the constancy of type in species is therefore also _quâ_ man
+persistent. But this is an illusion. We establish, therefore, the three
+following propositions:--
+
+"1. That every considerable and sustained change in the surroundings of
+any animal involves a real change in its needs.
+
+"2. That such change of needs involves the necessity of changed action
+in order to satisfy these needs, and, in consequence, of new
+habits.[288]
+
+"3. It follows that such and such parts, formerly less used, are now
+more frequently employed, and in consequence become more highly
+developed; new parts also become insensibly evolved in the creature by
+its own efforts from within.
+
+"From the foregoing these two general laws may be deduced:--
+
+"_Firstly. That in every animal which has not passed its limit of
+development, the more frequent and sustained employment of any organ
+develops and aggrandizes it, giving it a power proportionate to the
+duration of its employment, while the same organ in default of constant
+use becomes insensibly weakened and deteriorated, decreasing
+imperceptibly in power until it finally disappears._[289]
+
+"_Secondly. That these gains or losses of organic development, due to
+use or disuse, are transmitted to offspring, provided they have been
+common to both sexes, or to the animals from which the offspring have
+descended._"[290]
+
+Lamarck now sets himself to establish the fact that animals have
+developed modifications which have been transmitted to their offspring.
+
+"Naturalists," he says, "have believed that the possession of certain
+organs has led to their employment. This is not so: it is need and use
+which have developed the organs, and even called them into existence."
+[I have already sufficiently insisted that it is impossible to dispense
+with either of these two views. Demand and Supply have gone hand in
+hand, each reacting upon the other.] "Otherwise a special act of
+creation would be necessary for every different combination of
+conditions; and it would be also necessary that the conditions should
+remain always constant.
+
+"If this were really so we should have no racehorses like those of
+England, nor drayhorses so heavy in build and so unlike the racehorse;
+for there are no such breeds in a wild state. For the same reason, we
+should have no turnspit dogs with crooked legs, no greyhounds nor
+water-spaniels; we should have no tailless breed of fowls nor fantail
+pigeons, &c. Nor should we be able to cultivate wild plants in our
+gardens, for any length of time we please, without fear of their
+changing.
+
+"'Habit,' says the proverb, 'is a second nature'; what possible meaning
+can this proverb have, if descent with modification is unfounded?[291]
+
+"As regards the circumstances which give rise to variation, the
+principal are climatic changes, different temperatures of any of a
+creature's environments, differences of abode, of habit, of the most
+frequent actions; and lastly, of the means of obtaining food,
+self-defence, reproduction, &c., &c."[292]
+
+Here we have absolute agreement with Dr. Erasmus Darwin,[293] except
+that there seems a tendency in this passage to assign more effect to the
+direct action of conditions than is common with Lamarck. He seems to be
+mixing Buffon and Dr. Darwin.
+
+"In consequence of change in any of these respects, the faculties of an
+animal become extended and enlarged by use: they become diversified
+through the long continuance of the new habits, until little by little
+their whole structure and nature, as well as the organs originally
+affected, participate in the effects of all these influences, and are
+modified to an extent which is capable of transmission to
+offspring."[294]
+
+This sentence alone would be sufficient to show that Lamarck was as much
+alive as Buffon and Dr. Darwin were before him, to the fact that one of
+the most important conditions of an animal's life, is the relation in
+which it stands to the other inhabitants of the same neighbourhood--from
+which the survival of the fittest follows as a self-evident proposition.
+Nothing, therefore, can be more unfounded than the attempt, so
+frequently made by writers who have not read Lamarck, or who think
+others may be trusted not to do so, to represent him as maintaining
+something perfectly different from what is maintained by modern writers
+on evolution. The difference, in so far as there is any difference, is
+one of detail only. Lamarck would not have hesitated to admit, that, if
+animals are modified in a direction which is favourable to them, they
+will have a better chance of surviving and transmitting their
+favourable modifications. In like manner, our modern evolutionists
+should allow that animals are modified not because they subsequently
+survive, but because they have done this or that which has led to their
+modification, and hence to their surviving.
+
+Having established that animals and plants are capable of being
+materially changed in the course of a few generations, Lamarck proceeds
+to show that their modification is due to changed distribution of the
+use and disuse of their organs at any given time.
+
+"_The disuse of an organ_," he writes, "_if it becomes constant in
+consequence of new habits, gradually reduces the organ, and leads
+finally to its disappearance_."[295]
+
+"Thus whales have lost their teeth, though teeth are still found in the
+embryo. So, again, M. Geoffroy has discovered in birds the groove where
+teeth were formerly placed. The ant-eater, which belongs to a genus that
+has long relinquished the habit of masticating its food, is as toothless
+as the whale."[296]
+
+Then are adduced further examples of rudimentary organs, which will be
+given in another place, and need not be repeated here. Speaking of the
+fact, however, that serpents have no legs, though they are higher in the
+scale of life than the batrachians, Lamarck attributes this "to the
+continued habit of trying to squeeze through very narrow places, where
+four feet would be in the way, and would be very little good to them,
+inasmuch as more than four would be wanted in order to turn bodies that
+were already so much elongated."[297]
+
+If it be asked why, on Lamarck's theory, if serpents wanted more legs
+they could not have made them, the answer is that the attempt to do this
+would be to unsettle a question which had been already so long settled,
+that it would be impossible to reopen it. The animal must adapt itself
+to four legs, or must get rid of all or some of them if it does not like
+them; but it has stood so long committed to the theory that if there are
+to be legs at all, there are to be not more than four, that it is
+impossible for it now to see this matter in any other light.
+
+The experiments of M. Brown Séquard on guinea pigs, quoted by Mr.
+Darwin,[298] suggest that the form of the serpent may be due to its
+having lost its legs by successive accidents in squeezing through narrow
+places, and that the wounds having been followed by disease, the
+creature may have bitten the limbs off, in which case the loss might
+have been very readily transmitted to offspring; the animal would
+accordingly take to a sinuous mode of progression that would doubtless
+in time elongate the body still further. M. Brown Séquard "carefully
+recorded" thirteen cases, and saw even a greater number, in which the
+loss of toes by guinea pigs which had gnawed their own toes off, was
+immediately transmitted to offspring. Accidents followed by disease seem
+to have been somewhat overlooked as a possible means of modification.
+The missing forefinger to the hand of the potto[299] would appear at
+first sight to have been lost by some such mishap. Returning to Lamarck,
+we find him saying:--
+
+"Even in the lifetime of a single individual we can see organic changes
+in consequence of changed habits. Thus M. Tenon has constantly found the
+intestinal canal of drunkards to be greatly shorter than that of people
+who do not drink. This is due to the fact that habitual drunkards eat
+but little solid food, so that the stomach and intestines are more
+rarely distended. The same applies to people who lead studious and
+sedentary lives. The stomachs of such persons and of drunkards have
+little power, and a small quantity will fill them, while those of men
+who take plenty of exercise remain in full vigour and are even
+increased."[300]
+
+It becomes now necessary to establish the converse proposition, namely
+that:--
+
+"_The frequent use of an organ increases its power; it even develops the
+organ itself, and makes it acquire dimensions and powers which it is not
+found to have in animals which make no use of such an organ._
+
+"In support of this we see that the bird whose needs lead it to the
+water, in which to find its prey, extends the toes of its feet when it
+wants to strike the water, and move itself upon the surface. The skin at
+the base of the toes of such a bird contracts the habit of extending
+itself from continual practice. To this cause, in the course of time,
+must be attributed the wide membrane which unites the toes of ducks,
+geese, &c. The same efforts to swim, that is to say, to push the water
+for the purpose of moving itself forward, has extended the membrane
+between the toes of frogs, turtles, the otter, and the beaver."[301]
+
+[This is taken, I believe, from Dr. Darwin or Buffon, but I have lost
+the passage, if, indeed, I ever found it. It had been met by Paley some
+years earlier (1802) in the following:--
+
+"There is nothing in the action of swimming as carried on by a bird upon
+the surface of the water that should generate a membrane between the
+toes. As to that membrane it is an action of constant resistance.... The
+web feet of amphibious quadrupeds, seals, otters, &c., fall under the
+same observation."[302]]
+
+"On the other hand those birds whose habits lead them to perch on trees,
+and which have sprung from parents that have long contracted this habit,
+have their toes shaped in a perfectly different manner. Their claws
+become lengthened, sharpened, and curved, so as to enable the creature
+to lay hold of the boughs on which it so often rests. The shore bird
+again, which does not like to swim, is nevertheless continually obliged
+to enter the water when searching after its prey. Not liking to plunge
+its body in the water, it makes every endeavour to extend and lengthen
+its lower limbs. In the course of long time these birds have come to be
+elevated, as it were, on stilts, and have got long legs bare of feathers
+as far as their thighs, and often still higher. The same bird is
+continually trying to extend its neck in order to fish without wetting
+its body, and in the course of time its neck has become modified
+accordingly.[303]
+
+"Swans, indeed, and geese have short legs and very long necks, but this
+is because they plunge their heads as low in the water as they can in
+their search for aquatic larvæ and other animalcules, but make no effort
+to lengthen their legs."[304]
+
+This too is taken from some passage which I have either never seen or
+have lost sight of. Paley never gives a reference to an opponent, though
+he frequently does so when quoting an author on his own side, but I can
+hardly doubt that he had in his mind the passage from which Lamarck in
+1809 derived the foregoing, when in 1802 he wrote § 5 of chapter xv. and
+the latter half of chapter xxiii. of his 'Natural Theology.'
+
+"The tongues of the ant-eater and the woodpecker," continues Lamarck,
+"have become elongated from similar causes. Humming birds catch hold of
+things with their tongues; serpents and lizards use their tongues to
+touch and reconnoitre objects in front of them, hence their tongues have
+come to be forked.
+
+"Need--always occasioned by the circumstances in which an animal is
+placed, and followed by sustained efforts at gratification--can not only
+modify an organ, that is to say, augment or reduce it, but can change
+its position when the case requires its removal.[305]
+
+"Ocean fishes have occasion to see what is on either side of them, and
+have their eyes accordingly placed on either side their head. Some
+fishes, however, have their abode near coasts on submarine banks and
+inclinations, and are thus forced to flatten themselves as much as
+possible in order to get as near as they can to the shore. In this
+situation they receive more light from above than from below, and find
+it necessary to pay attention to whatever happens to be above them; this
+need has involved the displacement of their eyes, which now take the
+remarkable position which we observe in the case of soles, turbots,
+plaice, &c. The transfer of position is not even yet complete in the
+case of these fishes, and the eyes are not, therefore, symmetrically
+placed; but they are so with the skate, whose head and whole body are
+equally disposed on either side a longitudinal section. Hence the eyes
+of this fish are placed symmetrically upon the uppermost side.[306]
+
+"The eyes of serpents are placed on the sides and upper portions of the
+head, so that they can easily see what is on one side of them or above
+them; but they can only see very little in front of them, and supplement
+this deficiency of power with their tongue, which is very long and
+supple, and is in many kinds so divided that it can touch more than one
+object at a time; the habit of reconnoitring objects in front of them
+with their tongues has even led to their being able to pass it through
+the end of their nostrils without being obliged to open their jaws.[307]
+
+"Herbivorous mammals, such as the elephant, rhinoceros, ox, buffalo,
+horse, &c., owe their great size to their habit of daily distending
+themselves with food and taking comparatively little exercise. They
+employ their feet for standing, walking, or running, but not for
+climbing trees. Hence the thick horn which covers their toes. These toes
+have become useless to them, and are now in many cases rudimentary only.
+Some pachyderms have five toes covered with horn; some four, some
+three. The ruminants, which appear to be the earliest mammals that
+confined themselves to a life upon the ground, have but two hooves,
+while the horse has only one.[308]
+
+"Some herbivorous animals, especially among the ruminants, have been
+incessantly preyed upon by carnivorous animals, against which their only
+refuge is in flight. Necessity has therefore developed the light and
+active limbs of antelopes, gazelles, &c. Ruminants, only using their
+jaws to graze with, have but little power in them, and therefore
+generally fight with their heads. The males fight frequently with one
+another, and their desires prompt an access of fluids to the parts of
+their heads with which they fight; thus the horns and bosses have arisen
+with which the heads of most of these animals are armed.[309] The
+giraffe owes its long neck to its continued habit of browsing upon
+trees, whence also the great length of its fore legs as compared with
+its hinder ones. Carnivorous animals, in like manner, have had their
+organs modified in correlation with their desires and habits. Some
+climb, some scratch in order to burrow in the earth, some tear their
+prey; they therefore have need of toes, and we find their toes separated
+and armed with claws. Some of them are great hunters, and also plunge
+their claws deeply into the bodies of their victims, trying to tear out
+the part on which they have seized; this habit has developed a size and
+curvature of claw which would impede them greatly in travelling over
+stony ground; they have therefore been obliged to make efforts to draw
+back their too projecting claws, and so, little by little, has arisen
+the peculiar sheath into which cats, tigers, lions, &c., withdraw their
+claws when they no longer wish to use them.[310]
+
+"We see then that the long-sustained and habitual exercise of any part
+of a living organism, in consequence of the necessities engendered by
+its environment, develops such part, and gives it a form which it would
+never have attained if the exercise had not become an habitual action.
+All known animals furnish us with examples of this.[311] If anyone
+maintains that the especially powerful development of any organ has had
+nothing to do with its habitual use--that use has added nothing, and
+disuse detracted nothing from its efficiency, but that the organ has
+always been as we now see it from the creation of the particular species
+onwards--I would ask why cannot our domesticated ducks fly like wild
+ducks? I would also quote a multitude of examples of the effects of use
+and disuse upon our own organs, effects which, if the use and disuse
+were constant for many generations, would become much more marked.
+
+"A great number of facts show, as will be more fully insisted on, that
+when its will prompts an animal to this or that action, the organs which
+are to execute it receive an excess of nervous fluid, and this is the
+determinant cause of the movements necessary for the required action.
+Modifications acquired in this way eventually become permanent in the
+breed that has acquired them, and are transmitted to offspring, without
+the offspring's having itself gone through the processes of acquisition
+which were necessary in the case of the ancestor.[312] Frequent crosses,
+however, with unmodified individuals, destroy the effect produced. It is
+only owing to the isolation of the races of man through geographical and
+other causes, that man himself presents so many varieties, each with a
+distinctive character.
+
+"A review of all existing classes, orders, genera, and species would
+show that their structure, organs, and faculties, are in all cases
+solely attributable to the surroundings to which each creature has been
+subjected by nature, and to the habits which individuals have been
+compelled to contract; and that they are not at all the result of a form
+originally bestowed, which has imposed certain habits upon the
+creature.[313]
+
+"It is unnecessary to multiply instances; the fact is simply this, that
+all animals have certain habits, and that their organization is always
+in perfect harmony with these habits.[314] The conclusion hitherto
+accepted is that the Author of Nature, when he created animals, foresaw
+all the possible circumstances in which they would be placed, and gave
+an unchanging organism to each creature, in accordance with its future
+destiny. The conclusion, on the other hand, here maintained is that
+nature has evolved all existing forms of life successively, beginning
+with the simplest organisms and gradually proceeding to those which are
+more complete. Forms of life have spread themselves throughout all the
+habitable parts of the earth, and each species has received its habits
+and corresponding modification of organs, from the influence of the
+surroundings in which it found itself placed.[315]
+
+"The first conclusion supposes an unvarying organism and unvarying
+conditions. The second, which is my theory (_la mienne propre_),
+supposes that each animal is capable of modifications which in the
+course of generations amount to a wide divergence of type.
+
+"If a single animal can be shown to have varied considerably under
+domestication, the first conclusion is proved to be inadmissible, and
+the second to be in conformity with the laws of nature."
+
+This is a milder version of Buffon's conclusion (see _ante_, pp. 90,
+91). It is a little grating to read the words "la mienne propre,"
+and to recall no mention of Buffon in the 'Philosophie Zoologique.'
+
+"Animal forms then are the result of conditions of life and of the
+habits engendered thereby. With new forms new faculties are developed,
+and thus nature has little by little evolved the existing
+differentiations of animal and vegetable life."[316]
+
+Lamarck makes no exception in man's favour to the rule of descent with
+modification. He supposes that a race of quadrumanous apes gradually
+acquired the upright position in walking, with a corresponding
+modification of the feet and facial angle. Such a race having become
+master of all the other animals, spread itself over all parts of the
+world that suited it. It hunted out the other higher races which were in
+a condition to dispute with it for enjoyment of the world's
+productions, and drove them to take refuge in such places as it did not
+desire to occupy. It checked the increase of the races nearest itself,
+and kept them exiled in woods and desert places, so that their further
+development was arrested, while itself, able to spread in all
+directions, to multiply without opposition, and to lead a social life,
+it developed new requirements one after another, which urged it to
+industrial pursuits, and gradually perfected its capabilities.
+Eventually this pre-eminent race, having acquired absolute supremacy,
+came to be widely different from even the most perfect of the lower
+animals.
+
+"Certain apes approach man more nearly than any other animal approaches
+him; nevertheless, they are far inferior to him, both in bodily and
+mental capacity. Some of them frequently stand upright, but as they do
+not habitually maintain this attitude, their organization has not been
+sufficiently modified to prevent it from being irksome to them to stand
+for long together. They fall on all fours immediately at the approach of
+danger. This reveals their true origin.[317]
+
+"But is the upright position altogether natural, even to man? He uses it
+in moving from place to place, but still standing is a fatiguing
+position, and one which can only be maintained for a limited time, and
+by the aid of muscular contraction. The vertebrate column does not pass
+through the axis of the head so as to maintain it in like equilibrium
+with other limbs. The head, chest, stomach, and intestines weigh almost
+entirely on the anterior part of the vertebrate column, and this column
+itself is placed obliquely, so that, as M. Richerand has observed,
+continual watchfulness and muscular exertion are necessary to avoid the
+falls towards which the weight and disposition of our parts are
+continually inclining us. 'Children,' he remarks, 'have a constant
+tendency to assume the position of quadrupeds.'"[318]
+
+"Surely these facts should reveal man's origin as analogous to that of
+the other mammals, if his organization only be looked to. But the
+following consideration must be added. New wants, developed in societies
+which had become numerous, must have correspondingly multiplied the
+ideas of this dominant race, whose individuals must have therefore
+gradually felt the need of fuller communication with each other. Hence
+the necessity for increasing and varying the number of the signs
+suitable for mutual understanding. It is plain therefore that incessant
+efforts would be made in this direction.[319]
+
+"The lower animals, though often social, have been kept in too great
+subjection for any such development of power. They continue, therefore,
+stationary as regards their wants and ideas, very few of which need be
+communicated from one individual to another. A few movements of the
+body, a few simple cries and whistles, or inflexions of voice, would
+suffice for their purpose. With the dominant race, on the other hand,
+the continued multiplication of ideas which it was desirable to
+communicate rapidly, would exhaust the power of pantomimic gesture and
+of all possible inflexions of the voice--therefore by a succession of
+efforts this race arrived at the utterance of articulate sounds. A few
+only would be at first made use of, and these would be supplemented by
+inflexions of the voice: presently they would increase in number,
+variety, and appropriateness, with the increase of needs and of the
+efforts made to speak. Habitual exercise would increase the power of the
+lips and tongue to articulate distinctly.
+
+"The diversity of language is due to geographical distribution, with
+consequent greater or less isolation of certain races, and corruption of
+the signs originally agreed upon for each idea. Man's own wants,
+therefore, will have achieved the whole result. They will have given
+rise to endeavour, and habitual use will have developed the organs of
+articulation."[320]
+
+How, let me ask again, is "the case of neuter insects" "demonstrative"
+against the "well-known" theory put forward in the foregoing chapter?
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[208] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i., edited by M. Martins, 1873, pp. 25, 26.
+
+[209] 'Phil. Zool.' tom. i. pp. 26, 27.
+
+[210] Page 28.
+
+[211] Pages 28-31.
+
+[212] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. pp. 34, 35.
+
+[213] Page 42.
+
+[214] Page 46.
+
+[215] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 50.
+
+[216] Pages 50, 51.
+
+[217] 'Origin of Species,' p. 395, ed. 1876.
+
+[218] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 61.
+
+[219] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 62.
+
+[220] Page 63.
+
+[221] Page 64.
+
+[222] Page 65.
+
+[223] Page 67.
+
+[224] Chap. iii.
+
+[225] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 72.
+
+[226] Pages 71-73.
+
+[227] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 74, 75.
+
+[228] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. pp. 75-77.
+
+[229] 'Origin of Species,' p. 104, ed. 1876.
+
+[230] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 79.
+
+[231] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. pp. 79, 80.
+
+[232] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 80.
+
+[233] Page 80.
+
+[234] Ed. 1876.
+
+[235] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 81.
+
+[236] 'Origin of Species,' p. 241.
+
+[237] 'Phil. Zool.,' p. 82.
+
+[238] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 83.
+
+[239] Pages 349-351.
+
+[240] Page 84.
+
+[241] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 88.
+
+[242] Page 90.
+
+[243] 'Origin of Species,' p. 3.
+
+[244] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 94.
+
+[245] Pages 95-96.
+
+[246] Page 97.
+
+[247] Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 98.
+
+[248] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 111.
+
+[249] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 112.
+
+[250] See pp. 227 and 259 of this book.
+
+[251] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 113.
+
+[252] Page 113.
+
+[253] 'Phil Zool.,' tom. i. p. 113.
+
+[254] This passage is rather obscure. I give it therefore in the
+original:--
+
+"Ainsi les naturalistes ayant remarqué que beaucoup d'espèces, certains
+genres, et même quelques familles paraissent dans une sorte d'isolement,
+quant à leurs caractères, plusieurs se sont imaginés que les êtres
+vivants, dans l'un ou l'autre règne, s'avoisinaient, ou s'éloignaient
+entre eux, relativement à leurs _rapports naturels_, dans une
+disposition semblable aux differents points d'une carte de géographie ou
+d'une mappemonde. Ils regardent les petites séries bien prononcées qu'on
+a nommées familles naturelles, comme devant être disposées entre elles
+de manière à former une réticulation. Cette idée qui a paru sublime à
+quelques modernes, est évidemment une erreur, et, sans doute, elle se
+dissipera dès qu'on aura des connaissances plus profondes et plus
+générales de l'organisation, et surtout lorsqu'on distinguera ce qui
+appartient à l'influence des lieux d'habitation et des habitudes
+contractées, de ce qui résulte des progrès plus ou moins avancés dans la
+composition ou le perfectionnement de l'organisation."--(p. 120).
+
+[255] 'Origin of Species,' pp. 265, 266.
+
+[256] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 121.
+
+[257] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 122.
+
+[258] 'Origin of Species,' pp. 122, 123.
+
+[259] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 123.
+
+[260] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 123.
+
+[261] 'Origin of Species,' chap. xiv.
+
+[262] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 123.
+
+[263] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 140.
+
+[264] Page 142.
+
+[265] Page 143.
+
+[266] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 143.
+
+[267] Page 144.
+
+[268] Ibid.
+
+[269] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 145.
+
+[270] Page 146.
+
+[271] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 221.
+
+[272] Page 222.
+
+[273] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 223.
+
+[274] Page 224.
+
+[275] Page 223.
+
+[276] Page 225.
+
+[277] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 225.
+
+[278] Page 226.
+
+[279] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 228.
+
+[280] See Buffon, 'Hist. Nat.,' tom. v. pp. 196, 197, and Supp. tom. v.
+pp. 250-253.
+
+[281] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 229.
+
+[282] 'Hist. Nat.,' tom. xi. p. 290.
+
+[283] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 231.
+
+[284] Page 231. See Dr. Darwin's note on _Trapa natans_, 'Botanic
+Garden,' part ii. canto 4, l. 204.
+
+[285] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 232.
+
+[286] Page 233. See Buffon on Climate, tom. ix., 'The Animals of the Old
+and New Worlds.'
+
+[287] 'Origin of Species,' p. 233, ed. 1876.
+
+[288] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p 234.
+
+[289] Page 235.
+
+[290] Page 236.
+
+[291] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 237.
+
+[292] Page 238.
+
+[293] See _ante_, pp. 220-228.
+
+[294] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 239.
+
+[295] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p 240.
+
+[296] Page 241.
+
+[297] Page 245.
+
+[298] 'Animals and Plants under Domestication,' vol. i. p. 467, &c.
+
+[299] See frontispiece to Professor Mivart's 'Genesis of Species.'
+
+[300] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 247.
+
+[301] Page 248.
+
+[302] 'Nat. Theol.,' vol. xii., end of § viii.
+
+[303] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 249.
+
+[304] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 250.
+
+[305] Page 250.
+
+[306] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 251.
+
+[307] Page 252.
+
+[308] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 253.
+
+[309] Page 254.
+
+[310] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 256.
+
+[311] Page 257.
+
+[312] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 259.
+
+[313] Page 260.
+
+[314] Page 263.
+
+[315] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 263.
+
+[316] Page 265.
+
+[317] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 343.
+
+[318] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 343.
+
+[319] Page 346.
+
+[320] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 347.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+MR. PATRICK MATTHEW, MM. ÉTIENNE AND ISIDORE GEOFFROY ST. HILAIRE, AND
+MR. HERBERT SPENCER.
+
+
+The same complaint must be made against Mr. Matthew's excellent survey
+of the theory of evolution, as against Dr. Erasmus Darwin's original
+exposition of the same theory, namely, that it is too short. It may be
+very true that brevity is the soul of wit, but the leaders of science
+will generally succeed in burking new-born wit, unless the brevity of
+its soul is found compatible with a body of some bulk.
+
+Mr. Darwin writes thus concerning Mr. Matthew in the historical sketch
+to which I have already more than once referred.
+
+"In 1831 Mr. Patrick Matthew published his work on 'Naval Timber and
+Arboriculture,' in which he gives precisely the same view on the origin
+of species as that (presently to be alluded to) propounded by Mr.
+Wallace and myself in the 'Linnean Journal,' and as that enlarged in the
+present volume. Unfortunately the view was given by Mr. Matthew very
+briefly, in scattered passages in an appendix to a work on a different
+subject, so that it remained unnoticed until Mr. Matthew himself drew
+attention to it in the 'Gardener's Chronicle' for April 7, 1860. The
+differences of Mr. Matthew's view from mine are not of much importance;
+he seems to consider that the world was nearly depopulated at successive
+periods, and then re-stocked, and he gives as an alternative, that new
+forms may be generated 'without the presence of any mould or germ of
+former aggregates.' I am not sure that I understand some passages; but
+it seems that he attributes much influence to the direct action of the
+conditions of life. He clearly saw, however, the full force of the
+principle of natural selection."[321]
+
+Nothing could well be more misleading. If Mr. Matthew's view of the
+origin of species is "precisely the same as that" propounded by Mr.
+Darwin, it is hard to see how Mr. Darwin can call those of Lamarck and
+Dr. Erasmus Darwin "erroneous"; for Mr. Matthew's is nothing but an
+excellent and well-digested summary of the conclusions arrived at by
+these two writers and by Buffon. If, again, Mr. Darwin is correct in
+saying that Mr. Matthew "clearly saw the full force of the principle of
+natural selection," he condemns the view he has himself taken of it in
+his 'Origin of Species,' for Mr. Darwin has assigned a far more
+important and very different effect to the fact that the fittest
+commonly survive in the struggle for existence, than Mr. Matthew has
+done. Mr. Matthew sees a cause underlying all variations; he takes the
+most teleological or purposive view of organism that has been taken by
+any writer (not a theologian) except myself, while Mr. Darwin's view, if
+not the least teleological, is certainly nearly so, and his confession
+of inability to detect any general cause underlying variations, leaves,
+as will appear presently, less than common room for ambiguity. Here are
+Mr. Matthew's own words:--
+
+"There is a law universal in nature, tending to render every
+reproductive being the best possibly suited to the condition that its
+kind, or that organized matter is susceptible of, and which appears
+intended to model the physical and mental or instinctive, powers to
+their highest perfection, and to continue them so. This law sustains the
+lion in his strength, the hare in her swiftness, and the fox in his
+wiles. As nature in all her modifications of life has a power of
+increase far beyond what is needed to supply the place of what falls by
+Time's decay, those individuals who possess not the requisite strength,
+swiftness, hardihood, or cunning, fall prematurely without
+reproducing--either a prey to their natural devourers, or sinking under
+disease, generally induced by want of nourishment, their place being
+occupied by the more perfect of their own kind, who are pressing on the
+means of existence.
+
+"Throughout this volume, we have felt considerable inconvenience from
+the adopted dogmatical classification of plants, and have all along been
+floundering between species and variety, which certainly under culture
+soften into each other. A particular conformity, each after its own
+kind, when in a state of nature, termed species, no doubt exists to a
+considerable degree. This conformity has existed during the last forty
+centuries; geologists discover a like particular conformity--fossil
+species--through the deep deposition of each great epoch; but they also
+discover an almost complete difference to exist between the species or
+stamp of life of one epoch from that of every other. We are therefore
+led to admit either a repeated miraculous conception, or _a power of
+change under change of circumstances_ to belong to living organized
+matter, or rather to the congeries of inferior life which appears to
+form superior." (By this I suppose Mr. Matthew to imply his assent to
+the theory, that our personality or individuality is but as it were "the
+consensus, or full flowing river of a vast number of subordinate
+individualities or personalities, each one of which is a living being
+with thoughts and wishes of its own.") "The derangements and changes in
+organized existence, induced by a change of circumstances from the
+interference of man, afford us proof of the plastic quality of superior
+life; and the likelihood that circumstances have been very different in
+the different epochs, though steady in each, tend strongly to heighten
+the probability of the latter theory.
+
+"When we view the immense calcareous and bituminous formations,
+principally from the waters and atmosphere, and consider the oxidations
+and depositions which have taken place, either gradually or during some
+of the great convulsions, it appears at least probable that the liquid
+elements containing life have varied considerably at different times in
+composition and weight; that our atmosphere has contained a much greater
+proportion of carbonic acid or oxygen; and our waters, aided by excess
+of carbonic acid, and greater heat resulting from greater density of
+atmosphere, have contained a greater quantity of lime, and other mineral
+solutions. Is the inference, then, unphilosophic that living things
+which are proved to have _a circumstance-suiting power_ (a very slight
+change of circumstance by culture inducing a corresponding change of
+character), may have gradually accommodated themselves to the variations
+of the elements containing them, and without new creation, have
+presented the diverging changeable phenomena of past and present
+organized existence?
+
+"The destructive liquid currents before which the hardest mountains have
+been swept and comminuted into gravel, sand, and mud, which intervened
+between and divided these epochs, probably extending over the whole
+surface of the globe and destroying nearly all living things, must have
+reduced existence so much that an unoccupied field would be formed for
+new diverging ramifications of life, which from the connected sexual
+system of vegetables, and the natural instinct of animals to herd and
+combine with their own kind, would fall into specific groups--these
+remnants in the course of time moulding and accommodating their being
+anew to the change of circumstances, and to every possible means of
+subsistence--and the millions of ages of regularity which appear to have
+followed between the epochs, probably after this accommodation was
+completed, affording fossil deposit of regular specific character.
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"In endeavouring to trace ... the principle of these changes of fashion
+which have taken place in the domiciles of life the following questions
+occur: Do they arise from admixture of species nearly allied producing
+intermediate species? Are they the diverging ramifications of the
+living principle under modification of circumstance? or have they
+resulted from the combined agency of both?
+
+"_Is there only one living principle? Does organized existence, and
+perhaps all material existence, consist of one Proteus principle of
+life_ capable of gradual circumstance-suited modifications and
+aggregations without bound, under the solvent or motion-giving principle
+of heat or light? There is more beauty and unity of design in this
+continual balancing of life to circumstance, and greater conformity to
+those dispositions of nature that are manifest to us, than in total
+destruction and new creation. It is improbable that much of this
+diversification is owing to commixture of species nearly allied; all
+change by this appears very limited and confined within the bounds of
+what is called species; the progeny of the same parents under great
+difference of circumstance, might in several generations even become
+distinct species, incapable of co-reproduction.
+
+"The self-regulating adaptive disposition of organized life may, in
+part, be traced to the extreme fecundity of nature, who, as before
+stated, has in all the varieties of her offspring a prolific power much
+beyond (in many cases a thousand fold) what is necessary to fill up the
+vacancies caused by senile decay. As the field of existence is limited
+and preoccupied, it is only the hardier, more robust, better suited to
+circumstance individuals, who are able to struggle forward to maturity,
+these inhabiting only the situations to which they have _superior
+adaptation and greater power of occupancy than any other kind; the
+weaker and less circumstance-suited being prematurely destroyed_. This
+principle is in constant action; it regulates the colour, the figure,
+the capacities, and instincts; those individuals in each species whose
+colour and covering are best suited to concealment or protection from
+enemies, or defence from inclemencies and vicissitudes of climate, whose
+figure is best accommodated to health, strength, defence, and support;
+whose capacities and instincts can best regulate the physical energies
+to self-advantage according to circumstances--in such immense waste of
+primary and youthful life those only come forward to maturity from the
+strict ordeal by which nature tests their adaptation to her standard of
+perfection and fitness to continue their kind by reproduction.
+
+"From the unremitting operation of this law acting in concert with the
+tendency which the progeny have to take the more particular qualities of
+the parents, together with the connected sexual system in vegetables and
+instinctive limitation to its own kind in animals, a considerable
+uniformity of figure, colour, and character is induced constituting
+species; the breed gradually acquiring the very best possible adaptation
+of these to its condition which it is susceptible of, and when
+alteration of circumstance occurs, thus changing in character to suit
+these, as far as its nature is susceptible of change.
+
+"This circumstance-adaptive law operating upon the slight but continued
+natural disposition to sport in the progeny (seedling variety) _does not
+preclude the supposed influence which volition or sensation may have had
+over the configuration of the body_. To examine into the disposition to
+sport in the progeny, even when there is only one parent as in many
+vegetables, and to investigate how much variation is modified by the
+mind or nervous sensation of the parents, or of the living thing itself
+during its progress to maturity; how far it depends upon external
+circumstance, and how far on the will, irritability, and muscular
+exertion, is open to examination and experiment. In the first place, we
+ought to examine its dependency upon the preceding links of the
+particular chain of life, variety being often merely types or
+approximations of former parentage; thence the variation of the family
+as well as of the individual must be embraced by our experiments.
+
+"This continuation of family type, not broken by casual particular
+aberration, is mental as well as corporeal, and is exemplified in many
+of the dispositions or instincts of particular races of men. _These
+innate or continuous ideas or habits seem proportionally greater in the
+insect tribes, and in those especially of shorter revolution; and
+forming an abiding memory, may resolve much of the enigma of instinct,
+and the foreknowledge which these tribes have of what is necessary to
+completing their round of life, reducing this to knowledge or
+impressions and habits acquired by a long experience._
+
+"This greater continuity of existence, or rather continuity of
+perceptions and impressions in insects, is highly probable; _it is even
+difficult in some to ascertain the particular steps when each individual
+commences_, under the different phases of egg, larva, pupa, or if much
+consciousness of individuality exists. The continuation of reproduction
+for several generations by the females alone in some of these tribes,
+_tends to the probability of the greater continuity of existence; and
+the subdivisions of life by cuttings (even in animal life), at any rate,
+must stagger the advocate of individuality_.
+
+"Among the millions of specific varieties of living things which occupy
+the humid portions of the surface of our planet, as far back as can be
+traced, there does not appear, with the exception of man, to have been
+any particular engrossing race, but a pretty fair balance of power of
+occupancy--or rather most wonderful variation of circumstance parallel
+to the nature of every species, _as if circumstance and species had
+grown up together_. There are, indeed, several races which have
+threatened ascendancy in some particular regions; but it is man alone
+from whom any general imminent danger to the existence of his brethren
+is to be dreaded.
+
+"As far back as history reaches, man had already had considerable
+influence, and had made encroachments upon his fellow denizens, probably
+occasioning the destruction of many species, and the production and
+continuation of a number of varieties, and even species, which he found
+more suited to supply his wants, but which from the infirmity of their
+condition--_not having undergone selection by the law of nature_, of
+which we have spoken--cannot maintain their ground without culture and
+protection.
+
+"It is only however in the present age that man has begun to reap the
+fruits of his tedious education, and has proven how much 'knowledge is
+power.' He has now acquired a dominion over the material world, and a
+consequent power of increase, so as to render it probable that the whole
+surface of the earth may soon be overrun by this engrossing anomaly, to
+the annihilation of every wonderful and beautiful variety of animal
+existence which does not administer to his wants, principally as
+laboratories of preparation to befit cruder elemental matter for
+assimilation by his organs.
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"The consequences are being now developed of our deplorable ignorance
+of, or inattention to, one of the most evident traits of natural
+history--that vegetables, as well as animals, are generally liable to an
+almost unlimited diversification, regulated by climate, soil,
+nourishment, and new commixture of already-formed varieties. In those
+with which man is most intimate, and where his agency in throwing them
+from their natural locality and disposition has brought out this power
+of diversification in stronger shades, it has been forced upon his
+notice, as in man himself, in the dog, horse, cow, sheep, poultry,--in
+the apple, pear, plum, gooseberry, potato, pea, which sport in infinite
+varieties, differing considerably in size, colour, taste, firmness of
+texture, period of growth, almost in every recognizable quality. In all
+these kinds man is influential in preventing deterioration, by careful
+selection of the largest or most valuable as breeders."[322]
+
+
+_Étienne and Isidore Geoffroy._
+
+"Both Cuvier and Étienne Geoffroy," says Isidore Geoffroy, "had early
+perceived the philosophical importance of a question (evolution) which
+must be admitted as--with that of unity of composition--the greatest in
+natural history. We find them laying it down in the year 1795 in one of
+their joint 'Memoirs' (on the Orangs), in the very plainest terms, in
+the following question, 'Must we see,' they inquire, 'what we commonly
+call species, as the modified descendants of the same original form?'
+
+"Both were at that time doubtful. Some years afterwards Cuvier not only
+answered this question in the negative, but declared, and pretended to
+prove, that the same forms have been perpetuated from the beginning of
+things. Lamarck, his antagonist _par excellence_ on this point,
+maintained the contrary position with no less distinctness, showing that
+living beings are unceasingly variable with change of their
+surroundings, and giving with some boldness a zoological genesis in
+conformity with this doctrine.
+
+"Geoffroy St. Hilaire had long pondered over this difficult subject. The
+doctrine which in his old age he so firmly defended, does not seem to
+have been conceived by him till after he had completed his 'Philosophie
+Anatomique,' and except through lectures delivered orally to the museum
+and the faculty, it was not published till 1828; nor again in the work
+then published do we find his theory in its neatest expression and
+fullest development."
+
+Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire tells us in a note that the work referred
+to as first putting his father's views before the public in a printed
+form, was a report to the Academy of Sciences on a memoir by M. Roulin;
+but that before this report some indications of them are to be found in
+a paper on the Gavials, published in 1825. Their best rendering,
+however, and fullest development is in several memoirs, published in
+succession, between the years 1828 and 1837.
+
+"This doctrine," he continues, "is diametrically opposed to that of
+Cuvier, and is not entirely the same as Lamarck's. Geoffroy St. Hilaire
+refutes the one, he restrains and corrects the other. Cuvier, according
+to him, sums up against the facts, while Lamarck goes further than they
+will bear him out. Essentially however on questions of this nature he is
+a follower of Lamarck, and took pleasure on several occasions in
+describing himself as the disciple of his illustrious _confrère_."[323]
+
+I have been unable to detect any substantial difference of opinion
+between Geoffroy St. Hilaire and Lamarck, except that the first
+maintained that a line must be drawn somewhere--and did not draw
+it--while the latter said that no line could be drawn, and therefore
+drew none. Mr. Darwin is quite correct in saying that Geoffroy St.
+Hilaire "relied chiefly on the conditions of life, or the 'monde
+ambiant,' as the cause of change." But this is only Lamarck over again,
+for though Lamarck attributes variation directly to change of habits in
+the creature, he is almost wearisome in his insistence on the fact that
+the habit will not change, unless the conditions of life also do so.
+With both writers then it is change in the relative positions of the
+exterior circumstances, and of the organism, which results in variation,
+and finally in specific modification.
+
+Here is another sketch of Étienne Geoffroy, also by his son Isidore.
+
+In 1795, while Lamarck was still a believer in immutability, Étienne
+Geoffroy St. Hilaire "had ventured to say that species might well be
+'degenerations from a single type,'" but, though he never lost sight of
+the question, he waited more than a quarter of a century before passing
+from meditation to action. "He at length put forward his opinion in
+1825, he returned to it, but still briefly, in 1828 and 1829, and did
+not set himself to develop and establish it till the year 1831--the year
+following the memorable discussion in the Academy, on the unity of
+organic composition."[324]
+
+"If," says his son, "he began by paying homage to his illustrious
+precursor, and by laying it down as a general axiom, that there is no
+such thing as fixity in nature, and especially in animated nature, he
+follows this adhesion to the general doctrine of variability by a
+dissent which goes to the very heart of the matter. And this dissent
+becomes deeper and deeper in his later works. Not only is Geoffroy St.
+Hilaire at pains to deny the unlimited extension of variability which
+is the foundation of the Lamarckian system, but he moreover and
+particularly declines to explain those degenerations which he admits as
+possible, by changes of action and habit on the part of the creature
+varying--Lamarck's favourite hypothesis, which he laboured to
+demonstrate without even succeeding in making it appear probable."[325]
+
+Isidore Geoffroy then declares that his father, "though chronologically
+a follower of Lamarck, should be ranked philosophically as having
+continued the work of Buffon, to whom all his differences of opinion
+with Lamarck serve to bring him nearer."[326] If he had understood
+Buffon he would not have said so.
+
+His conclusions are thus summed up:--"Geoffroy St. Hilaire maintains
+that species are variable if the environment varies in character;
+differences, then, more or less considerable according to the power of
+the modifying causes _may have_ been produced in the course of time, and
+the living forms of to-day _may be_ the descendants of more ancient
+forms."[327]
+
+It is not easy to see that much weight should be attached to Geoffroy
+St. Hilaire's opinion. He seems to have been a person of hesitating
+temperament, under an impression that there was an opening just then
+through which a judicious trimmer might pass himself in among men of
+greater power. If his son has described his teaching correctly, it
+amounts practically to a _bonâ fide_ endorsement of what Buffon can only
+be considered to have pretended to believe. The same objection that must
+be fatal to the view pretended by Buffon, is so in like manner to those
+put forward seriously of both the Geoffroys--for Isidore Geoffroy
+followed his father, but leant a little more openly towards Lamarck. He
+writes:--
+
+"The characters of species are neither absolutely fixed, as has been
+maintained by some; nor yet, still more, indefinitely variable as
+according to others. They are fixed for each species as long as that
+species continues to reproduce itself in an unchanged environment; but
+they become modified if the environment changes."[328]
+
+This is all that Lamarck himself would expect, as no one could be more
+fully aware than M. Geoffroy, who, however, admits that degeneration may
+extend to generic differences.[329]
+
+I have been unable to find in M. Isidore Geoffroy's work anything like a
+refutation of Lamarck's contention that the modifications in animals and
+plants are due to the needs and wishes of the animals and plants
+themselves; on the contrary, to some extent he countenances this view
+himself, for he says, "hence arise notable differences of habitation and
+climate, and these in their turn induce secondary differences in diet
+_and even in habits_."[330] From which it must follow, though I cannot
+find it said expressly, that the author attributes modification in some
+measure to changed habits, and therefore to the changed desires from
+which the change of habits has arisen; but in the main he appears to
+refer modification to the direct action of a changed environment.
+
+
+_Mr. Herbert Spencer._
+
+"Those who cavalierly reject the theory of Lamarck and his followers as
+not adequately supported by facts," wrote Mr. Herbert Spencer,[331]
+"seem quite to forget that their own theory is supported by no facts at
+all"--inasmuch as no one pretends to have seen an act of direct
+creation. Mr. Spencer points out that, according to the best
+authorities, there are some 320,000 species of plants now existing, and
+about 2,000,000 species of animals, including insects, and that if the
+extinct forms which have successively appeared and disappeared be added
+to these, there cannot have existed in all less than some ten million
+species. "Which," asks Mr. Spencer, "is the most rational theory about
+these ten millions of species? Is it most likely that there have been
+ten millions of special creations? or, is it most likely that by
+continual modification _due to change of circumstances_, ten millions of
+varieties may have been produced as varieties are being produced still?"
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"Even could the supporters of the development hypothesis merely show
+that the production of species by the process of modification is
+conceivable, they would be in a better position than their opponents.
+But they can do much more than this; they can show that the process of
+modification has effected and is effecting great changes in all
+organisms, subject to modifying influences ... they can show that any
+existing species--animal or vegetable--when placed under conditions
+different from its previous ones, _immediately begins to undergo certain
+changes of structure_ fitting it for the new conditions. They can show
+that in successive generations these changes continue until ultimately
+the new conditions become the natural ones. They can show that in
+cultivated plants and domesticated animals, and in the several races of
+men, these changes have uniformly taken place. They can show that the
+degrees of difference, so produced, are often, as in dogs, greater than
+those on which distinctions of species are in other cases founded. They
+can show that it is a matter of dispute whether some of these modified
+forms _are_ varieties or modified species. They can show too that the
+changes daily taking place in ourselves; the facility that attends long
+practice, and the loss of aptitude that begins when practice ceases; the
+strengthening of passions habitually gratified, and the weakening of
+those habitually curbed; the development of every faculty, bodily, moral
+or intellectual, according to the use made of it, are all explicable on
+this same principle. And thus they can show that throughout all organic
+nature there _is_ at work a modifying influence of the kind they assign
+as the cause of these specific differences, an influence which, though
+slow in its action, does in time, if the circumstances demand it,
+produce marked changes; an influence which, to all appearance, would
+produce in the millions of years, and under the great varieties of
+condition which geological records imply, any amount of change."
+
+This leaves nothing to be desired. It is Buffon, Dr. Darwin, and
+Lamarck, well expressed. Those were the days before "Natural Selection"
+had been discharged into the waters of the evolution controversy, like
+the secretion of a cuttle fish. Changed circumstances immediately induce
+changed habits, and hence a changed use of some organs, and disuse of
+others: as a consequence of this, organs and instincts become changed,
+"and these changes continue in successive generations, until ultimately
+the new conditions become the natural ones." This is the whole theory of
+"development," "evolution," or "descent with modification." Volumes may
+be written to adduce the details which warrant us in accepting it, and
+to explain the causes which have brought it about, but I fail to see how
+anything essential can be added to the theory itself, which is here so
+well supported by Mr. Spencer, and which is exactly as Lamarck left it.
+All that remains is to have a clear conception of the oneness of
+personality between parents and offspring, of the eternity, and latency,
+of memory, and of the unconsciousness with which habitual actions are
+repeated, which last point, indeed, Mr. Spencer has himself touched
+upon.
+
+Mr. Spencer continues--"That by any series of changes a zoophyte should
+ever become a mammal, seems to those who are not familiar with zoology,
+and who have not seen how clear becomes the relationship between the
+simplest and the most complex forms, when all intermediate forms are
+examined, a very grotesque notion ... they never realize the fact that
+by small increments of modification, any amount of modification may in
+time be generated. That surprise which they feel on finding one whom
+they last saw as a boy, grown into a man, becomes incredulity when the
+degree of change is greater. Nevertheless, abundant instances are at
+hand of the mode in which we may pass to the most diverse forms by
+insensible gradations."
+
+Nothing can be more satisfactory and straightforward. I will make one
+more quotation from this excellent article:--
+
+"But the blindness of those who think it absurd to suppose that complex
+organic forms may have arisen by successive modifications out of simple
+ones, becomes astonishing when we remember that complex organic forms
+are daily being thus produced. A tree differs from a seed immeasurably
+in every respect--in bulk, in structure, in colour, in form, in specific
+gravity, in chemical composition--differs so greatly that no visible
+resemblance of any kind can be pointed out between them. Yet is the one
+changed in the course of a few years into the other--changed so
+gradually that at no moment can it be said, 'Now the seed ceases to be,
+and the tree exists.' What can be more widely contrasted than a
+newly-born child, and the small, semi-transparent gelatinous spherule
+constituting the human ovum? The infant is so complex in structure that
+a cyclopædia is needed to describe its constituent parts. The germinal
+vesicle is so simple, that a line will contain all that can be said of
+it. Nevertheless, a few months suffices to develop the one out of the
+other, and that too by a series of modifications so small, that were
+the embryo examined at successive minutes, not even a microscope would
+disclose any sensible changes. That the uneducated and ill-educated
+should think the hypothesis that all races of beings, man inclusive, may
+in process of time have been evolved from the simplest monad a ludicrous
+one is not to be wondered at. But for the physiologist, who knows that
+every individual being _is_ so evolved--who knows further that in their
+earliest condition the germs of all plants and animals whatsoever are so
+similar, 'that there is no appreciable distinction among them which
+would enable it to be determined whether a particular molecule is the
+germ of a conferva or of an oak, of a zoophyte or of a man'[332]--for
+him to make a difficulty of the matter is inexcusable. Surely, if a
+single structureless cell may, when subjected to certain influences,
+become a man in the space of twenty years, there is nothing absurd in
+the hypothesis that under certain other influences a cell may, in the
+course of millions of years, give origin to the human race. The two
+processes are generically the same, and differ only in length and
+complexity."
+
+     *     *     *     *     *
+
+The very important extract from Professor Hering's lecture should
+perhaps have been placed here. The reader will, however, find it on page
+199.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[321] 'Origin of Species,' Hist. Sketch, p. xvi.
+
+[322] See 'Naval Timber and Arboriculture,' by Patrick Matthew,
+published by Adam and C. Black, Edinburgh, and Longmans and Co., London,
+1831, pp. 364, 365, 381-388, and also 106-108, 'Gardeners' Chronicle,'
+April 7, 1860.
+
+[323] 'Vie et Doctrine Scientifique de Geoffroy Étienne St. Hilaire,'
+Paris, Strasbourg, 1847, pp. 344-346.
+
+[324] 'Hist. Nat. Gén.,' tom. ii. 413.
+
+[325] 'Hist. Nat. Gén.,' tom. ii. p. 415.
+
+[326] Ibid.
+
+[327] Ibid. p. 421.
+
+[328] 'Hist. Nat. Gén.,' vol. ii. p. 431, 1859.
+
+[329] 'Origin of Species,' Hist. Sketch, p. xix.
+
+[330] 'Hist. Nat. Gén.,' vol. ii. p. 432.
+
+[331] See 'The Leader,' March 20, 1852, "The Haythorne Papers."
+
+[332] Carpenter's 'Principles of Physiology', 3rd ed., p. 867.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+MAIN POINTS OF AGREEMENT AND OF DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE OLD AND NEW
+THEORIES OF EVOLUTION.
+
+
+Having put before the reader with some fulness the theories of the three
+writers to whom we owe the older or teleological view of evolution, I
+will now compare that view more closely with the theory of Mr. Darwin
+and Mr. Wallace, to whom, in spite of my profound difference of opinion
+with them on the subject of natural selection, I admit with pleasure
+that I am under deep obligation. For the sake of brevity, I shall take
+Lamarck as the exponent of the older view, and Mr. Darwin as that of the
+one now generally accepted.
+
+We have seen, that up to a certain point there is very little difference
+between Lamarck and Mr. Darwin. Lamarck maintains that animals and
+plants vary: so does Mr. Darwin. Lamarck maintains that variations
+having once arisen have a tendency to be transmitted to offspring and
+accumulated: so does Mr. Darwin. Lamarck maintains that the accumulation
+of variations, so small, each one of them, that it cannot be, or is not
+noticed, nevertheless will lead in the course of that almost infinite
+time during which life has existed upon earth, to very wide differences
+in form, structure, and instincts: so does Mr. Darwin. Finally, Lamarck
+declares that all, or nearly all, the differences which we observe
+between various kinds of animals and plants are due to this exceedingly
+gradual and imperceptible accumulation, during many successive
+generations, of variations each one of which was in the outset small: so
+does Mr. Darwin. But in the above we have a complete statement of the
+fact of evolution, or descent with modification--wanting nothing, but
+entire, and incapable of being added to except in detail, and by way of
+explanation of the causes which have brought the fact about. As regards
+the general conclusion arrived at, therefore, I am unable to detect any
+difference of opinion between Lamarck and Mr. Darwin. They are both bent
+on establishing the theory of evolution in its widest extent.
+
+The late Sir Charles Lyell, in his 'Principles of Geology,' bears me out
+here. In a note to his _résumé_ of the part of the 'Philosophie
+Zoologique' which bears upon evolution, he writes:--
+
+"I have reprinted in this chapter word for word my abstract of Lamarck's
+doctrine of transmutation, as drawn up by me in 1832 in the first
+edition of the 'Principles of Geology.'[333] I have thought it right to
+do this in justice to Lamarck, in order to show how nearly the opinions
+taught by him at the commencement of this century resembled those now in
+vogue amongst a large body of naturalists respecting the infinite
+variability of species, and the progressive development in past time of
+the organic world. The reader must bear in mind that when I made this
+analysis of the 'Philosophie Zoologique' in 1832, I was altogether
+opposed to the doctrine that the animals and plants now living were the
+lineal descendants of distinct species, only known to us in a fossil
+state, and ... so far from exaggerating, I did not do justice to the
+arguments originally adduced by Lamarck and Geoffroy St. Hilaire,
+especially those founded on the occurrence of rudimentary organs. There
+is therefore no room for suspicion that my account of the Lamarckian
+hypothesis, written by me thirty-five years ago, derived any colouring
+from my own views tending to bring it more into harmony with the theory
+since propounded by Darwin."[334] So little difference did Sir Charles
+Lyell discover between the views of Lamarck and those of his successors.
+
+With the identity, however, of the main proposition which, both Lamarck
+and Mr. Darwin alike endeavour to establish, the points of agreement
+between the two writers come to an end. Lamarck's great aim was to
+discover the cause of those variations whose accumulation results in
+specific, and finally in generic, differences. Not content with
+establishing the fact of descent with modification, he, like his
+predecessors, wishes to explain how it was that the fact came about. He
+finds its explanation in changed surroundings--that is to say, in
+changed conditions of existence--as the indirect cause, and in the
+varying needs arising from these changed conditions as the direct cause.
+
+According to Lamarck, there is a broad principle which underlies
+variation generally, and this principle is the power which all living
+beings possess of slightly varying their actions in accordance with
+varying needs, coupled with the fact observable throughout nature that
+use develops, and disuse enfeebles an organ, and that the effects,
+whether of use or disuse, become hereditary after many generations.
+
+This resolves itself into the effect of the mutual interaction of mind
+on body and of body on mind. Thus he writes:--
+
+"The physical and the mental are to start with undoubtedly one and the
+same thing; this fact is most easily made apparent through study of the
+organization of the various orders of known animals. From the common
+source there proceeded certain effects, and these effects, in the outset
+hardly separated, have in the course of time become so perfectly
+distinct, that when looked at in their extremest development they appear
+to have little or nothing in common.
+
+"The effect of the body upon the mind has been already sufficiently
+recognized; not so that of the mind upon the body itself. The two, one
+in the outset though they were, interact upon each other more and more
+the more they present the appearance of having become widely sundered,
+and it can be shown that each is continually modifying the other and
+causing it to vary."[335]
+
+And again, later:--
+
+"I shall show that the habits by which we now recognize any creature
+are due to the environment (_circonstances_) under which it has for a
+long while existed, _and that these habits have had such an influence
+upon the structure of each individual of the species as to have at
+length_" (that is to say, through many successive slight variations,
+each due to habit engendered by the wishes of the animal itself),
+"modified this structure and adapted it to the habits contracted."[336]
+
+These quotations must suffice, for the reader has already had Lamarck's
+argument sufficiently put before him.
+
+Variation, and consequently modification, are, according to Lamarck, the
+outward and visible signs of the impressions made upon animals and
+plants in the course of their long and varied history, each organ
+chronicling a time during which such and such thoughts and actions
+dominated the creature, and specific changes being the effect of certain
+long-continued wishes upon the body, and of certain changed surroundings
+upon the wishes. Plants and animals are living forms of faith, or faiths
+of form, whichever the reader pleases.
+
+Mr. Darwin, on the other hand, repeatedly avows ignorance, and profound
+ignorance, concerning the causes of those variations which, or nothing,
+must be the fountain-heads of species. Thus he writes of "the complex
+and _little known_ laws of variation."[337] "There is also _some
+probability_ in the view propounded by Andrew Knight, that variability
+_may be partly_ connected with excess of food."[338] "Many laws regulate
+variation, _some few of which_ can be _dimly seen_."[339] "The results
+of the _unknown_, or _but dimly understood_, laws of variation are
+infinitely complex and diversified."[340] "We are _profoundly ignorant_
+of the cause of each slight variation or individual difference."[341]
+"We are _far too ignorant_ to speculate on the relative importance of
+the several known and unknown causes of variation."[342] He admits,
+indeed, the effects of use and disuse to have been important, but how
+important we have no means of knowing; he also attributes considerable
+effect to the action of changed conditions of life--but how considerable
+again we know not; nevertheless, he sees no great principle underlying
+the variations generally, and tending to make them appear for a length
+of time together in any definite direction advantageous to the creature
+itself, but either expressly, as at times, or by implication, as
+throughout his works, ascribes them to accident or chance.
+
+In other words, he admits his ignorance concerning them, and dwells only
+on the accumulation of variations the appearance of which for any length
+of time in any given direction he leaves unaccounted for.
+
+Lamarck, again, having established his principle that sense of need is
+the main direct cause of variation, and having also established that the
+variations thus engendered are inherited, so that divergences accumulate
+and result in species and genera, is comparatively indifferent to
+further details. His work is avowedly an outline. Nevertheless, we have
+seen that he was quite alive to the effects of the geometrical ratio of
+increase, and of the struggle for existence which thence inevitably
+follows.
+
+Mr. Darwin, on the other hand, comparatively indifferent to, or at any
+rate silent concerning the causes of those variations which appeared so
+all-important to Lamarck, inasmuch as they are the raindrops which unite
+to form the full stream of modification, goes into very full detail upon
+natural selection, or the survival of the fittest, and maintains it to
+have been "the most important but not the exclusive means of
+modification."[343]
+
+It will be readily seen that, according to Lamarck, the variations which
+when accumulated amount to specific and generic differences, will have
+been due to causes which have been mainly of the same kind for long
+periods together. Conditions of life change for the most part slowly,
+steadily, and in a set direction; as in the direction of steady, gradual
+increase or decrease of cold or moisture; of the steady, gradual
+increase of such and such an enemy, or decrease of such and such a kind
+of food; of the gradual upheaval or submergence of such and such a
+continent, and consequent drying up or encroachment of such and such a
+sea, and so forth. The thoughts of the creature varying will thus have
+been turned mainly in one direction for long together; and hence the
+consequent modifications will also be mainly in fixed and definite
+directions for many successive generations; as in the direction of a
+warmer or cooler covering; of a better means of defence or of attack in
+relation to such and such another species; of a longer neck and longer
+legs, or of whatever other modification the gradually changing
+circumstances may be rendering expedient. It is easy to understand the
+accumulation of slight successive modifications which thus make their
+appearance in given organs and in a set direction.
+
+With Mr. Darwin, on the contrary, the variations being accidental, and
+due to no special and uniform cause, will not appear for any length of
+time in any given direction, nor in any given organ, but will be just as
+liable to appear in one organ as in another, and may be in one
+generation in one direction, and in another in another.
+
+In confirmation of the above, and in illustration of the important
+consequences that will follow according as we adopt the old or the more
+recent theory, I would quote the following from Mr. Mivart's 'Genesis of
+Species.'
+
+Shortly before maintaining that two similar structures have often been
+developed independently of one another, Mr. Mivart points out that if we
+are dependent upon indefinite variations only, as provided for us by Mr.
+Darwin, this would be "so improbable as to be practically
+impossible."[344] The number of possible variations being indefinitely
+great, "it is therefore an indefinitely great number to one against a
+similar series of variations occurring and being similarly preserved in
+any two independent instances." It will be felt (as Mr. Mivart presently
+insists) that this objection does not apply to a system which maintains
+that in case an animal feels any given want it will gradually develop
+the structure which shall meet the want--that is to say, if the want be
+not so great and so sudden as to extinguish the creature to which it has
+become a necessity. For if there be such a power of self-adaptation as
+thus supposed, two or more very widely different animals feeling the
+same kind of want might easily adopt similar means to gratify it, and
+hence develop eventually a substantially similar structure; just as two
+men, without any kind of concert, have often hit upon like means of
+compassing the same ends. Mr. Spencer's theory--so Mr. Mivart tells
+us--and certainly that of Lamarck, whose disciple Mr. Spencer would
+appear to be,[345] admits "a certain peculiar, but limited power of
+response and adaptation in each animal and plant"--to the conditions of
+their existence. "Such theories," says Mr. Mivart, "have not to contend
+against the difficulty proposed, and it has been urged that even very
+complex extremely similar structures have again and again been developed
+quite independently one of the other, and this because the process has
+taken place not by merely haphazard, indefinite variations in all
+directions, but by the concurrence of some other internal natural law or
+laws co-operating with external influences and with Natural Selection in
+the evolution of organic forms.
+
+"_It must never be forgotten that to admit any such constant operation
+of any such unknown natural cause is to deny the purely Darwinian theory
+which relies upon the survival of the fittest by means of minute
+fortuitous indefinite variations._
+
+"Among many other obligations which the author has to acknowledge to
+Professor Huxley, are the pointing out of this very difficulty, and the
+calling his attention to the striking resemblance between certain teeth
+of the dog, and of the thylacine, as one instance, and certain ornithic
+peculiarities of pterodactyles as another."[346]
+
+In brief then, changed distribution of use and disuse in consequence of
+changed conditions of the environment is with Lamarck the main cause of
+modification. According to Mr. Darwin natural selection, or the survival
+of favourable but accidental variations, is the most important means of
+modification. In a word, with Lamarck the variations are definite; with
+Mr. Darwin indefinite.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[333] Vol. ii. chap. i.
+
+[334] Vol. ii. chap, xxxiv., ed. 1872.
+
+[335] 'Philosophie Zoologique,' ed. M. Martins, Paris, Lyons, 1873, tom.
+i. p. 24.
+
+[336] 'Philosophie Zoologique,' tom. i. p. 72.
+
+[337] 'Origin of Species,' p. 3.
+
+[338] Ibid. p. 5.
+
+[339] 'Origin of Species,' p. 8.
+
+[340] Ibid. p. 9.
+
+[341] Ibid. p. 158.
+
+[342] Ibid. p. 159.
+
+[343] 'Origin of Species,' p. 4.
+
+[344] 'Genesis of Species,' p. 74, 1871.
+
+[345] See _ante_, p. 330, line 1 after heading.
+
+[346] 'Genesis of Species,' p. 76, ed. 1871.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+NATURAL SELECTION CONSIDERED AS A MEANS OF MODIFICATION. THE CONFUSION
+WHICH THIS EXPRESSION OCCASIONS.
+
+
+When Mr. Darwin says that natural selection is the most important
+"means" of modification, I am not sure that I understand what he wishes
+to imply by the word "means." I do not see how the fact that those
+animals which are best fitted for the conditions of their existence
+commonly survive in the struggle for life, can be called in any special
+sense a "means" of modification.
+
+"Means" is a dangerous word; it slips too easily into "cause." We have
+seen Mr. Darwin himself say that Buffon did not enter on "the _causes or
+means_"[347] of modification, as though these two words were synonymous,
+or nearly so. Nevertheless, the use of the word "means" here enables Mr.
+Darwin to speak of Natural Selection as if it were an active cause
+(which he constantly does), and yet to avoid expressly maintaining that
+it is a cause of modification. This, indeed, he has not done in express
+terms, but he does it by implication when he writes, "Natural Selection
+_might be most effective in giving_ the proper colour to each kind of
+grouse, and in _keeping_ that colour when once acquired." Such language,
+says the late Mr. G. H. Lewes, "is misleading;" it makes "selection an
+agent."[348]
+
+It is plain that natural selection cannot be considered a cause of
+variation; and if not of variation, which is as the rain drop, then not
+of specific and generic modification, which are as the river; for the
+variations must make their appearance before they can be selected.
+Suppose that it is an advantage to a horse to have an especially hard
+and broad hoof, then a horse born with such a hoof will indeed probably
+survive in the struggle for existence, but he was not born with the
+larger and harder hoof _because of his subsequently surviving_. He
+survived because he was born fit--not, he was born fit because he
+survived. The variation must arise first and be preserved afterwards.
+
+Mr. Darwin therefore is in the following dilemma. If he does not treat
+natural selection as a cause of variation, the 'Origin of Species' will
+turn out to have no _raison d'être_. It will have professed to have
+explained to us the manner in which species has originated, but it will
+have left us in the dark concerning the origin of those variations
+which, when added together, amount to specific and generic differences.
+Thus, as I said in 'Life and Habit,' Mr. Darwin will have made us think
+we know the whole road, in spite of his having almost ostentatiously
+blindfolded us at every step in the journey. The 'Origin of Species'
+would thus prove to be no less a piece of intellectual sleight-of-hand
+than Paley's 'Natural Theology.'
+
+If, on the other hand, Mr. Darwin maintains natural selection to be a
+cause of variation, this comes to saying that when an animal has varied
+in an advantageous direction, the fact of its subsequently surviving in
+the struggle for existence is the cause of its having varied in the
+advantageous direction--or more simply still--that the fact of its
+having varied is the cause of its having varied.
+
+And this is what we have already seen Mr. Darwin actually to say, in a
+passage quoted near the beginning of this present book. When writing of
+the eye he says, "Variation will cause the slight alterations;"[349] but
+the "slight alterations" _are_ the variations; so that Mr. Darwin's
+words come to this--that "variation will cause the variations."
+
+There does not seem any better way out of this dilemma than that which
+Mr. Darwin has adopted--namely, to hold out natural selection as "a
+means" of modification, and thenceforward to treat it as an efficient
+cause; but at the same time to protest again and again that it is
+not a cause. Accordingly he writes that "Natural Selection _acts
+only by the preservation and accumulation_ of small inherited
+modifications,"[350]--that is to say, it has had no share in inducing or
+causing these modifications. Again, "What applies to one animal will
+apply throughout all time to all animals--_that is, if they vary, for
+otherwise natural selection can effect nothing_"[351]; and again, "for
+natural selection only _takes advantage of such variations as
+arise_"[352]--the variations themselves arising, as we have just seen,
+from variation.
+
+Nothing, then, can be clearer from these passages than that natural
+selection is not a cause of modification; while, on the other hand,
+nothing can be clearer, from a large number of such passages, as, for
+instance, "natural selection may be _effective_ in _giving_ and
+_keeping_ colour,"[353] than that natural selection is an efficient
+cause; and in spite of its being expressly declared to be only a "means"
+of modification, it will be accepted as cause by the great majority of
+readers.
+
+Mr. Darwin explains this apparent inconsistency thus:--He maintains that
+though the advantageous modification itself is fortuitous, or without
+known cause or principle underlying it, yet its becoming the predominant
+form of the species in which it appears is due to the fact that those
+animals which have been advantageously modified commonly survive in
+times of difficulty, while the unmodified individuals perish: offspring
+therefore is more frequently left by the favourably modified animal, and
+thus little by little the whole species will come to inherit the
+modification. Hence the survival of the fittest becomes a means of
+modification, though it is no cause of variation.
+
+It will appear more clearly later on how much this amounts to. I will
+for the present content myself with the following quotation from the
+late Mr. G. H. Lewes in reference to it. Mr. Lewes writes:--
+
+"Mr. Darwin seems to imply that the external conditions which cause a
+variation are to be distinguished from the conditions which accumulate
+and perfect such variation, that is to say, he implies a radical
+difference between the process of variation and the process of
+selection. This I have already said does not seem to me acceptable; the
+selection I conceive to be simply the variation which has
+survived."[354]
+
+Certainly those animals and plants which are best fitted for their
+environment, or, as Lamarck calls it, "_circonstances_"--those animals,
+in fact, which are best fitted to comply with the conditions of their
+existence--are most likely to survive and transmit their especial
+fitness. No one would admit this more readily than Lamarck. This is no
+theory; it is a commonly observed fact in nature which no one will
+dispute, but it is not more "a means of modification" than many other
+commonly observed facts concerning animals.
+
+Why is "the survival of the fittest" more a means of modification than,
+we will say, the fact that animals live at all, or that they live in
+successive generations, being born, continuing their species, and dying,
+instead of living on for ever as one single animal in the common
+acceptation of the term; or than that they eat and drink?
+
+The heat whereby the water is heated, the water which is turned into
+steam, the piston on which the steam acts, the driving wheel, &c., &c.,
+are all one as much as another a means whereby a train is made to go
+from one place to another; it is impossible to say that any one of them
+is the main means. So (_mutatis mutandis_) with modification. There is
+no reason therefore why "the survival of the fittest" should claim to
+be an especial "means of modification" rather than any other necessary
+adjunct of animal or vegetable life.
+
+I find that the late Mr. G. H. Lewes has insisted on this objection in
+his 'Physical Basis of Mind.' I observe, also, that in the very passage
+in which he does so, Mr. Lewes appears to have been misled by Mr.
+Darwin's use of that dangerous word "means," and, at the same time, by
+his frequent treatment of natural selection as though it were an active
+cause; so that Mr. Lewes supposes Mr. Darwin to have fallen into the
+very error of which, as I have above shown, he is evidently struggling
+to keep clear--namely, that of maintaining natural selection to be a
+"cause" of variation. Mr. Lewes then continues:--
+
+"He [Mr. Darwin] separates Natural Selection from all the primary causes
+of variation either internal or external--either as results of the laws
+of growth, of the correlations of variation, of use and disuse, &c., and
+limits it to the slow accumulation of such variations as are profitable
+in the struggle with competitors. And for his purpose this separation is
+necessary. But biological philosophy must, I think, regard the
+distinction as artificial, _referring only to one of the great factors
+in the production of species_."[355]
+
+The fact that one in a brood or litter is born fitter for the conditions
+of its existence than its brothers and sisters, and, again, the causes
+that have led to this one's having been born fitter--which last is what
+the older evolutionists justly dwelt upon as the most interesting
+consideration in connection with the whole subject--are more noteworthy
+factors of modification than the factor that an animal, if born fitter
+for its conditions, will commonly survive longer in the struggle for
+existence. If the first of these can be explained in such a manner as to
+be accepted as true, or highly probable, we have a substantial gain to
+our knowledge. The second is little--if at all--better than a truism.
+Granted, if it were not generally the case that those forms are most
+likely to survive which are best fitted for the conditions of their
+existence, no adaptation of form to conditions of existence could ever
+have come about. "The survival of the fittest" therefore, or, perhaps
+better, "the fertility of the fittest," is thus a _sine quâ non_ for
+modification. But, as we have just insisted, this does not render "the
+fertility of the fittest" an especial "means of modification," rather
+than any other _sine quâ non_ for modification.
+
+But, to look at the matter in another light. Mr. Darwin maintains
+natural selection to be "the most important but not the exclusive means
+of modification."
+
+For "natural selection" substitute the words "survival of the fittest,"
+which we may do with Mr. Darwin's own consent abundantly given.
+
+To the words "survival of the fittest" add what is elided, but what is,
+nevertheless, unquestionably as much implied as though it were said
+openly whenever these words are used, and without which "fittest" has no
+force--I mean, "for the conditions of their existence."
+
+We thus find that when Mr. Darwin says that natural selection is the
+most important, but not exclusive means of modification, he means that
+the survival in the struggle for existence of those creatures which are
+best fitted to comply with the conditions of their existence is the most
+important, but not exclusive means whereby the descendants of a
+creature, we will say, A, have become modified, so as to be now
+represented by a creature, we will say, B.
+
+But the word "_circonstances_," so frequently used by Lamarck for the
+conditions of an animal's existence, contains, by implication, the idea
+of animals _which shall exist or not according as they fulfil those
+conditions or fail to fulfil them_. Conditions of existence are
+conditions which something capable of existing must fulfil if it would
+exist at all, and nothing is a condition of an animal's existence which
+that animal need not comply with and may yet continue to exist. Again,
+the words "animals" and "plants" comprehend the ideas of "fit,"
+"fitter," and "fittest," "unfit," "unfitter," and "unfittest" for
+certain conditions, for we know of no animals or plants in which we do
+not observe degrees of fitness or unfitness for their "_circonstances_"
+or environment, or conditions of existence.
+
+The use, therefore, of the term "conditions of existence" is sufficient
+to show that the person using it intends to imply that those animals and
+plants will live longest (or survive) and thrive best which are best
+able to fulfil those conditions. Hence it implies neither more nor less
+than what is implied by the words "struggle for existence, with
+consequent survival of the fittest"--that is to say, if we hold the
+complying with any condition of life to which difficulty is attached to
+be part of "the struggle" for life, and this we should certainly do.
+
+The words "conditions of existence" may, then, be used instead of the
+"struggle for existence with consequent survival of the fittest," for as
+they cannot imply any less than the "struggle, &c.," when they are set
+out in full, and without suppression, so neither do they imply more; for
+nothing is a condition of existence, in so far as its power of effecting
+the modification of any animal is concerned, which does not also involve
+more or less difficulty or struggle; for if there is no difficulty or
+struggle there will be nothing to bring about change of habit, and hence
+of structure. This identity of meaning may be also seen if we call to
+mind that the conditions of existence can be only a synonym for "the
+conditions of continuing to live," and "the conditions of continuing to
+live" a synonym for "the conditions of continuing to live a longer
+time," and "the conditions of continuing to live a longer time," for
+"the conditions of survival," and "the conditions of survival," for "the
+survival of the fittest," inasmuch as the being fittest is the condition
+of being the longest survivor.
+
+But we have already seen that "the survival of the fittest," is,
+according to Mr. Darwin, a synonym for "natural selection"; hence it
+follows that "the conditions of existence" imply neither more nor less
+than what is implied by "natural selection" when this expression is
+properly explained, and may be used instead of it; so that when Mr.
+Darwin says that "natural selection" is the main but not exclusive means
+of modification, he must mean, consciously or unconsciously, that "the
+conditions of existence" are the main but not exclusive means of
+modification. But this is only falling in with "the views and erroneous
+grounds of opinion," as Mr. Darwin briefly calls them, of Lamarck
+himself; a fact which Mr. Darwin's readers would have seen more readily
+if he had kept to the use of the words "survival of the fittest" instead
+of "natural selection." Of that expression Mr. Darwin says[356] that it
+is "more accurate" than natural selection, but naively adds, "and
+sometimes equally convenient."
+
+I have said that there is a practical identity of meaning between
+"natural selection" and "the conditions of existence," when both
+expressions are fully extended. I say this, however, without prejudice
+to my right of maintaining that, of the two expressions, the one is
+accurate, lucid, and calculated to keep the thread of the argument well
+in sight of the reader, while the other is inaccurate, and always, if I
+may say so, less "convenient," as being always liable to lead the reader
+astray. Nor should it be lost sight of that Lamarck and Dr. Erasmus
+Darwin maintain that species and genera have arisen _because animals can
+fashion themselves into accord with_ their conditions, so that, as
+Lamarck is so continually insisting, the action of the conditions is
+indirect only--changed use and disuse being the direct causes; while,
+according to Mr. Darwin, it is natural selection itself (which, as we
+have seen, is but another way of saying conditions of existence) that is
+the most important means of modification.
+
+The identity of meaning above insisted on was, on the face of it, almost
+as obscure as that between "_evêque_ and bishop." Yet we know that
+"_evêque_" is "episc" and "bishop" "piscop," and that "episcopus" is the
+Latin for bishop; the words, therefore, are really one and the same, in
+spite of the difference in their appearance. I think I can show,
+moreover, that Mr. Darwin himself holds natural selection and the
+conditions of existence to be one and the same thing. For he writes, "in
+one sense," and it is hard to see any sense but one in what follows,
+"the conditions of life may be said not only to cause variability" (so
+that here Mr. Darwin appears to support Lamarck's main thesis) "either
+directly or indirectly, but likewise to include natural selection; for
+the conditions determine whether this or that variety shall
+survive."[357] But later on we find that "the expression of conditions
+of existence, so often insisted upon by the illustrious Cuvier" (and
+surely also by the illustrious Lamarck, though he calls them
+"_circonstances_") "is fully embraced by the principle of natural
+selection."[358] So we see that the conditions of life "_include_"
+natural selection, and yet the conditions of existence "_are fully
+embraced by_" natural selection, which, I take it, is an enigmatic way
+of saying that they are one and the same thing, for it is not until two
+bodies absolutely coincide and occupy the same space that the one can be
+said both to include and to be embraced by the other.
+
+The difficulty, again, of understanding Mr. Darwin's meaning is enhanced
+by his repeatedly writing of "natural selection," or the fact that the
+fittest survive in the struggle for existence, as though it were the
+same thing as "evolution" or the descent, through the accumulation of
+small modifications in many successive generations, of one species from
+another and different one. In the concluding and recapitulatory chapter
+of the 'Origin of Species,' he writes:--
+
+"Turning to geographical distribution, the difficulties encountered _on
+the theory of descent with modification_ are serious enough;"[359] and
+in the next paragraph, "As, according to _the theory of natural
+selection, &c._," the context showing that in each case descent with
+modification is intended.
+
+Again:--
+
+"On the theory of the _natural selection_ of successive, slight, but
+profitable, modifications,"[360] that is to say, on the theory of the
+survival of the fittest; while on the next page we find "_the theory of
+descent with modification_," and "_the principle of natural selection_,"
+used as though they were convertible terms.
+
+Again:--
+
+"The existence of closely allied or representative species in any two
+areas implies, _on the theory of descent with modification, &c._;"[361]
+and, in the next paragraph, "_the theory of natural selection_, with its
+contingencies of extinction and divergence of character," is substituted
+as though the two expressions were identical.
+
+This is calculated to mislead. Independently of the fact that "natural
+selection," or "the survival of the fittest," is in no sense a theory,
+but simply an observed fact, yet even if the words are allowed to stand
+for "descent with modification by means of natural selection," it is
+still misleading to write as though this were synonymous with "the
+theory of evolution," or "the theory of descent with modification." To
+do this prevents the reader from bearing in mind that "evolution by
+means of the circumstance-suiting power of plants and animals" as
+advanced by the earlier evolutionists; and "evolution by means of lucky
+accidents" with comparatively little circumstance-suiting power, are two
+very different things, of which the one may be true and the other
+untrue. It leads the reader to forget that evolution by no means stands
+or falls with evolution by means of natural selection, and makes him
+think that if he accepts evolution at all, he is bound to Mr. Darwin's
+view of it. Hence, when he falls in with such writers as Professor
+Mivart and the Rev. J. J. Murphy, who show, and very plainly, that the
+survival of the fittest, unsupplemented by something which shall give a
+definite aim to the variations which successively occur, fails to
+account for the coadaptations of need and structure, he imagines that
+evolution has much less to say for itself than it really has. If Mr.
+Darwin, instead of taking the line which he has thought fit to adopt
+towards Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck, and the author of the
+'Vestiges,' had shown us what these men taught, why they taught it,
+wherein they were wrong, and how he proposed to set them right, he would
+have taken a course at once more agreeable with ordinary practice, and
+more likely to clear misconception from his own mind and from those of
+his readers.
+
+Mr. Darwin says,[362] "it is easy to hide our ignorance under such
+expressions as 'the plan of creation' and 'unity of design.'" Surely,
+also, it is easy to hide want of precision of thought, and the absence
+of any fundamental difference between his own main conclusion and that
+of Dr. Darwin and Lamarck whom he condemns, under the term "natural
+selection."
+
+I assure the reader that I find the task of forming a clear,
+well-defined conception of Mr. Darwin's meaning, as expressed in his
+'Origin of Species,' comparable only to that of one who has to act on
+the advice of a lawyer who has obscured the main issue as far as he can,
+and whose chief aim has been to make as many loopholes as possible for
+himself to escape through in case of his being called to account. Or,
+again, to that of one who has to construe an Act of Parliament which was
+originally framed so as to throw dust in the eyes of those who would
+oppose the measure, and which, having been since found unworkable, has
+had clauses repealed and inserted up and down it, till it is in an
+inextricable tangle of confusion and contradiction.
+
+As an example of my meaning, I will quote a passage to which I called
+attention in 'Life and Habit.' It runs:--
+
+"In the earlier editions of this work I underrated, as now seems
+probable, the frequency and importance of modifications due to
+spontaneous variability. But it is impossible to attribute to _this
+cause_" (i. e. spontaneous variability, which is itself only an
+expression for unknown causes) "the innumerable structures which are so
+well adapted to the habits of life of each species. I can no more
+believe in _this_" (i. e. that the innumerable structures, &c., can be
+due to unknown causes) "than that the well adapted form of a racehorse
+or greyhound, which, before the principle of selection by man was well
+understood, excited so much surprise in the minds of the older
+naturalists, can _thus_" (i. e. by attributing them to unknown causes)
+"be explained."[363]
+
+This amounts to saying that unknown causes can do so much, but cannot do
+so much more. On this passage I wrote, in 'Life and Habit':--
+
+"It is impossible to believe that, after years of reflection upon his
+subject, Mr. Darwin should have written as above, especially in such a
+place, if his mind was clear about his own position. Immediately after
+the admission of a certain amount of miscalculation there comes a more
+or less exculpatory sentence, which sounds so right that ninety-nine
+people out of a hundred would walk through it, unless led by some
+exigency of their own position to examine it closely, but which yet,
+upon examination, proves to be as nearly meaningless as a sentence can
+be."[364]
+
+No one, to my knowledge, has impugned the justice of this criticism, and
+I may say that further study of Mr. Darwin's works has only strengthened
+my conviction of the confusion and inaccuracy of thought, which detracts
+so greatly from their value.
+
+So little is it generally understood that "evolution" and what is called
+"Darwinism" convey indeed the same main conclusion, but that this
+conclusion has been reached by two distinct roads, one of which is
+impregnable, while the other has already fallen into the hands of the
+enemy, that in the last November number of the 'Nineteenth Century'
+Professor Tyndall, while referring to descent with modification or
+evolution, speaks of it as though it were one and inseparable from Mr.
+Darwin's theory that it has come about mainly by means of natural
+selection. He writes:--
+
+"_Darwin's theory_, as pointed out nine or ten years ago by Helmholtz
+and Hooker, was then exactly in this condition of growth; and had they
+to speak of the subject to-day they would be able to announce an
+enormous strengthening of the theoretic fibre. Fissures in continuity
+which then existed, and which left little hope of being ever spanned,
+have been since bridged over, so that the further _the theory_ is tested
+the more fully does it harmonize with progressive experience and
+discovery. We shall never probably fill all the gaps; but this will not
+prevent a profound belief in the truth of _the theory_ from taking root
+in the general mind. Much less will it justify a total denial of _the
+theory_. The man of science, who assumes in such a case the position of
+a denier, is sure to be stranded and isolated."
+
+This is in the true vein of the professional and orthodox scientist; of
+that new orthodoxy which is clamouring for endowment, and which would
+step into the Pope's shoes to-morrow, if we would only let it. If
+Professor Tyndall means that those who deny evolution will find
+themselves presently in a very small minority, I agree with him; but if
+he means that evolution is Mr. Darwin's theory, and that he who rejects
+what Mr. Darwin calls "the theory of natural selection" will find
+himself stranded, his assertion will pass muster with those only who
+know little of the history and literature of evolution.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[347] 'Origin of Species,' Hist. Sketch, p. xiii.
+
+[348] 'Physical Basis of Mind,' p. 108.
+
+[349] 'Origin of Species,' p. 146.
+
+[350] Ibid. p. 75.
+
+[351] Ibid. p. 88.
+
+[352] 'Origin of Species,' p. 98.
+
+[353] Ibid. p. 66.
+
+[354] 'Physical Basis of the Mind,' p. 109, 1878.
+
+[355] 'Physical Basis of the Mind,' p. 107, 1878.
+
+[356] 'Origin of Species,' p. 49.
+
+[357] 'Origin of Species,' p. 107.
+
+[358] Ibid. p. 166.
+
+[359] 'Origin of Species,' p. 406.
+
+[360] Ibid, p. 416.
+
+[361] Ibid. p. 419.
+
+[362] 'Origin of Species,' p. 422.
+
+[363] 'Origin of Species,' p. 171, ed. 1876.
+
+[364] 'Life and Habit,' p. 260.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+MR. DARWIN'S DEFENCE OF THE EXPRESSION, NATURAL SELECTION--PROFESSOR
+MIVART AND NATURAL SELECTION.
+
+
+So important is it that we should come to a clear understanding upon the
+positions taken by Mr. Darwin and Lamarck respectively, that at the risk
+of wearying the reader I will endeavour to exhaust this subject here. In
+order to do so, I will follow Mr. Darwin's answer to those who have
+objected to the expression, "natural selection."
+
+Mr. Darwin says:--
+
+"Several writers have misapprehended or objected to the term 'natural
+selection.' Some have even imagined that natural selection induces
+variability."[365]
+
+And small wonder if they have; but those who have fallen into this error
+are hardly worth considering. The true complaint is that Mr. Darwin has
+too often written of "natural selection" as though it does induce
+variability, and that his language concerning it is so confusing that
+the reader is not helped to see that it really comes to nothing but a
+cloak of difference from his predecessors, under which there lurks a
+concealed identity of opinion as to the main facts. The reader is thus
+led to look upon it as something positive and special, and, in spite of
+Mr. Darwin's disclaimer, to think of it as an actively efficient cause.
+
+Few will deny that this complaint is a just one, or that ninety-nine out
+of a hundred readers of average intelligence, if asked, after reading
+Mr. Darwin's 'Origin of Species,' what was the most important cause of
+modification, would answer "natural selection." Let the same readers
+have read the 'Zoonomia' of Dr. Erasmus Darwin, or the 'Philosophie
+Zoologique' of Lamarck, and they would at once reply, "the wishes of an
+animal or plant, as varying with its varying conditions," or more
+briefly, "sense of need."
+
+"Whereas," continues Mr. Darwin, "it" (natural selection) "implies only
+the preservation of such variations as arise, and are beneficial to the
+being under its conditions of life. No one objects to agriculturists
+speaking of the potent effects of man's selection."
+
+Of course not; for there _is_ an actual creature man, who actually does
+select with a set purpose in order to produce such and such a result,
+which result he presently produces.
+
+"And in this case the individual differences given by nature, which man
+for some object selects, must first occur."
+
+This shows that the complaint has already reached Mr. Darwin, that in
+not showing us how "the individual differences first occur," he is
+really leaving us absolutely in the dark as to the cause of all
+modification--giving us an 'Origin of Species' with "the origin" cut
+out; but I do not think that any reader who has not been compelled to go
+somewhat deeply into the question would find out that this is the real
+gist of the objection which Mr. Darwin is appearing to combat. A general
+impression is left upon the reader that some very foolish objectors are
+being put to silence, that Mr. Darwin is the most candid literary
+opponent in the world, and as just as Aristides himself; but if the
+unassisted reader will cross-question himself what it is all about, I
+shall be much surprised if he is ready with his answer.
+
+"Others"--to resume our criticism on Mr. Darwin's defence--"have
+objected that the term implies conscious choice in the animals which
+become modified, and it has been even urged that as plants have no
+volition, natural selection is not applicable to them!"
+
+This--unfortunately--must have been the objection of a slovenly, or
+wilfully misapprehending reader, and was unworthy of serious notice. But
+its introduction here tends to draw the reader from the true ground of
+complaint, which is that at the end of Mr. Darwin's book we stand much
+in the same place as we did when we started, as regards any knowledge of
+what is the "origin of species."
+
+"In the literal sense of the word, no doubt, natural selection is a
+false term."
+
+Then why use it when another, and, by Mr. Darwin's own admission, a
+"more accurate" one is to hand in "the survival of the fittest"?[366]
+This term is not appreciably longer than natural selection. Mr. Darwin
+may say, indeed, that it is "sometimes" as convenient a term as natural
+selection; but the kind of men who exercise permanent effect upon the
+opinions of other people will bid such a passage as this stand aside
+somewhat sternly. If a term is not appreciably longer than another, and
+if at the same time it more accurately expresses the idea which is
+intended to be conveyed, it is not sometimes only, but always, more
+convenient, and should immediately be substituted for the less accurate
+one.
+
+No one complains of the use of what is, strictly speaking, an inaccurate
+expression, when it is nevertheless the best that we can get. It may be
+doubted whether there is any such thing possible as a perfectly accurate
+expression. All words that are not simply names of things are apt to
+turn out little else than compendious false analogies; but we have a
+right to complain when a writer tells us that he is using a less
+accurate expression when a more accurate one is ready to his hand.
+Hence, when Mr. Darwin continues, "Who ever objected to chemists
+speaking of the elective affinities of the various elements? and yet an
+acid cannot strictly be said to elect the base with which it by
+preference combines," he is beside the mark. Chemists do not speak of
+"elective affinities" in spite of there being a more accurate and not
+appreciably longer expression at their disposal.
+
+"It has been said," continues Mr. Darwin, "that I speak of natural
+selection as an active power or deity. But who objects to an author
+speaking of the attraction of gravity? Everyone knows what is meant and
+implied by such metaphorical expressions, and they are almost necessary
+for brevity."
+
+Mr. Darwin certainly does speak of natural selection "acting,"
+"accumulating," "operating"; and if "every-one knew what was meant and
+implied by this metaphorical expression," as they now do, or think they
+do, in the case of the attraction of gravity, there might be less ground
+of complaint; but the expression was known to very few at the time Mr.
+Darwin introduced it, and was used with so much ambiguity, and with so
+little to protect the reader from falling into the error of supposing
+that it was the cause of the modifications which we see around us, that
+we had a just right to complain, even in the first instance; much more
+should we do so on the score of the retention of the expression when a
+more accurate one had been found.
+
+If the "survival of the fittest" had been used, to the total excision of
+"natural selection" from every page in Mr. Darwin's book--it would have
+been easily seen that "the survival of the fittest" is no more a cause
+of modification, and hence can give no more explanation concerning the
+origin of species, than the fact of a number of competitors in a race
+failing to run the whole course, or to run it as quickly as the winner,
+can explain how the winner came to have good legs and lungs. According
+to Lamarck, the winner will have got these by means of sense of need,
+and consequent practice and training, on his own part, and on that of
+his forefathers; according to Mr. Darwin, the "most important means" of
+his getting them is his "happening" to be born with them, coupled, with
+the fact that his uncles and aunts for many generations could not run
+so well as his ancestors in the direct line. But can the fact of his
+uncles and aunts running less well than his fathers and mothers be a
+means of his fathers and mothers coming to run _better than they used to
+run_?
+
+If the reader will bear in mind the idea of the runners in a race, it
+will help him to see the point at issue between Mr. Darwin and Lamarck.
+Perhaps also the double meaning of the word race, as expressing equally
+a breed and a competition, may not be wholly without significance. What
+we want to be told is, not that a runner will win the prize if he can
+run "ever such a little" faster than his fellows--we know this--but by
+what process he comes to be able to run ever such a little faster.
+
+"So, again," continues Mr. Darwin, "it is difficult to avoid
+personifying nature, but I mean by nature only the aggregate action and
+product of many natural laws, and by laws the sequence of events as
+ascertained by us."
+
+This, again, is raising up a dead man in order to knock him down. Nature
+has been personified for more than two thousand years, and every one
+understands that nature is no more really a woman than hope or justice,
+or than God is like the pictures of the mediæval painters; no one whose
+objection was worth notice could have objected to the personification of
+nature.
+
+Mr. Darwin concludes:--
+
+"With a little familiarity, such superficial objections will be
+forgotten."[367]
+
+As a matter of fact, I do not see any greater tendency to acquiesce in
+Mr. Darwin's claim on behalf of natural selection than there was a few
+years ago, but on the contrary, that discontent is daily growing. To say
+nothing of the Rev. J. J. Murphy and Professor Mivart, the late Mr. G.
+H. Lewes did not find the objection a superficial one, nor yet did he
+find it disappear "with a little familiarity"; on the contrary, the more
+familiar he became with it the less he appeared to like it. I may even
+go, without fear, so far as to say that any writer who now uses the
+expression "natural selection," writes himself down thereby as behind
+the age. It is with great pleasure that I observe Mr. Francis Darwin in
+his recent lecture[368] to have kept clear of it altogether, and to have
+made use of no expression, and advocated no doctrine to which either Dr.
+Erasmus Darwin or Lamarck would not have readily assented. I think I may
+affirm confidently that a few years ago any such lecture would have
+contained repeated reference to Natural Selection. For my own part I
+know of few passages in any theological writer which please me less than
+the one which I have above followed sentence by sentence. I know of few
+which should better serve to show us the sort of danger we should run if
+we were to let men of science get the upper hand of us.
+
+Natural Selection, then, is only another way of saying "Nature." Mr.
+Darwin seems to be aware of this when he writes, "Nature, if I may be
+allowed to personify the natural preservation or survival of the
+fittest." And again, at the bottom of the same page, "It may
+metaphorically be said that _natural selection is daily and hourly
+scrutinizing_ throughout the world the slightest variations."[369] It
+may be metaphorically said that _Nature_ is daily and hourly
+scrutinizing, but it cannot be said consistently with any right use of
+words, metaphorical or otherwise, that natural selection scrutinizes,
+unless natural selection is merely a somewhat cumbrous synonym for
+Nature. When, therefore, Mr. Darwin says that natural selection is the
+"most important, but not the exclusive means" whereby any modification
+has been effected, he is really saying that Nature is the most important
+means of modification--which is only another way of telling us that
+variation causes variations, and is all very true as far as it goes.
+
+I did not read Professor Mivart's 'Lessons from Nature,' until I had
+written all my own criticism on Mr. Darwin's position. From that work,
+however, I now quote the following:--
+
+"It cannot then be contested that the far-famed 'Origin of Species,'
+that, namely, by 'Natural Selection,' has been repudiated in fact,
+though not expressly even by its own author. This circumstance, which is
+simply undeniable, might dispense us from any further consideration of
+the hypothesis itself. But the "conspiracy of silence," which has
+accompanied the repudiation tends to lead the unthinking many to suppose
+that the same importance still attaches to it as at first. On this
+account it may be well to ask the question, what, after all, _is_
+'Natural Selection'?
+
+"The answer may seem surprising to some, but it is none the less true,
+that 'Natural Selection' is simply nothing. It is an apparently positive
+name for a really negative effect, and is therefore an eminently
+misleading term. By 'Natural Selection' is meant the result of all the
+destructive agencies of Nature, destructive to individuals and to races
+by destroying their lives or their powers of propagation. Evidently,
+_the cause of the distinction of species_ (supposing such distinction to
+be brought about in natural generation) _must be that which causes
+variation, and variation in one determinate direction in at least
+several individuals simultaneously_." I should like to have added here
+the words "and during many successive generations," but they will go
+very sufficiently without saying.
+
+"At the same time," continues Professor Mivart, "it is freely conceded
+that the destructive agencies in nature do succeed in preventing the
+perpetuation of monstrous, abortive, and feeble attempts at the
+performance of the evolutionary process, that they rapidly remove
+antecedent forms when new ones are evolved more in harmony with
+surrounding conditions, and that their action results in the formation
+of new characters when these have once attained sufficient completeness
+to be of real utility to their possessor.
+
+"Continued reflection, and five years further pondering over the
+problems of specific origin have more and more convinced me that the
+conception, that the origin of all species 'man included' is due simply
+to conditions which are (to use Mr. Darwin's own words) 'strictly
+accidental,' is a conception utterly irrational."
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"With regard to the conception as now put forward by Mr. Darwin, I
+cannot truly characterize it but by an epithet which I employ only with
+much reluctance. I weigh my words and have present to my mind the many
+distinguished naturalists who have accepted the notion, and yet I cannot
+hesitate to call it a '_puerile hypothesis_.'"[370]
+
+I am afraid I cannot go with Professor Mivart farther than this point,
+though I have a strong feeling as though his conclusion is true, that
+"the material universe is always and everywhere sustained and directed
+by an infinite cause, for which to us the word mind is the least
+inadequate and misleading symbol." But I feel that any attempt to deal
+with such a question is going far beyond that sphere in which man's
+powers may be at present employed with advantage: I trust, therefore,
+that I may never try to verify it, and am indifferent whether it is
+correct or not.
+
+Again, I should probably differ from Professor Mivart in finding this
+mind inseparable from the material universe in which we live and move.
+So that I could neither conceive of such a mind influencing and
+directing the universe from a point as it were outside the universe
+itself, nor yet of a universe as existing without there being
+present--or having been present--in its every particle something for
+which mind should be the least inadequate and misleading symbol. But the
+subject is far beyond me.
+
+As regards Professor Mivart's denunciations of natural selection, I
+have only one fault to find with them, namely, that they do not speak
+out with sufficient bluntness. The difficulty of showing the fallacy of
+Mr. Darwin's position, is the difficulty of grasping a will-o'-the-wisp.
+A concluding example will put this clearly before the reader, and at the
+same time serve to illustrate the most tangible feature of difference
+between Mr. Darwin and Lamarck.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[365] 'Origin of Species,' p. 62.
+
+[366] 'Origin of Species,' p. 49.
+
+[367] 'Origin of Species,' p. 63.
+
+[368] 'Nature,' March 14 and 21, 1878.
+
+[369] 'Origin of Species,' p. 65.
+
+[370] 'Lessons from Nature,' p. 300.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+THE CASE OF THE MADEIRA BEETLES AS ILLUSTRATING THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN
+THE EVOLUTION OF LAMARCK AND OF MR. CHARLES DARWIN--CONCLUSION.
+
+
+An island of no very great extent is surrounded by a sea which cuts it
+off for many miles from the nearest land. It lies a good deal exposed to
+winds, so that the beetles which live upon it are in continual danger of
+being blown out to sea if they fly during the hours and seasons when the
+wind is blowing. It is found that an unusually large proportion of the
+beetles inhabiting this island are either without wings or have their
+wings in a useless and merely rudimentary state; and that a large number
+of kinds which are very common on the nearest mainland, but which are
+compelled to use their wings in seeking their food, are here entirely
+wanting. It is also observed that the beetles on this island generally
+lie much concealed until the wind lulls and the sun shines. These are
+the facts; let us now see how Lamarck would treat them.
+
+Lamarck would say that the beetles once being on this island it became
+one of the conditions of their existence that they should not get blown
+out to sea. For once blown out to sea, they would be quite certain to be
+drowned. Beetles, when they fly, generally fly for some purpose, and do
+not like having that purpose interfered with by something which can
+carry them all-whithers, whether they like it or no. If they are flying
+and find the wind taking them in a wrong direction, or seaward--which
+they know will be fatal to them--they stop flying as soon as may be, and
+alight on _terra firma_. But if the wind is very prevalent the beetles
+can find but little opportunity for flying at all: they will therefore
+lie quiet all day and do as best they can to get their living on foot
+instead of on the wing. There will thus be a long-continued disuse of
+wings, and this will gradually diminish the development of the wings
+themselves, till after a sufficient number of generations these will
+either disappear altogether, or be seen in a rudimentary condition only.
+For each beetle which has made but little use of its wings will be
+liable to leave offspring with a slightly diminished wing, some other
+organ which has been used instead of the wing becoming proportionately
+developed. It is thus seen that the conditions of existence are the
+indirect cause of the wings becoming rudimentary, inasmuch as they
+preclude the beetles from using them; the disuse however on the part of
+the beetles themselves is the direct cause.
+
+Now let us see how Mr. Darwin deals with the same case. He writes:--
+
+"In some cases we might easily set down to disuse, modifications of
+structure which are _wholly_ or _mainly_ due to natural selection." Then
+follow the facts about the beetles of Madeira, as I have given them
+above. While we are reading them we naturally make up our minds that
+the winglessness of the beetles will prove due either wholly, or at any
+rate mainly, to natural selection, and that though it would be easy to
+set it down to disuse, yet we must on no account do so. The facts having
+been stated, Mr. Darwin continues:--"These several considerations make
+me believe that the wingless condition of so many Madeira beetles is
+mainly due to the action of natural selection," and when we go on to the
+words that immediately follow, "combined probably with disuse," we are
+almost surprised at finding that disuse has had anything to do with the
+matter. We feel a languid wish to know exactly how much and in what way
+it has entered into the combination; but we find it difficult to think
+the matter out, and are glad to take it for granted that the part played
+by disuse must be so unimportant that we need not consider it. Mr.
+Darwin continues:--
+
+"For during many successive generations each individual beetle which
+flew least, either from its wings having been ever so little less
+perfectly developed, or from indolent habit, will have had the best
+chance of surviving from not having been blown out to sea; and on the
+other hand those beetles which most readily took to flight would
+oftenest be blown out to sea and perish."[371]
+
+So apt are we to believe what we are told, when it is told us gravely
+and with authority, and when there is no statement at hand to contradict
+it, that we fail to see that Mr. Darwin is all the time really
+attributing the winglessness of the Madeira beetles either to the _quâ_
+him _unknown causes_ which have led to the "ever so little less perfect
+development of wing" on the part of the beetles that leave
+offspring--that is to say, is admitting that he can give no account of
+the matter--or else to the "indolent habit" of the parent beetles which
+has led them to disuse their wings, and hence gradually to lose
+them--which is neither more nor less than the "erroneous grounds of
+opinion," and "well-known doctrine" of Lamarck.
+
+For Mr. Darwin cannot mean that the fact of some beetles being blown out
+to sea is the most important means whereby certain other beetles come to
+have smaller wings--that the Madeira beetles in fact come to have
+smaller wings mainly because their large winged uncles and aunts--go
+away.
+
+But if he does not mean this, what becomes of natural selection?
+
+For in this case we are left exactly where Lamarck left us, and must
+hold that such beetles as have smaller wings have them because the
+conditions of life or "circumstances" in which their parents were
+placed, rendered it inconvenient to them to fly, and thus led them to
+leave off using their wings.
+
+Granted, that if there had been nothing to take unmodified beetles away,
+there would have been less room and scope for the modified beetles; also
+that unmodified beetles would have intermixed with the modified, and
+impeded the prevalence of the modification. But anything else than such
+removal of unmodified individuals would be contrary to our hypothesis.
+The very essence of conditions of existence is that there _shall be_
+something to take away those which do not comply with the conditions;
+if there is nothing to render such and such a course a _sine quâ non_
+for life, there is no condition of existence in respect of this course,
+and no modification according to Lamarck could follow, as there would be
+no changed distribution of use.
+
+I think that if I were to leave this matter here I should have said
+enough to make the reader feel that Lamarck's system is direct,
+intelligible and sufficient--while Mr. Darwin's is confused and
+confusing. I may however quote Mr. Darwin himself as throwing his theory
+about the Madeira beetles on one side in a later passage, for he
+writes:--
+
+"It is probable that _disuse has been the main agent in rendering organs
+rudimentary_," or in other words that Lamarck was quite right--nor does
+one see why if disuse is after all the main agent in rendering an organ
+rudimentary, use should not have been the main agent in developing
+it--but let that pass. "It (disuse) would at first lead," continues Mr.
+Darwin, "by slow steps to the more and more complete reduction of a
+part, until at last it became rudimentary--as in the case of the eyes of
+animals inhabiting dark caverns, and of the wings of birds inhabiting
+oceanic islands, which have seldom been forced by beasts of prey to take
+flight, and have ultimately lost the power of flying. Again, an organ
+useful under certain conditions, might become injurious under others,
+_as with the wings of beetles living on small and exposed
+islands_;"[372] so that the rudimentary condition of the Madeira
+beetles' wings is here set down as mainly due to disuse--while above we
+find it mainly due to natural selection--I should say that immediately
+after the word "islands" just quoted, Mr. Darwin adds "and in this case
+natural selection will have aided in reducing the organ, until it was
+rendered harmless and rudimentary," but this is Mr. Darwin's manner, and
+must go for what it is worth.
+
+How refreshing to turn to the simple straightforward language of
+Lamarck.
+
+"Long continued disuse," he writes, "in consequence of the habits which
+an animal has contracted, gradually reduces an organ, and leads to its
+final disappearance....
+
+"Eyes placed in the head form an essential part of that plan on which we
+observe all vertebrate organisms to be constructed. Nevertheless the
+mole which uses its vision very little, has eyes which are only very
+small and hardly apparent.
+
+"The _aspalax_ of Olivier, which lives underground like the mole, and
+exposes itself even less than the mole to the light of day, has wholly
+lost the use of its sight, nor does it retain more than mere traces of
+visual organs, these traces again being hidden under the skin and under
+certain other parts which cover them up and leave not even the smallest
+access to the light. The Proteus, an aquatic reptile akin to the
+Salamander and living in deep and obscure cavities under water, has,
+like the aspalax, no longer anything but traces of eyes
+remaining--traces which are again entirely hidden and covered up.[373]
+
+"The following consideration should be decisive.
+
+"Light cannot penetrate everywhere, and as a consequence, animals which
+live habitually in places which it cannot reach, do not have an
+opportunity of using eyes, even though they have got them; but animals
+which form part of a system of organization which comprises eyes as an
+invariable rule among its organs, must have had eyes originally. Since
+then we find among these animals some which have lost their eyes, and
+which have only concealed traces of these organs, it is evident that the
+impoverishment, and even disappearance of the organs in question, must
+be the effect of long-continued disuse.
+
+"A proof of this is to be found in the fact that the organ of hearing is
+never in like case with that of sight; we always find it in animals of
+whose system of organization hearing is a component part; and for the
+following reason, namely, that sound, which is the effect of vibration
+upon the ear, can penetrate everywhere, and pass even through massive
+intermediate bodies. Any animal, therefore, with an organic system of
+which the ear is an essential part, can always find a use for its ears,
+no matter where it inhabits. We never, therefore, come upon rudimentary
+ears among the vertebrata, and when, going down the scale of life lower
+than the vertebrata, we come to a point at which the ear is no longer to
+be found; we never come upon ears again in any lower class.
+
+"Not so with the organ of sight: we see this organ disappear, reappear,
+and disappear again with the possibility or impossibility of using eyes
+on the part of the creature itself.[374]
+
+"The great development of mantle in the acephalous molluscs has rendered
+eyes, and even a head, entirely useless to them. These organs, though
+belonging to the type of the organism, and by rights included in it,
+have had to disappear and become annihilated owing to continued default
+of use.
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"Many insects which, by the analogy of their order and even genus,
+should have wings, have nevertheless lost them more or less completely
+through disuse. A number of coleoptera, orthoptera, hymenoptera, and
+hemiptera give us examples, the habits of these animals never leading
+them to use their wings."[375]
+
+     *     *     *     *     *
+
+I will here bring this present volume to a conclusion, hoping, however,
+to return to the same subject shortly, but to that part of it which
+bears upon longevity and the phenomena of old age. In 'Life and Habit' I
+pointed out that if differentiations of structure and instinct are
+considered as due to the different desires under different circumstances
+of an organism, which must be regarded as a single creature, though its
+development has extended over millions of years, and which is guided
+mainly by habit and memory until some disturbing cause compels
+invention--then the longevity of each generation or stage of this
+organism should depend upon the lateness of the average age of
+reproduction in each generation; so that an organism (using the word in
+its usual signification) which did not upon the average begin to
+reproduce itself till it was twenty, should be longer lived than one
+that on the average begins to reproduce itself at a year old. I also
+maintained that the phenomena of old age should be referred to failure
+of memory on the part of the organism, which in the embryonic stages,
+infancy, youth, and early manhood, leans upon the memory of what it did
+when it was in the persons of its ancestors; in middle life, carries its
+action onward by means of the impetus, already received, and by the
+force of habit; and in old age becomes puzzled, having no experience of
+any past existence at seventy-five, we will say, to guide it, and
+therefore forgetting itself more and more completely till it dies. I
+hope to extend this, and to bring forward arguments in support of it in
+a future work.
+
+Of the importance of the theory put forward in 'Life and Habit'--I am
+daily more and more convinced. Unless we admit oneness of personality
+between parents and offspring, memory of the often repeated facts of
+past existences, the latency of that memory until it is rekindled by the
+presence of the associated ideas, or of a sufficient number of them, and
+the far-reaching consequences of the unconsciousness which results from
+habitual action, evolution does not greatly add to our knowledge as to
+how we shall live here to the best advantage. Add these considerations,
+and its value as a guide becomes immediately apparent; a new light is
+poured upon a hundred problems of the greatest delicacy and difficulty.
+Not the least interesting of these is the gradual extension of human
+longevity--an extension, however, which cannot be effected till many
+many generations as yet unborn have come and gone. There is nothing,
+however, to prevent man's becoming as long lived as the oak if he will
+persevere for many generations in the steps which can alone lead to this
+result. Another interesting achievement which should be more quickly
+attainable, though still not in our own time, is the earlier maturity of
+those animals whose rapid maturity is an advantage to us, but whose
+longevity is not to our purpose.
+
+     *     *     *     *     *
+
+The question--Evolution or Direct Creation of all species?--has been
+settled in favour of Evolution. A hardly less interesting and important
+battle has now to be fought over the question whether we are to accept
+the evolution of the founders of the theory--with the adjuncts hinted at
+by Dr. Darwin and Mr. Matthew, and insisted on, so far as I can gather,
+by Professor Hering and myself--or the evolution of Mr. Darwin, which
+denies the purposiveness or teleology inherent in evolution as first
+propounded. I am assured that such of my readers as I can persuade to
+prefer the old evolution to the new will have but little reason to
+regret their preference.
+
+     *     *     *     *     *
+
+P.S.--As these sheets leave my hands, my attention is called to a review
+of Professor Haeckel's 'Evolution of Man,' by Mr. A. E. Wallace, in the
+'Academy' for April 12, 1879. "Professor Haeckel maintains," says Mr.
+Wallace, "_that the struggle for existence in nature evolves new forms
+without design, just as the will of man produces new varieties in
+cultivation with design_." I maintain in preference with the older
+evolutionists, that in consequence of change in the conditions of their
+existence, _organisms design new forms for themselves, and carry those
+designs out in additions to, and modifications of, their own bodies_.
+
+"The science of rudimentary organs," continues Mr. Wallace, "which
+Haeckel terms 'dysteleology, or the doctrine of purposelessness,' is
+here discussed, and a number of interesting examples are given, the
+conclusion being that they prove the mechanical or monistic conception
+of the origin of organisms to be correct, and the idea of any 'all-wise
+creative plan an ancient fable.'" I see no reason to suppose, or again
+not to suppose, an all-wise creative plan. I decline to go into this
+question, believing it to be not yet ripe, nor nearly ripe, for
+consideration. I see purpose, however, in rudimentary organs as much as
+in useful ones, but a spent or extinct purpose--a purpose which has been
+fulfilled, and is now forgotten--the rudimentary organ being repeated
+from force of habit, indolence, and dislike of change, so long as it
+does not, to use the words of Buffon, "stand in the way of the fair
+development" of other parts which are found useful and necessary. I
+demur, therefore, to the inference of "purposelessness" which I gather
+that Professor Haeckel draws from these organs.
+
+In the 'Academy' for April 19, 1879, Mr. Wallace quotes Professor
+Haeckel as saying that our "highly purposive and admirably-constituted
+sense-organs have developed without premeditated aim; that they have
+originated by the same mechanical process of Natural Selection, by the
+same constant interaction of Adaptation and Heredity [what _is_ Heredity
+but another word for unknown causes, unless it is explained in some such
+manner as in 'Life and Habit'?] by which all the other purposive
+contrivances of the animal organization have been slowly and gradually
+evolved during the struggle for existence."
+
+I see no evidence for "premeditated aim" at any modification very far in
+advance of an existing organ, any more than I do for "premeditated aim"
+on man's part at any as yet inconceivable mechanical invention; but as
+in the case of man's inventions, so also in that of the organs of
+animals and plants, modification is due to the accumulation of small,
+well-considered improvements, as found necessary in practice, and the
+conduct of their affairs. Each step having been purposive, the whole
+road has been travelled purposively; nor is the purposiveness of such an
+organ, we will say, as the eye, barred by the fact that invention has
+doubtless been aided by some of those happy accidents which from time to
+time happen to all who keep their wits about them, and know how to turn
+the gifts of Fortune to account.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[371] 'Origin of Species,' p. 109.
+
+[372] 'Origin of Species, p. 401.
+
+[373] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 242.
+
+[374] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 244.
+
+[375] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 245.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+REVIEWS OF 'EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW.'
+
+
+Those who have been at the pains to read the foregoing book will,
+perhaps, pardon me if I put before them a short account of the reception
+it has met with: I will not waste time by arguing with my critics at any
+length; it will be enough if I place some of their remarks upon my book
+under the same cover as the book itself, with here and there a word or
+two of comment.
+
+The only reviews which have come under my notice appeared in the
+'Academy' and the 'Examiner,' both of May 17, 1879; the 'Edinburgh Daily
+Review,' May 23, 1879; 'City Press,' May 21, 1879; 'Field,' May 26,
+1879; 'Saturday Review,' May 31, 1879; 'Daily Chronicle,' May 31, 1879;
+'Graphic' and 'Nature,' both June 12, 1879; 'Pall Mall Gazette,' June
+18, 1879; 'Literary World,' June 20, 1879; 'Scotsman,' June 24, 1879;
+'British Journal of Homoeopathy' and 'Mind,' both July 1, 1879;
+'Journal of Science,' July 18, 1879; 'Westminster Review,' July, 1879;
+'Athenæum,' July 26, 1879; 'Daily News,' July 29, 1879; 'Manchester
+City News,' August 16, 1879; 'Nonconformist,' November 26, 1879;
+'Popular Science Review,' Jan. 1, 1880; 'Morning Post,' Jan. 12, 1880.
+
+Some of the most hostile passages in the reviews above referred to are
+as follows:--
+
+"From beginning to end, our eccentric author treats us to a dazzling
+flood of epigram, invective, and what appears to be argument; and
+finally leaves us without a single clear idea as to what he has been
+driving at."
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"Mr. Butler comes forward, as it were, to proclaim himself a
+professional satirist, and a mystifier who will do his best to leave you
+utterly in the dark with regard to his system of juggling. Is he a
+teleological theologian making fun of evolution? Is he an evolutionist
+making fun of teleology? Is he a man of letters making fun of science?
+Or is he a master of pure irony making fun of all three, and of his
+audience as well? For our part we decline to commit ourselves, and
+prefer to observe, as Mr. Butler observes of Von Hartmann, that if his
+meaning is anything like what he says it is, we can only say that it has
+not been given us to form any definite conception whatever as to what
+that meaning may be."--'Academy,' May 17, 1879, Signed Grant Allen.
+
+     *     *     *     *     *
+
+Here is another criticism of "Evolution, Old and New"--also, I believe I
+am warranted in saying, by Mr. Grant Allen. These two criticisms
+appeared on the same day; how many more Mr. Allen may have written later
+on I do not know.
+
+We find the writer who in the 'Academy' declares that he has been left
+without "a single clear idea" as to what 'Evolution, Old and New,' has
+been driving at saying on the same day in the 'Examiner' that
+'Evolution, Old and New,' "has a more evident purpose than any of its
+predecessors." If so, I am afraid the predecessors must have puzzled Mr.
+Allen very unpleasantly. What the purpose of 'Evolution, Old and New,'
+is, he proceeds to explain:--
+
+"As to his (Mr. Butler's) main argument, it comes briefly to this:
+natural selection does not originate favourable varieties, it only
+passively permits them to exist; therefore it is the unknown cause which
+produced the variations, not the natural selection which spared them,
+that ought to count as the mainspring of evolution. That unknown cause
+Mr. Butler boldly declares to be the will of the organism itself. An
+intelligent ascidian wanted a pair of eyes,[376] so set to work and made
+itself a pair, exactly as a man makes a microscope; a talented fish
+conceived the idea of walking on dry land, so it developed legs, turned
+its swim bladder into a pair of lungs, and became an amphibian; an
+æsthetic guinea-fowl admired bright colours, so it bought a paint-box,
+studied Mr. Whistler's ornamental designs, and, painting itself a gilded
+and ocellated tail, was thenceforth a peacock. But how about plants? Mr.
+Butler does not shirk even this difficulty. The theory must be
+maintained at all hazards.... This is the sort of mystical nonsense
+from which we had hoped Mr. Darwin had for ever saved us."--'Examiner,'
+May 17, 1879.
+
+     *     *     *     *     *
+
+In this last article, Mr. Allen has said that I am a man of genius,
+"with the unmistakable signet-mark upon my forehead." I have been
+subjected to a good deal of obloquy and misrepresentation at one time or
+another, but this passage by Mr. Allen is the only one I have seen that
+has made me seriously uneasy about the prospects of my literary
+reputation.
+
+I see Mr. Allen has been lately writing an article in the 'Fortnightly
+Review' on the decay of criticism. Looking over it somewhat hurriedly,
+my eye was arrested by the following:--
+
+"Nowadays any man can write, because there are papers enough to give
+employment to everybody. No reflection, no deliberation, no care; all is
+haste, fatal facility, stock phrases, commonplace ideas, and a ready pen
+that can turn itself to any task with equal ease, because supremely
+ignorant of all alike."
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"The writer takes to his craft nowadays, not because he has taste for
+literature, but because he has an incurable faculty for scribbling. He
+has no culture, and he soon loses the power of taking pains, if he ever
+possessed it. But he can talk with glib superficiality and imposing
+confidence about every conceivable subject, from a play or a picture to
+a sermon or a metaphysical essay. It is the utter indifference to
+subject-matter, joined with the vulgar unscrupulousness of pretentious
+ignorance, that strikes the keynote of our existing criticism. Men write
+without taking the trouble to read or think."[377]
+
+     *     *     *     *     *
+
+The 'Saturday Review' attacked 'Evolution, Old and New,' I may almost
+say savagely. It wrote: "When Mr. Butler's 'Life and Habit' came before
+us, we doubted whether his ambiguously expressed speculations belonged
+to the regions of playful but possibly scientific imagination, or of
+unscientific fancies; and we gave him the benefit of the doubt. In fact,
+we strained a point or two to find a reasonable meaning for him. He has
+now settled the question against himself. Not professing to have any
+particular competence in biology, natural history, or the scientific
+study of evidence in any shape whatever, and, indeed, rather glorying in
+his freedom from any such superfluities, he undertakes to assure the
+overwhelming majority of men of science, and the educated public who
+have followed their lead, that, while they have done well to be
+converted to the doctrine of the evolution and transmutation of species,
+they have been converted on entirely wrong grounds."
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"When a writer who has not given as many weeks to the subject as Mr.
+Darwin has given years [as a matter of fact, it is now twenty years
+since I began to publish on the subject of Evolution] is not content to
+air his own crude, though clever, fallacies, but presumes to criticize
+Mr. Darwin with the superciliousness of a young schoolmaster looking
+over a boy's theme, it is difficult not to take him more seriously than
+he deserves or perhaps desires. One would think that Mr. Butler was the
+travelled and laborious observer of Nature, and Mr. Darwin the pert
+speculator, who takes all his facts at secondhand."
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"Let us once more consider how matters stood a year or two before the
+'Origin of Species' first appeared. The continuous evolution of animated
+Nature had in its favour the difficulty of drawing fixed lines between
+species and even larger divisions, all the indications of comparative
+anatomy and embryology, and a good deal of general scientific
+presumption. Several well-known writers, and some eminent enough to
+command respect, had expressed their belief in it. One or two far-seeing
+thinkers, among whom the place of honour must be assigned to Mr. Herbert
+Spencer, had done more. They had used their philosophic insight, which,
+to science, is the eye of faith, to descry the promised land almost
+within reach; they knew and announced how rich and spacious the heritage
+would be, if once the entry could be made good. But on that 'if'
+everything hung. Nature was not bound to give up her secret, or was
+bound only in a mocking covenant with an impossible condition: _Si cælum
+digito tetigeris_; if only some fortunate hand could touch the
+inaccessible firmament, and bring down the golden chain to earth! But
+fruition seemed out of sight. Even those who were most willing to
+advance in this direction, could only regret that they saw no road
+clear. There was a tempting vision, but nothing proven--many would have
+said nothing provable. A few years passed, and all this was changed.
+The doubtful speculation had become a firm and connected theory. In the
+room of scattered foragers and scouts, there was an irresistibly
+advancing column. Nature had surrendered her stronghold, and was
+disarmed of her secret. And if we ask who were the men by whom this was
+done, the answer is notorious, and there is but one answer possible: the
+names that are for ever associated with this great triumph are those of
+Charles Darwin and Wallace."[378]
+
+I gave the lady or gentleman who wrote this an opportunity of
+acknowledging the authorship; but she or he preferred, not I think
+unnaturally, to remain anonymous.
+
+The only other criticism of 'Evolution, Old and New,' to which I would
+call attention, appeared in 'Nature,' in a review of 'Unconscious
+Memory,' by Mr. Romanes, and contained the following passages:--
+
+"But to be serious, if in charity we could deem Mr. Butler a lunatic, we
+should not be unprepared for any aberration of common sense that he
+might display.... A certain nobody writes a book ['Evolution, Old and
+New'] accusing the most illustrious man in his generation of burying the
+claims of certain illustrious predecessors out of the sight of all men.
+In the hope of gaining some notoriety by deserving, and perhaps
+receiving a contemptuous refutation from the eminent man in question, he
+publishes this book which, if it deserved serious consideration, would
+be not more of an insult to the particular man of science whom it
+accuses of conscious and wholesale plagiarism [there is no such
+accusation in 'Evolution, Old and New'] than it would be to men of
+science in general for requiring such elementary instruction on some of
+the most famous literature in science from an upstart ignoramus, who,
+until two or three years ago, considered himself a painter by
+profession."--'Nature,' Jan. 27, 1881.
+
+     *     *     *     *     *
+
+In a subsequent letter to 'Nature,' Mr. Romanes said he had been "acting
+the part of policeman" by writing as he had done. Any unscrupulous
+reviewer may call himself a policeman if he likes, but he must not
+expect those whom he assails to recognize his pretensions. 'Evolution,
+Old and New,' was not written for the kind of people whom Mr. Romanes
+calls men of science; if "men of science" means men like Mr. Romanes, I
+trust they say well who maintain that I am not a man of science; I
+believe the men to whom Mr. Romanes refers to be men, not of that kind
+of science which desires to know, but of that kind whose aim is to
+thrust itself upon the public as actually knowing. 'Evolution, Old and
+New,' could be of no use to these; certainly, it was not intended as an
+insult to them, but if they are insulted by it, I do not know that I am
+sorry, for I value their antipathy and opposition as much as I should
+dislike their approbation: of one thing, however, I am certain--namely,
+that before 'Evolution, Old and New,' was written, Professors Huxley and
+Tyndall, for example, knew very little of the earlier history of
+Evolution. Professor Huxley, in his article on Evolution in the ninth
+edition of the 'Encyclopædia Britannica,' published in 1878, says of the
+two great pioneers of Evolution, that Buffon "contributed nothing to
+the general doctrine of Evolution,"[379] and that Erasmus Darwin "can
+hardly be said to have made any real advance on his predecessors."[380]
+
+Professor Haeckel evidently knew little of Erasmus Darwin, and still
+less, apparently, about Buffon.[381] Professor Tyndall,[382] in 1878,
+spoke of Evolution as "Darwin's theory"; and I have just read Mr. Grant
+Allen as saying that Evolutionism "is an almost exclusively English
+impulse."[383]
+
+Since 'Evolution, Old and New,' was published, I have observed several
+of the so-called men of science--among them Professor Huxley and Mr.
+Romanes--airing Buffon; but I never observed any of them do this till
+within the last three years. I maintain that "men of science" were, and
+still are, very ignorant concerning the history of Evolution; but,
+whether they were or were not, I did not write 'Evolution, Old and New,'
+for them; I wrote for the general public, who have been kind enough to
+testify their appreciation of it in a sufficiently practical manner.
+
+The way in which Mr. Charles Darwin met 'Evolution, Old and New,' has
+been so fully dealt with in my book, 'Unconscious Memory;' in the
+'Athenæum,' Jan. 31, 1880; the 'St. James's Gazette,' Dec. 8, 1880; and
+'Nature,' Feb. 3, 1881, that I need not return to it here, more
+especially as Mr. Darwin has, by his silence, admitted that he has no
+defence to make.
+
+I have quoted by no means the moat exceptionable parts of Mr. Romanes'
+article, and have given them a permanence they would not otherwise
+attain, inasmuch as nothing can better show the temper of the kind of
+men who are now--as I said in the body of the foregoing work--clamouring
+for endowment, and who would step into the Pope's shoes to-morrow if we
+would only let them.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[376] See p. 44, and the whole of chap. v., where I say of this
+supposition, that "nothing could be conceived more foreign
+to experience and common sense."
+
+[377] 'Fortnightly Review,' March 1, 1882, pp. 344, 345.
+
+[378] 'Saturday Review,' May 31, 1879, pp. 682-3.
+
+[379] P. 748.
+
+[380] _Ibid._
+
+[381] See pp. 71-73.
+
+[382] 'Nineteenth Century' for November, pp. 360, 361.
+
+[383] 'Fortnightly Review,' March, 1882.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+ROME AND PANTHEISM.
+
+
+Evolution would after all be a poor doctrine if it did not affect human
+affairs at every touch and turn. I propose to devote the second chapter
+of this Appendix to the consideration of an aspect of Evolution which
+will always interest a very large number of people--the development of
+the relation that may exist between religion and science.
+
+If the Church of Rome would only develop some doctrine or, I know not
+how, provide some means by which men like myself, who cannot pretend to
+believe in the miraculous element of Christianity, could yet join her as
+a conservative stronghold, I, for one, should gladly do so. I believe
+the difference between her faith and that of all who can be called
+gentlemen to be one of words rather than things. Our practical working
+ideal is much the same as hers; when we use the word "gentleman" we mean
+the same thing that the Church of Rome does; so that, if we get down
+below the words that formulate her teaching, there are few points upon
+which we should not agree. But, alas! words are often so very important.
+
+How is it possible for myself, for example, to give people to understand
+that I believe in the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception or in the
+Lourdes miracles? If the Pope could spare time to think about so
+insignificant a person, would he wish me to pretend such beliefs or
+think better of me if I did pretend them? I should be sorry to see him
+turn suddenly round and deny his own faith, and I am persuaded that, in
+like manner, he would have me continue to hold my own in peace;
+nevertheless, the duty of subordinating private judgment to the
+avoidance of schism is so obvious that, if we could see a practicable
+way of bridging the gulf between ourselves and Rome, we should be
+heartily glad to bridge it.
+
+I speak as though the Church of Rome was the only one we can look to. I
+do not see how it is easy to dispute this. Protestantism has been tried
+and failed; it has long ceased to grow, but it has by no means ceased to
+disintegrate. Note the manner in which it is torn asunder by
+dissensions, and the rancour which these dissensions engender--a rancour
+which finds its way into the political and social life of Europe, with
+incalculable damage to the health and well-being of the world. Who can
+doubt but that there will be a split even in the Church of England ere
+so many years are over? Protestantism is like one of those drops of
+glass which tend to split up into minuter and minuter fragments the
+moment the bond that united them has been removed. It is as though the
+force of gravity had lost its hold, and a universal power of repulsion
+taken the place of attraction. This may, perhaps, come about some day in
+the material as well as in the spiritual and political world, but the
+spirit of the age is as yet one of aggregation; the spirit of
+Protestantism is one of disintegration. I maintain, therefore, that it
+is not likely to be permanent.
+
+All the great powers of Europe have from numberless distinct tribes
+become first a few kingdoms or dukedoms, then two or three nations, and
+now homogeneous wholes, so that there is no chance of their further
+dismemberment through internal discontent; a process which has been
+going on for so many hundreds of years all over Europe is not likely to
+be arrested without ample warning. True, during the Roman Empire the
+world was practically bonded together, yet broke in pieces again; but
+this, I imagine, was because the bonding was prophetic and superficial
+rather than genuine. Nature very commonly makes one or two false starts,
+and misses her aim a time or two before she hits it. She nearly hit it
+in the time of Alexander the Great, but this was a short-lived success;
+in the case of the Roman Empire she succeeded better and for longer
+together. Where Nature has once or twice hit her mark as near as this
+she will commonly hit it outright eventually; the disruption of the
+Roman Empire, therefore, does not militate against the supposition that
+the normal condition of right-minded people is one which tends towards
+aggregation, or, in other words, towards compromise and the merging of
+much of one's own individuality for the sake of union and concerted
+action.
+
+See, again, how Rome herself, within the limits of Italy, was an
+aggregation, an aggregation which has now within these last few years
+come together again after centuries of disruption; all middle-aged men
+have seen many small countries come together in their own lifetime,
+while in America a gigantic attempt at disruption has completely failed.
+Success will, of course, sometimes attend disruption, but on the whole
+the balance inclines strongly in favour of aggregation and homogeneity;
+analogy points in the direction of supposing that the great civilized
+nations of Europe, as they are the coalition of subordinate provinces,
+so must coalesce themselves also to form a larger, but single empire.
+Wars will then cease, and surely anything that seems likely to tend
+towards so desirable an end deserves respectful consideration.
+
+The Church of Rome is essentially a unifier. It is a great thing that
+nations should have so much in common as the acknowledgment of the same
+tribunal for the settlement of spiritual and religious questions, and
+there is no head under which Christendom can unite with as little
+disturbance as under Rome. Nothing more tends to keep men apart than
+religious differences; this certainly ought not to be the case, but it
+no less certainly is, and therefore we should strain many points and
+subordinate our private judgment to a very considerable extent if called
+upon to do so. A man, under these circumstances, is right in saying he
+believes in much that he does not believe in. Nevertheless there are
+limits to this, and the Church of Rome requires more of us at present
+than we can by any means bring ourselves into assenting to.
+
+It may be asked, Why have a Church at all? Why not unite in community of
+negation rather than of assertion? When I wrote 'Evolution, Old and
+New,' three years ago, I thought, as now, that the only possible Church
+must be a development of the Church of Rome; and seeing no chance of
+agreement between avowed free-thinkers, like myself, and Rome (for I
+believed Rome immovable), I leaned towards absolute negation as the best
+chance for unity among civilized nations; but even then, I expressed
+myself as "having a strong feeling as though Professor Mivart's
+conclusion is true, that 'the material universe is always and everywhere
+sustained and directed by an infinite cause, for which to us the word
+mind is the least inadequate and misleading symbol.'"[384]
+
+I had hardly finished 'Evolution, Old and New,' before I began to deal
+with this question according to my lights, in a series of articles upon
+God[385] which appeared in the 'Examiner' during the summer of 1879, and
+I returned to the same matter more than once in 'Unconscious Memory,' my
+next succeeding work. The articles I intend recasting and rewriting, as
+they go upon a false assumption; but subsequent reflection has only
+confirmed me in the general result I arrived at--namely, the
+omnipresence of mind in the universe.
+
+I have therefore come to see that we can go farther than negation, and
+in this case--a positive expression of faith as regards an invisible
+universe of some sort being possible--a Church of some sort is also
+possible, which shall formulate and express the general convictions as
+regards man's position in respect of this faith. I think the instinct
+which has led so many countries towards a double legislative chamber,
+and ourselves, till at any rate quite recently, to a double system of
+jurisprudence, law and equity, was not arrived at without having passed
+through the stages of reason and reflection. There are a variety of
+delicate, almost intangible, questions which belong rather to conscience
+than to law, and for which a Church is a fitter tribunal--at any rate
+for many ages hence--than a parliament or law court. There is room,
+therefore, for both a State and a Church, each of which should be
+influenced by the action of the other.
+
+I do not say that I personally should like to see the Church of Rome as
+at present constituted in the position which I should be glad to see
+attained by an ideal Church. If it were in that position I would attack
+it to the utmost of my power; but I have little hesitation in thinking
+that the world with a very possible feasible Church, would be better
+than the world with no Church at all; and, if so, I have still less
+hesitation in concluding, for the reasons already given, that it is to
+Rome we must turn as the source from which the Church of the future is
+to be evolved, if it is to come at all.
+
+For the new, if it is to strike deep root and be permanent, must grow
+out of the old, without too violent a transition. Some violence there
+will always be, even in the kindliest birth; but the less the better,
+and a leap greater than the one from Judaism to Christianity is not
+desirable, even if it were possible. As a free-thinker, therefore, but
+also as one who wishes to take a practical view of the manner in which
+things will, and ought to go, I neither expect to see the religions of
+the world come once for all to an end with the belief in
+Christianity--which to me is tantamount to saying with Rome--nor am I at
+all sure that such a consummation is more desirable than likely to come
+about. The ultimate fight will, I believe, be between Rome and
+Pantheism; and the sooner the two contending parties can be ranged into
+their opposite camps by the extinction of all intermediate creeds, the
+sooner will an issue of some sort be arrived at. This will not happen in
+our time, but we should work towards it.
+
+When it arrives, what is to happen? Is Pantheism to absorb Rome, and, if
+so, what sort of a religious formula is to be the result? or is Rome so
+to modify her dogmas that the Pantheist can join her without doing too
+much violence to his convictions? We who are outside the Church's pale
+are in the habit of thinking that she will make little if any advances
+in our direction. The dream of a Pantheistic Rome seems so wild as
+hardly to be entertained seriously; nevertheless I am much mistaken if I
+do not detect at least one sign as though more were within the bounds of
+possibility than even the most sanguine of us could have hoped for a few
+years back. We do not expect the Church to go our whole length; it is
+the business of some to act as pioneers, but this is the last function a
+Church should assume. A Church should be as the fly-wheel of a
+steam-engine, which conserves, regulates and distributes energy, but
+does not originate it. In all cases it is more moral and safer to be a
+little behind the age than a little in front of it; a Church, therefore,
+ought to cling to an old-established belief, even though her leaders
+know it to be unfounded, so long as any considerable number of her
+members would be shocked at its abandonment. The question is whether
+there are any signs as though the Church of Rome thought the time had
+come when she might properly move a step forward, and I rejoice to
+think, as I have said above, that at any rate one such sign--and a very
+important one--has come under my notice.
+
+In his Encyclical of August 4, 1879, the Pope desires the Bishops and
+Clergy to restore the golden wisdom of St. Thomas Aquinas, and to spread
+it far and wide. "Vos omnes," he writes, "Venerabiles Fratres, quam
+enixe hortamur ut ad Catholicæ fidei tutelam et decus, ad societatis
+bonum, ad scientiarum omnium incrementum auream Sancti Thomæ sapientiam
+restituatis, et quam latissime propagetis." He proceeds then with the
+following remarkable passage: "We say the wisdom of St. Thomas. For
+whatever has been worked out with too much subtleness by the doctors of
+the schools, or handed down inconsiderately, whatever is not consistent
+with the teachings of a later age, or finally, is in any way NOT
+PROBABLE, We in no wise intend to propose for acceptance in these
+days."[386]
+
+It would be almost possible to suppose that these words had been written
+inadvertently, so the Pope practically repeats them thus: "We willingly
+and gratefully declare that whatsoever can be excepted with advantage,
+is to be excepted, no matter by whom it has been invented."[387]
+
+The passage just quoted is so pregnant that a few words of comment may
+be very well excused. In the first place, I cannot but admire the
+latitude which the Pope not only tolerates, but enjoins: he defines
+nothing, but declares point blank that if we find anything in St. Thomas
+Aquinas "not consistent with the assured teachings of a later age, or
+finally IN ANY WAY NOT PROBABLE"--(what is not involved here?)--we are
+"in no wise to suppose" that it is being proposed for our acceptance.
+But it is a small step from allowing latitude in accepting or rejecting
+the parts of St. Thomas Aquinas which conflict with the assured result
+of later discoveries to allowing a similar latitude in respect, we will
+say, of St. Jude; and if of St. Jude, then of St. James the Less; and if
+of St. James the Less, then surely ere very long of St. James the
+Greater and St. John and St. Paul; nor will the matter stop there. How
+marvellously closely are the two extremes of doctrine approaching to one
+another! We, on the one hand, who begin with _tabulæ rasæ_ having made a
+clean sweep of every shred of doctrine, lay hold of the first thing we
+can grasp with any firmness, and work back from it. We grope our way to
+evolution; through this to purposive evolution; through this to the
+omnipresence of mind and design throughout the universe; what is this
+but God? So that we can say with absolute freedom from _équivoque_ that
+we are what we are through the will of God. The theologian, on the other
+hand, starts with God, and finds himself driven through this to
+evolution, as surely as we found ourselves driven through evolution to
+the omnipresence of God.
+
+Let us look a little more closely at the ground which the Church of Rome
+and the Evolutionist hold in common. St. Paul speaks of there being "one
+body and one spirit," and of one God as being "above all, and through
+all, and in you all."[388] Again, he tells us that we are members of
+God's body, "of his flesh and of his bones;"[389] in another place he
+writes that God has reconciled us to himself, "in the body of his
+flesh,"[390] and in yet another of the Spirit of God "dwelling in
+us."[391] St. Paul indeed is continually using language which implies
+the closest physical as well as spiritual union between God and those at
+any rate of mankind who were Christians. Then he speaks of our "being
+builded together for an habitation of God through the spirit,"[392] and
+of our being "filled with the fulness of God."[393] He calls Christian
+men's bodies "temples of the Holy Spirit,"[394] in fact it is not too
+much to say that he regarded Christian men's limbs as the actual living
+organs of God himself, for the expressions quoted above--and many others
+could be given--come to no less than this. It follows that since any man
+could unite himself to "the flesh and bones" of God by becoming a
+Christian, Paul had a perception of the unity at any rate of human life;
+and what Paul admitted I am persuaded the Church of Rome will not deny.
+
+Granted that Paul's notion of the unity of all mankind in one spirit
+animating, or potentially animating the whole was mystical, I submit
+that the main difference between him and the Evolutionist is that the
+first uses certain expressions more or less prophetically, and without
+perhaps a full perception of their import; while the second uses the
+same expressions literally, and with the ordinary signification attached
+to the words that compose them. It is not so much that we do not hold
+what Paul held, but that we hold it with the greater definiteness and
+comprehension which modern discovery has rendered possible. We not only
+accept his words, but we extend them, and not only accept them as
+articles of faith to be taken on the word of others, but as so
+profoundly entering into our views of the world around us that that
+world loses the greater part of its significance if we may not take such
+sayings as that "we are God's flesh and his bones" as meaning neither
+more nor less than what appears upon the face of them. We believe that
+what we call our life is part of the universal life of the Deity--which
+is literally and truly made manifest to us in flesh that can be seen and
+handled--ever changing, but the same yesterday, and to-day, and for
+ever.
+
+So much for the closeness with which we have come together on matters of
+fact, and now for the _rapprochement_ between us in respect of how much
+conformity is required for the sake of avoiding schism. We find
+ourselves driven through considerations of great obviousness and
+simplicity to the conclusion that a man both may and should keep no
+small part of his opinions to himself, if they are too widely different
+from those of other people for the sake of union and the strength gained
+by concerted action; and we also find the Pope declaring of one of the
+brightest saints and luminaries of the Church that we need not follow
+him when it is plainly impossible for us to do so. Is it so very much to
+hope that ere many years are over the approximation will become closer
+still?
+
+I have sometimes imagined that the doctrine of Papal Infallibility may
+be the beginning of a way out of the difficulty, and that its promoters
+were so eager for it, rather for the facilities it afforded for the
+repealing of old dogmas than for the imposition of new ones. The Pope
+cannot, even now, under any circumstances, declare a dogma of the Church
+to be obsolete or untrue, but I should imagine he can, in council, _ex
+cathedra_, modify the interpretation to be put upon any dogma, if he
+should find the interpretation commonly received to be prejudicial to
+the good of the Church: and if so, the manner in which Rome can put
+herself more in harmony with the spirit of recent discoveries, without
+putting herself in an illogical position, is not likely to escape eyes
+so keen as those of the Catholic hierarchy. No sensible man will
+hesitate to admit that many an interpretation which was natural to and
+suitable for one age is unnatural to and unsuitable for another; as
+circumstances are always changing, so men's moods and the meanings they
+attach to words, and the state of their knowledge changes; and hence,
+also, the interpretation of the dogmas in which their conclusions are
+summarized. There is nothing to be ashamed of or that needs explaining
+away in this; nothing can remain changeless under changed conditions;
+and that institution is most likely to be permanent which contains
+provision for such changes as time may prove to be expedient, with the
+least disturbance. I can see nothing, therefore, illogical or that needs
+concealment in the fact of an infallible Pope putting a widely different
+interpretation upon a dogma now, to what a no less infallible Pope put
+upon the same dogma fifteen hundred, or even fifteen years ago; it is
+only right, reasonable, and natural that this should be so. The Church
+of England may have made no provision for the virtual pruning off of
+dogmas that have become rudimentary, but the Encyclical from which I
+have just quoted leads me to think that the Church of Rome has found
+one, and, in her own cautious way, is proceeding to make use of it. If
+so, she may possibly in the end get rid of Protestantism by putting
+herself more in harmony with the spirit of the age than Protestantism
+can do. In this case, the spiritual reunion of Christendom under Rome
+ceases to be impossible, or even, I should think improbable. I heartily
+wish that my conjecture concerning future possibilities is not
+unfounded.
+
+Scientists have been right in preaching evolution, but they have
+preached it in such a way as to make it almost as much of a
+stumbling-block as of an assistance. For though the fact that animals
+and plants are descended from a common stock is accepted by the greater
+and more reasonable part of mankind, these same people feel that the
+evidence in favour of design in the universe is no less strong than that
+in favour of evolution, and our scientists, for the most part, uphold a
+theory of evolution of which the cardinal doctrine is that design and
+evolution have nothing to do with one another; the jar they raise,
+therefore, is as bad as the jar they have allayed.
+
+It has been the object of the foregoing work to show that those who take
+this line are wrong, and that evolution not only tolerates design, but
+cannot get on without it. The unscrupulousness with which I have been
+attacked, together with the support given me by the general public, are
+sufficient proofs that I have not written in vain.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[384] P. 371.
+
+[385] Published as "God the Known and God the Unknown" in 1909.
+(Fifield.)
+
+[386] "Sapientiam Sancti Thomæ dicimus: si quid enim est a doctoribus
+scholasticis vel nimia subtilitate quæsitum, vel parum considerate
+traditum, si quid cum exploratis posterioris ævi doctrinis minus
+cohærens, vel denique quoque modo non probabile, id nullo pacto in animo
+est ætate nostra ad imitandum proponi."
+
+[387] "Edicimus libenti gratoque animo excipiendum esse quidquid
+utiliter fuerit a quopiam inventum atque excogitatum."
+
+[388] Eph. iv. 3, 4, 5.
+
+[389] Eph. v. 30.
+
+[390] Col. i. 22.
+
+[391] Rom. viii. 2.
+
+[392] Eph. ii. 22.
+
+[393] Eph. iii. 19.
+
+[394] 1 Cor. vii. 19.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+ABORTION, neutralization of working bees an act of, 250
+
+Accessory touches, varying Buffon on, 92
+
+Accident, many of our best thoughts come thoughtlessly, 48, 384
+
+---- profiting by, 51, 53
+
+---- and discovery of theory connecting meteors with comets, 53
+
+---- shaking the bag to see what will come out, 53
+
+---- effects of, transmitted to offspring, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, 224
+
+---- and design, the line between these hard to draw, 384
+
+Accidental variations thrown for as with dice, 3
+
+Accumulation of variations, C. Darwin deals with the, and not with
+  the origin of, 340, 341
+
+---- of small divergencies, Buffon on the, 103
+
+Accurate, survival of fittest more accurate than Nat. Sel. and
+  _sometimes_ equally convenient, 9, 354, 365
+
+Act of Parliament, Natural Selection compared to a certain kind of, 358
+
+Age, old, the phenomena of, 67, 204, 381
+
+Aggregation, the spirit of the age tends towards, 397, 398
+
+Ahead, no organism sees very far, 44, 48, 54, 384
+
+Aldrovandus, Buffon on the learned, 93
+
+Alive, when we must not say that an animal is alive (to be
+  retracted), 279
+
+Allen, Grant, on 'Evolution, Old and New,' 386-388
+
+---- on the decay of criticism, 388
+
+---- calls Evolutionism "an almost exclusively English impulse," 393
+
+Alternations of fat and lean years, Buffon on, 125
+
+Amoeba, the, did not conceive the idea of an eye and work towards
+  it, 43, 44, 384
+
+Analogies, false, all words are apt to turn out to be, 365
+
+Animals, contracts among, Dr. E. Darwin on, 205
+
+Ape, the, and man, 90
+
+Apes and monkeys, Buffon on, 153
+
+---- and children fall on all-fours at the approach of danger, 312
+
+Apparentibus, _de non_, _et non existentibus, &c._, 36
+
+Appearances, rather superficial, our only guide to
+  classification, 34, 35, 36, 198, 204
+
+Appetency, Paley's argument against the view that structures have been
+  developed through, 22, 45
+
+Aristides, C. Darwin as just as, 363
+
+Aristotle denied teleology, 4
+
+Artificial and real foot, differences between, 25
+
+Asceticism, virtue errs on the side of excess rather than on that of, 35
+
+Ass, the, and horse, Buffon's pregnant passage on their
+  relationship, 80, 90, 91, 100, 101, 142, 143, 155, 164, 311
+
+Authority, a hard thing to weigh, 253
+
+
+BACON, F., on evolution, 69
+
+Balzac, quotation from, on memory and instinct, 67
+
+Bark, Erasmus Darwin's theory of, 208
+
+Beaver, trowel incorporated into the beaver's organism, 8
+
+Bees, neutralization of working, an act of abortion, 250
+
+Beetles, Madeira, Lamarck and C. Darwin's views of their winglessness
+  compared, 373, 380
+
+Begin, How could the eye _begin_? 46, 47
+
+Beginnings, of complex structures, a difficulty in the way of natural
+  selection, 21, 22
+
+---- difficulty of accounting for, 46, 47
+
+---- a matter of conjecture and inference, 48
+
+Behind, more moral to be behind the age than in front of it, 401
+
+Best, making the best of whatever power one has, 50
+
+Bird, how birds became web-footed, 48, 49, 51
+
+---- a, will modify its nest a little, under altered circumstances, 55
+
+---- Buffon on, 170, &c.
+
+---- nests, Dr. Erasmus Darwin's failure to connect the power to make
+  them with memory, 201, 203
+
+---- aquatic and wading, Lamarck on, 305
+
+Bishop, and Evêque, common derivation of, 355
+
+Blindfolded, we are so far, that we can see a few steps in front,
+  but no more, 44
+
+---- us, C. Darwin has almost ostentatiously, 346
+
+Blindly, forces interacting blindly, 59
+
+Body and mind, Lamarck on, 338, 339, 341
+
+Brain, Lamarck had brain upon the brain, 36
+
+---- Buffon on the, 131, 133, &c.
+
+Brevity may be the soul of wit, but, &c., 315
+
+Breeding, and feeding, 222
+
+Brown-Séquard, his experiments on guinea-pigs' legs, 303
+
+Buds, individuality of, Dr. Erasmus Darwin on the, 207, 208
+
+Buffalo, Buffon on the, 148, &c.
+
+Buffon, profoundly superficial, 34
+
+---- _plus il a su, plus il a pu, &c._, 44
+
+---- _dans l'animal il y a moins de jugement que de sentiment_, 51
+
+---- ignorance concerning, 61
+
+---- memoir of, 74, &c.
+
+---- on glory, genius, and style, 76, 77
+
+---- ironical character of his work and method (_see_ Irony), 78,
+  &c., 171
+
+---- on the ass, horse, and zebra, 80, 90, 91, 100, 101, 142,
+  143, 155, 164, 311
+
+---- would not play the part of Rousseau or Voltaire, 81
+
+---- Sir W. Jardine on, and the Sorbonne, 82
+
+---- regards all animal and vegetable life as from one common source, 90
+
+---- if a single species has ever been found under domestication,
+  &c., 91
+
+---- on plaisanterie, and the learned Aldrovandus, 93, &c.
+
+---- his compromise, 92
+
+---- accessory touches, 92
+
+---- "_especially_" the same, 96
+
+---- fluctuation of opinion an unfounded charge, 97, &c., 164
+
+---- on the accumulation of small divergencies, 103
+
+---- began preaching evolution almost on his first page, 104
+
+---- chapter on the _dégénération des animaux_, equivalent to "on
+  descent with modification," 104, &c.
+
+---- difference of opinion between him and Erasmus Darwin and
+  Lamarck, 105
+
+---- probably did not differ from Lamarck, 105
+
+---- on direct action of changed conditions, 105, 145, 147
+
+---- on man and the lower animals, 108
+
+---- on classification, 108, 109, 141
+
+---- on animals and plants, 109, 110
+
+---- on reason and instinct, 110, 115
+
+---- on final causes (the pig), 118, &c.
+
+---- on hybridism, 117, 118
+
+---- rudimentary organs, 120
+
+---- on animals under domestication, 121, &c., 148
+
+---- deals with these early, as giving him the best opportunities
+  for illustrating the theory of evolution, 276
+
+---- approaches natural selection in his "by _some chance_ common
+  enough in Nature," 122
+
+---- preaching on the hare when he should have preached on the rabbit
+  out of pure love of mischief, 123
+
+---- resumption of feral characteristics, 123
+
+---- on the geometrical ratio of increase, 123, &c.
+
+---- alternation of fat and lean years, 125
+
+---- equilibrium of Nature, 125
+
+---- "au réel," 126
+
+---- on violent death, 126
+
+---- on sensation, 126, &c.
+
+---- on the interaction of organ and sense, 127
+
+---- the carnivora, 126
+
+---- his criterion of what name a thing is to bear, 127
+
+---- his criterion of perception and sensation, 127
+
+---- on the unity of the individual, 127, 128
+
+---- satirizes our habit of judging all things by our own standards, 129
+
+---- the diaphragm, 129
+
+---- on the stock and the diaphragm, 130
+
+---- distinction between perception and sensation, 129, 130
+
+---- on the meninges, 132
+
+---- on the brain, 131, 133, &c.
+
+---- on scientific orthodoxy and mystification, 138
+
+---- on the relativity of science, 140
+
+---- on nomenclature and knowledge, 141
+
+---- on the genus _felis_, 143
+
+---- on the lion and the tiger, 143, 145
+
+---- on the animals of the old and new world, 145, &c.
+
+---- on changed geographical distribution of land and water, 145, 164
+
+---- on extinct species, 146
+
+---- hates the new world, 146
+
+---- on heredity and habit, 148, 159, 160, 161, 162
+
+---- approaches Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, _re_ the Buffalo, Camel,
+  and Llama, 148, 160, 161
+
+---- on oneness of personality between parents and offspring, 151
+
+---- on the organic and inorganic, 153, &c.
+
+---- on apes and monkeys, 153, &c.
+
+---- on the causes or means of the transformation of species, 159, &c.
+
+---- on generic (as well as specific) differences, 164
+
+---- on plants under domestication, 167
+
+---- on pigeons and fowls, 169
+
+---- on birds, 170, &c.
+
+---- the assistance he rendered to Lamarck, 237, 258
+
+---- Isidore Geoffroy's failure to understand, 328
+
+---- Colonel, 75
+
+Bulk, a _sine quâ non_ for success in literature or science, 315
+
+Bull running, Tutbury, and Erasmus Darwin, 187
+
+
+CAMEL, Buffon on the hereditary ills of the, 161
+
+Cant, and rudimentary organs, 38
+
+Captandum, all good things are done ad, 85
+
+Carnivora, Buffon on the, 126
+
+Carriage, Dr. Erasmus Darwin's, 181
+
+Cat, family, Buffon on the, 142, &c.
+
+---- with a mane and long tail, 143
+
+Cataclysms, the good cells that get exterminated during the cataclysms
+  of our own development, 75
+
+Catastrophes, Lamarck on, 277
+
+Causes, or "means," of modification, 301
+
+---- C. Darwin says that Buffon has not entered on the, 104, &c.
+
+---- C. Darwin gets us into a fog about, 345, &c.
+
+Change, under changed circumstances, Mr. Patrick Matthew on, 318
+
+Charity, the greatest of these is, 77
+
+Church, a, like a second chamber, 400
+
+---- the world better with than without, 400
+
+---- should be like the fly-wheel of a steam engine, 104
+
+_Circonstances_ (_see_ Conditions of Existence), Lamarck on, 268, 281
+
+Circumstance, suiting power, a, Mr. Patrick Matthew on, 318-321
+
+Classification, rather superficial appearances our best guide
+  to, 34, 35, 36, 198, 204
+
+---- Buffon on, 108, 109, 141
+
+Clear, an ineradicable tendency to make things, 92
+
+Clifford, Professor, on "Design," 6, 7
+
+Climbing plants, the movements of, Dr. Erasmus Darwin on, 209
+
+Coherency, the persistency of ideas the best argument in support of
+  their legitimate connection, 23
+
+Coleridge, on "Darwinising," 21
+
+Common terms, our, involve the connection between memory and
+  heredity, 201, 205
+
+---- descent, the "hidden bond" of Lamarck, as also of C. Darwin, 271
+
+Comparative anatomy, Lamarck on, 266, &c.
+
+Complex structures, the incipiency of, a difficulty in the way of the
+  natural selection view of evolution, 21, 22
+
+Compromise, Buffon's, 92
+
+Conditions of existence, the very essence of condition involves that
+  there shall be penalty in case of non-fulfilment, 352, 376, 377
+
+---- and the winglessness of Madeira beetles, 373, &c.
+
+---- according to C. Darwin, "include" and yet "are fully embraced by"
+  natural selection, 355
+
+---- identical with "natural selection," 351-354
+
+---- Étienne Geoffroy, and Lamarck on, 326, 327, 328
+
+---- Buffon on the, 103;
+     difference between Buffon's and Lamarck's view of their action, 105
+
+---- direct action of changed, Buffon on the, 145, 147, 160
+
+---- Lamarck on, 105, 268, 270, 271, 275, 277, 278, 281, 291,
+  292, 294, 295, 298, 299, 300, &c.
+
+Continuity in discontinuity, and _vice versâ_, 47
+
+Contracts of animals, Dr. E. Darwin on the, 205
+
+Contrivance, does organism show signs of this? 2
+
+Convenient, not only _sometimes_, but always, more, 365
+
+Corkscrew for corks, and lungs for respiration, Prof. Clifford on, 7.
+  See also p. 58
+
+---- we should have grown a, if drawing corks had been important
+  to us, 7
+
+Creator, a, who is not an organism, unintelligible, 6, 11, 24
+
+Criticising, difficulty of, without knowing more than the mere facts
+  which are to be criticised, 172
+
+Criticism, Miss Seward's, on Dr. Darwin's "Elegy," 189
+
+---- Grant Allen on the decay of, 388
+
+Crux, the, of the early evolutionist, 35
+
+Cuttle-fish, natural selection like the secretion of a, 332
+
+
+DAMNATION, praising with faint, 111
+
+Darwin, Charles, on the eye, denies design, 8
+
+---- declares variation to be the cause of variation, 8, 347, 369
+
+---- and blind chance working on whither; the accumulation of
+  innumerable lucky accidents, 41, 42
+
+---- our indebtedness to, 62, 66, 335
+
+---- has adopted one half of Isidore Geoffroy's conclusion without
+  verifying either, 83
+
+---- on Buffon's fluctuation of opinion, 97
+
+---- on Isidore Geoffroy, 97
+
+---- his assertion that Buffon has not entered on the "causes or
+  means" of transformation, 104
+
+---- his meagre notice of his grandfather, 196
+
+---- his treatment of the author of the "Vestiges of Creation," 65,
+  247, 248
+
+---- attributes the characteristics of neuter insects to natural
+  selection, 249
+
+---- his treatment of Lamarck, 249, 250, 251, 298, 314, 376
+
+---- "great is the power of steady misrepresentation," 251
+
+---- his "happy simplicity" about animals and plants under
+  domestication, 276
+
+---- his notice of Mr. Patrick Matthew in the imperfect historical
+  sketch which he has prefaced to the "Origin of Species," 315, 316
+
+---- points of agreement between him and Lamarck, 335-337
+
+---- sees no broad principle underlying variation, 339
+
+---- dwells on the accumulation of variations, the origination of
+  which he leaves unaccounted for, 340, 341
+
+---- his variations being due to no general underlying principle, will
+  not tend to appear in definite directions, nor to many individuals
+  at a time, nor to be constant for long together, 342
+
+---- speaks of natural selection as a cause of modification, while
+  declaring it to be a means only, 345, &c.
+
+---- his explanation of this, 384, &c.
+
+---- his dilemma, as regards the "Origin of Species," 346
+
+---- declares the fact of variation to be the cause of variation,
+  8, 347, 369
+
+---- if he had told us more of what Buffon, &c., said, and where
+  they were wrong, he would have taken a course, &c., 357
+
+---- on the ease with which we can hide our ignorance under a cloud
+  of words, 358
+
+---- apologizes for having underrated the frequency and importance
+  of variation due to spontaneous variability, 358
+
+---- his "Origin of Species" like the opinion of a lawyer who wanted
+  to leave loopholes, or an Act of Parliament full of repealed and
+  inserted clauses, 358
+
+---- accused of confusion and inaccuracy of thought, 359
+
+---- as just as Aristides himself, 364
+
+---- most candid literary opponent in the world, 364
+
+---- declares Nature to be the most important means of modification,
+  and variation to be the cause of variations, 369
+
+---- like a will-o'-the-wisp, 372
+
+---- disuse, the main agent in reducing wings of Madeira beetles, 377
+
+---- how he and Lamarck treat the winglessness of Madeira beetles
+  respectively, 373-380
+
+---- an example of his "manner," 378
+
+---- the way in which he met "Evolution, Old and New," 393
+
+Darwin, Erasmus, never quite recognized design, 39
+
+---- ignorance concerning, 61
+
+---- on reason and instinct, 115, &c.
+
+---- life of, 173, &c.
+
+---- in Nottingham market-place, 182, 184, 197
+
+---- and Dr. Johnson, 184, 185
+
+---- and Tutbury bull running, 187
+
+---- his poetry about the pump, and illustration, 84, 193
+
+---- should have given his evolution theory a book to itself, 197
+
+---- had no wish to see far beyond the obvious, 197
+
+---- must be admitted to have missed detecting Buffon's
+  humour, 83, 84, 197
+
+---- did not attribute instincts and structures to memory pure
+  and simple, 198
+
+---- on the reasoning powers of animals, and on instinct, 201, 205
+
+---- his failure to connect memory and instinct, as with birds'
+  nests, 201-203
+
+---- failed to see the four main propositions which I contended
+  for in "Life and Habit," 37, 203, 204
+
+---- on the analogies between animal and vegetable life, 206, &c.
+
+---- on sensitive plants, 206, 210
+
+---- on the individuality of buds, and his theory of bark, 207, 208
+
+---- on the movements of climbing plants, 209
+
+---- on the oneness of personality between parents and offspring, 214;
+     the embryo not a new animal, 215
+
+---- on animals under domestication, 223
+
+---- on the effects of accidents transmitted to offspring, 224
+
+---- sees struggle, and hence modification, turn mainly round three
+  great wants, 226, 229, 257, 279
+
+---- on desire as a means of modification, 226, 228, 259
+
+---- by a slip approaches the error of his grandson, 227, 228
+
+---- on embryonic metamorphoses, 230, 231
+
+---- believed animals and plants to be descended from a common
+  stock, 233
+
+---- and Lamarck compared, 257
+
+---- on the struggle of existence, and the survival of the
+  fittest, 227, 232, 259
+
+Darwin, Mrs. Erasmus, death-bed of, 178
+
+Darwin, Francis, mentioned, 109
+
+---- his interesting lecture, 206
+
+---- does not use the expression "natural selection," 368
+
+Darwinising, Coleridge on, 21
+
+Darwinism, the old Darwinism involves desire, invention, and design, 58
+
+---- modern, falling into disfavour, 60
+
+---- and evolution not to be confounded, 360, 361
+
+Day, the portrait of, by Wright of Derby, 180
+
+Death, violent, Buffon on, 126
+
+---- of Dr. Erasmus Darwin, 193, 194
+
+Death-bed of Mrs. Erasmus Darwin, 178
+
+Deed, illustration drawn from a very intricate, 28
+
+Definite, with Lamarck the variations are, 341, 344
+
+_Dégénérations_, 87
+
+Demand and supply, like power and desire, 222, 300
+
+Demonstrative case, "this demonstrative case of neuter insects,
+  &c.," 249, 298, 314
+
+Descent, with modification, spoken of as though synonymous with
+  natural selection, 248, 356
+
+Design, and organism, shall we or shall we not connect these ideas? 2
+
+---- Aristotle denied, Plato upheld, Haeckel on, 4
+
+---- Prof. Clifford's denial of, 6, 7
+
+---- does certainly involve a designer who has an organism, who
+  can think, and make mistakes, 6, 24
+
+---- a belief in both design and evolution, commonly held to
+  be incompatible, 9
+
+---- Sir W. Thomson and Sir J. Herschel on, 11
+
+---- Paley on, 12, &c.
+
+---- light thrown by embryology on the method of, 25
+
+---- G. H. Lewes opposes, 26
+
+---- the three positions in respect to, taken by Charles Darwin,
+  Paley, and the earlier evolutionists, 31
+
+---- the first evolutionists did not see that their view of
+  evolution involved design, 34
+
+---- from within as much design as from without, 36
+
+---- was equivalent to theological design, with the early
+  evolutionists, 36
+
+---- if each step is taken designedly, the whole is done
+  designedly, 52, 384
+
+---- and accident, the line between them hard to draw; shaking
+  the bag, &c., 53, 384
+
+---- instinct originated in, 54
+
+---- as much lost sight of with old-established forms of the
+  steam-engine as with birds' nests or the wheel, 55
+
+---- Dr. E. Darwin's failure to see that evolution involves design, 195
+
+---- we feel the want of, as much as we do of evolution, 407
+
+---- evolution not only tolerates, but cannot get on without, 408
+
+Designer, "I believe in an organic and tangible designer of every
+  complex structure," 6
+
+---- "where is he? show him to us," &c., 29, 30
+
+---- the, of any organism, the organism itself, 30, 31, 40
+
+Desire and power, interaction of, 44, 45, 47, 127, 217, 221, 300, 322
+
+---- and power, like wealth, 222
+
+---- as a means of modification, Dr. Erasmus Darwin on, 226, 228, 259
+
+Development, the history of organic, the history of a moral struggle, 45
+
+---- always due to making the best of the present, 50
+
+Devils, 20,000, dancing a saraband on the point of a needle, 216
+
+Dew drop, or lens, the, and Lord Rosse's telescope, 44, 47
+
+Diaphragm, Buffon on the, 129
+
+Dice, accidental variations thrown for as with, 3
+
+Difference between animal and ordinary mechanism, 24
+
+---- the main, between the manufacture of tools and that of organs, 39
+
+Dilemma, C. Darwin's, 346
+
+Direct action of changed conditions, Buffon on the, 105, 145, 147, 160
+
+Discontinuity in continuity, 47
+
+Disease, accidents followed by, 303
+
+Disintegration, Protestantism tends towards, 397
+
+Distribution, geographical, changed, Buffon on, 145, 164
+
+Disuse, and the winglessness of Madeira beetles, we are almost surprised
+  to find that they are connected at all, 375
+
+---- the main agent in reducing the wings of Madeira beetles, 377
+
+---- some examples of the effect of, adduced by Lamarck, 378
+
+Dog, Buffon on the, 120
+
+---- Lamarck on the various breeds of the, 297
+
+Domestication, a single case of a species formed under domestication
+  sufficient to remove the _à priori_ difficulty from a
+  comprehensive theory of evolution, 90, 91, 311
+
+---- plants under, Buffon on, 167, &c.
+
+---- Buffon on animals under, 103, 120, &c., 148, &c., 159, &c., 276
+
+---- animals under, Dr. Erasmus Darwin on, 223
+
+---- animals under, Buffon on, 121, &c., 148, 276
+
+---- C. Darwin on, 276
+
+---- animals and plants under, Lamarck on, 275, 293, 296, 297, 300
+
+---- animals and plants under, Mr. Patrick Matthew on, 324
+
+Door, the doing anything well will open the door for doing
+  something else, 51
+
+Ducks, our domesticated, why they cannot fly like wild ones, 296, 309
+
+
+EARN, "you are but doing your best to earn an honest living," 29
+
+Ears are never found in a rudimentary condition, 379
+
+Eat, or be eaten, 177
+
+Effort, Paley's argument that structures have not been developed
+  through, 22, 45
+
+---- too much, as vicious as indolence, 35
+
+---- "neither too much nor too little," 50
+
+---- Herculean, condemned, 197
+
+Egyptian mummies, Lamarck on, 274, 275
+
+Embryology, the light it throws upon the mode in which organisms
+  have been designed, 25
+
+Embryonic metamorphoses, Erasmus Darwin on, 230, 231
+
+Embryonic development, Lamarck on, 289
+
+Encyclical, the Pope's, on St. Thomas Aquinas, 402, &c.
+
+Endeavour, Paley's argument against the view that structures have
+  been developed through, 22, 45
+
+Endowment, the new orthodoxy, which is clamouring for, 360
+
+English wines, Dr. Erasmus Darwin's preference for, 175
+
+Environment. _See_ Conditions of Existence
+
+Equilibrium, the, of Nature, Buffon on the, 125
+
+Err, the power to, rated highly, 29
+
+---- "it is on this margin that we may err or wander," 50
+
+---- virtue ever errs on the side of excess, 35
+
+Error, importance of, dependent on the distance, rather than the
+  direction, 50
+
+"Especially" the same, 92, 96
+
+Ethiopian, the, can change his skin, if it becomes worth his while
+  to try long enough, 40
+
+Evêque and bishop, common derivation of, 355
+
+Everlasting, God, how far, 32
+
+Evolution, commonly held incompatible with design, 9
+
+---- Paley, its first serious opponent in England, 21
+
+---- Sir Walter Raleigh on, 21, 70
+
+---- must stand or fall according as it rests on a purposive
+  foundation or no, 60
+
+---- brief summary of its six principal stages, 62, &c.
+
+---- Bacon on, 69
+
+---- the theory of, as apart from the evidence in support of it, 332
+
+---- C. Darwin and Lamarck are equally intent upon establishing
+  the same theory of evolution, 335-337
+
+---- and Darwinism, not to be confounded, 360, 361
+
+---- Rome and Pantheism meet in, 403
+
+Evolutionists, the early, did not know that they accepted teleology, 34
+
+---- the early, saw design, only as design by the God of theologians, 36
+
+Experience and instinct, Mr. Patrick Matthew on, 322
+
+Extinct species, Lamarck on, 277
+
+---- Buffon on, 146, 277
+
+Eye, no creature that had nothing like an eye ever set itself to
+  conceive one and grow one, 44, 387
+
+---- Paley asks "how will our philosopher get an eye?" 46
+
+---- of flat fish, Lamarck on the, 307
+
+---- Lamarck on the, of underground and cave-inhabiting animals, 378
+
+---- disappear and reappear in the scale of organism according to the
+  power of using them, 379
+
+
+FAITH, forms of, or faiths of form, &c., 339
+
+Familiarity, with a little, such superficial objections will be
+  forgotten, 367
+
+Far ahead, no organism ever saw an improvement a long way off and made
+  towards it, 43, 44, 48, 49, 54, 384
+
+Father, the man who could be father of such a son and retain his
+  affection, &c., 76
+
+Factors, there have been two, of modification, one producing and the
+  other accumulating variations, 227
+
+Fecundity, alternate years of, Buffon on, 125
+
+Feeding and breeding, 222
+
+Feel, if plants and animals look as if they feel, let us say
+  they feel, 198
+
+Feeling, there is more feeling than reason in animals, 51
+
+Feral characteristics, resumption of, Buffon on, 123
+
+Final causes, the doctrine of, as commonly held in the time of the
+  early evolutionists, 34, 36
+
+---- Buffon on, 118, &c.
+
+Fitness, the cause of, more important than the fact that fitness is
+  commonly fit, and therefore successful, 351
+
+Flat fish, Lamarck on the eyes of, 307
+
+Fluctuation of opinion, C. Darwin on Buffon's, the charge
+  refuted, 97, &c., 164, 166
+
+Fontenelle, on theories, 22
+
+Foot, and model of foot, differences between, 24
+
+Forms of faith, or faiths of form, &c., 339
+
+Four main points which the early evolutionists failed to see in
+  their connection and bearing on each other, 37, 203
+
+Four main principles, the, which I contended for in "Life and
+  Habit," 37, 203, 380, 381
+
+Fowls and pigeons, Buffon on, 169
+
+
+GARNETT, Mr. R., and "Darwinising," 21
+
+Genius, Mr. Allen says I am a, 388
+
+Gentleman, the Church of Rome means the same by the word as we do, 395
+
+Geoffroy, Étienne, how small a way he goes, 196
+
+---- and Isidore, trimmers, 328
+
+---- on Buffon, 328
+
+---- on conditions of existence, 326, 327
+
+---- declares against Lamarck's hypothesis, 328
+
+---- his position, 325-328
+
+Geoffroy, Isidore, on evolution and final causes, 9
+
+---- on Buffon's fluctuation of opinion, 98, &c., 164, 166
+
+---- points out the difference between the views of Buffon
+  and Lamarck, 105
+
+---- statement that Buffon's opinions fluctuated again refuted, 166
+
+---- and Lamarck's hypothesis, 244-246, 329
+
+---- on Buffon, 328
+
+---- his position, 329
+
+Genealogical order, Lamarck on, 264
+
+---- C. Darwin on, 265
+
+Generation more remarkable than reason, Hume on, 233
+
+Generic differences (as well as specific), Buffon on, 164
+
+Genius, a supreme capacity for taking pains, 76
+
+Geographical distribution, changed, Buffon on, 145, &c., 164
+
+Geometrical ratio of increase, Buffon on, 123
+
+---- Lamarck, on, 280
+
+---- Patrick Matthew on, 320, 321
+
+Germ of oak indistinguishable from that of a man, 334
+
+Germans, Buffon on the, 93
+
+Glory "comes after labour if she can," &c., 76
+
+Go away, because their uncles, aunts, 376
+
+God, embodied in living forms, and dwelling in them, 31
+
+---- how far everlasting, invisible, imperishable, omnipotent, &c., 32
+
+---- the unseen parts of, are as a deep-buried history, 33
+
+Goethe, as an evolutionist, 71
+
+Gradations infinitely subtle, 87
+
+Grant Allen, on "Evolution, Old and New," 386-388
+
+---- on the decay of criticism, 388
+
+---- says that "Evolutionism is an almost exclusively English
+  impulse," 393
+
+Greyhound or racehorse, the well-adapted form of the, 359
+
+Growth attended at each step by a felicitous tempering of two
+  antagonistic principles, 35
+
+Gueneau de Montbeillard, 172, 173
+
+
+HABIT," "Life and. _See_ "Life and Habit."
+
+---- rudimentary organs repeated through mere force of, 38, 39
+
+---- Buffon on, 148, 159, 160, 161, 162
+
+---- a second Nature, Lamarck on, 300
+
+Habits, or use, and organ, Lamarck on the interaction of, 292, 311
+
+Haeckel, on design, 4, 5
+
+---- on Goethe as an evolutionist, 71
+
+---- does not appear to know of Buffon as an evolutionist, 71, 393
+
+---- his surprising statement concerning Lamarck, 73
+
+---- his ignorance concerning Erasmus Darwin, 73, 393
+
+---- on Lamarck, 246, 247
+
+---- A. R. Wallace's review of his "Evolution of Man," 382, 384
+
+Hamlet, the "Origin of Species" like "Hamlet" without Hamlet, 363
+
+Handiest, a man should do whatever comes handiest, 51, 52
+
+Hare, Buffon on the, 123, &c.
+
+Hartmann's philosophy of the unconscious, and "Life and Habit," 56, 57
+
+Hearing, when we once reach animals so low as to have no organ of,
+  we lose this organ for good and all, 379
+
+Heredity and habit, Buffon on, 148, 159, 160, 161, 162
+
+---- only another term for unknown causes, unless the "Life and Habit"
+  theory be adopted, 384
+
+Hering, Professor, referred to, 66, 67
+
+---- his theory as given in "Nature" by Ray Lankester, 198-200
+
+Herschel, Sir John, compares natural selection to the Laputan
+  method of making books, 10
+
+Higgling and haggling of the market, 50
+
+History of the universe, each organism is a, from its own point
+  of view, 31
+
+Horse and ass, Buffon's most pregnant passage on the, 80, 90, 91,
+  100, 101, 142, 143, 155, 164, 311
+
+---- and man, skeleton of the, 88, 89
+
+---- and zebra, Buffon on the, example of irony, 80, 155, 164
+
+Hume, his saying that generation is more remarkable than reason, 233
+
+Huxley, Professor, referred to, 93
+
+---- pointed out to Professor Mivart the difficulty in the way of
+  natural selection, 344
+
+---- his ignorance concerning the earlier history of evolution, 392, 393
+
+Hybridism, Buffon on, 117, 118
+
+Hybrids, sterility of, Lamarck on, and C. Darwin on, 272, 273
+
+
+IDEAS, the bond or nexus of our, 23, 29, 30
+
+Ignorance, the prevailing, concerning the earlier evolutionists, 61
+
+---- it is easy to hide our, under such expressions as "plan of
+  creation," or natural selection, 358
+
+Imitation, instinct not referable to, as maintained by Erasmus
+  Darwin, 202
+
+Immutability of species and design commonly accepted together, 9, 10
+
+Improvements, small successive, in man's inventions, 44, 46,
+  47, 54, 55, 384
+
+Inaccuracy of thought, C. Darwin accused of, 359
+
+Incipiency, of complex structures, a difficulty in the way of the
+  Natural selection view of evolution, 21, 22
+
+Incorporate, the designer is, with the organism, 30
+
+Increase, geometrical ratio of Buffon on the, 123
+
+---- Lamarck on, 280
+
+---- Patrick Matthew on, 320, 321
+
+Indefinite, with C. Darwin the variations are, 342, 344
+
+Indifference, I say I am more indifferent than I think I am, whether
+  mind is or is not the least misleading symbol for the cause that
+  sustains the universe, 371
+
+Indirect action of conditions of existence according to
+  Lamarck, 294, 299, 306. (_See_ "Conditions of Existence")
+
+Individuality, Buffon on, 128
+
+---- of buds, Erasmus Darwin on the, 207, 208
+
+---- our, a _consensus_, or full-flowing river, 318
+
+Infallibility, possible results of the doctrine of Papal, 406
+
+Insectivorous plants, Erasmus Darwin on, 206
+
+Instep, ligament that binds the tendons of the, Paley on the, 22
+
+Instinct, present, does not bar its having arisen in reason and
+  reflection, 53, 54
+
+---- returns to its earlier phase, _i. e._ to reason on the presence
+  of the unfamiliar, 54, 55, 56
+
+---- and reason, Buffon on, 110-116
+
+---- Darwin, Erasmus, on, 115, 116, 204
+
+---- not referable to imitation, as maintained by Erasmus Darwin, 202
+
+---- is reason become habitual, 203
+
+---- reason perfected and got by rote, 256
+
+---- and reason, Lamarck on, 256, 257, 274
+
+---- referred to experience and memory, by Patrick Matthew, 322
+
+Insult, "Evolution, Old and New," not intended as an insult to men
+  of science, 392
+
+Interaction of want and power, 44, 45, 47, 217, 218, 221, 300, 323
+
+---- of body and mind, Lamarck on the, 338, 339, 341
+
+Interesting, the more interesting the animal the more evolution Buffon
+  puts into his account of it, 84
+
+Intermediate forms, Lamarck on, 283, 286
+
+---- C. Darwin, 284, 285
+
+Inventions, small successive improvements in man's, and development of,
+  analogous to that of organism, 44, 46, 47, 54, 55, 384
+
+Irony, good-natured and the reverse, 91
+
+---- an apology for, and explanation how far it is legitimate, 111, 112
+
+---- Buffon's, 78, &c., 91, 92, 93, 155, 157, 163, 164
+
+
+JARDINE, Sir W., on Buffon's character, 82
+
+Johnson, Dr., and Erasmus Darwin, 184, 185
+
+Joints, Paley on the human, 19, 20
+
+Juggle, Paley's argument a juggle, unless man has had a _bonâ fide_
+  personal, and therefore organic designer, 14, 16
+
+
+KNEE-PAN, Paley on the human, 18
+
+Knowledge, nomenclature mistaken for, 141
+
+
+LABOUR, glory comes after, if she can, 76
+
+Lamarck, had brain upon the brain, 36
+
+---- never quite recognized design, 39
+
+---- Haeckel's surprising statement concerning, 73
+
+---- wherein he mainly differs from Buffon, 105
+
+---- memoir of, 235
+
+---- his connection with Buffon, as tutor to his son, &c., 237, 258
+
+---- his daughters, 242, 253
+
+---- his poverty and blindness, 242, 253
+
+---- Isidore Geoffroy on, bad caricature of his teaching, 244-246
+
+---- Haeckel on, 246, 247
+
+---- never seriously discussed, 247
+
+---- "the well-known doctrine of," C. Darwin's reference
+  to, 249, 250, 251, 298, 314, 376
+
+---- on the opposition his theory met with, 252
+
+---- too old to have begun his unequal contest, 253
+
+---- on the feeling of animals, 254, 255
+
+---- too theory-ridden, 254
+
+---- misled by Buffon (query), 255
+
+---- took from Buffon without sufficient acknowledgment,
+  255, 258, 260, 311
+
+---- as compared with Dr. Erasmus Darwin, 257
+
+---- like Dr. E. Darwin, sees struggle and modification turn
+  mainly round three great wants, 257, 279, 300, 309
+
+---- when and how he came over to the side of mutability, 258
+
+---- and the French translation of the "Loves of the Plant," 259
+
+---- on comparative anatomy, 266
+
+---- on species, 267, &c.
+
+---- on conditions of existence (_circonstances_), 105, 268, 270, 271,
+  275, 277, 278, 281, 291, 292, 294, 295, 298, 299, 300, &c.
+
+---- on instinct, 274
+
+---- on animals and plants under domestication, 275, 293, 296, 297, 300
+
+---- on extinct species, 277
+
+---- anticipated Lyell in rejecting catastrophes, 277
+
+---- on the geometrical ratio of increase and struggle for
+  existence, 280-282
+
+---- on embryonic development, 289
+
+---- the main principles which he supposes to underlie
+  variations, 292, 299, 338, 339
+
+---- his contention that plants have neither actions nor habits, 295
+
+---- on use and disuse, 294, 296, 299, 301, 302, 304, 305, 307-309
+
+---- on the various breeds of the dog, 297
+
+---- habit a second nature, 300
+
+---- like Erasmus Darwin and Buffon, understood the survival of
+  the fittest, 301
+
+---- on the way in which serpents have lost their legs, 303
+
+---- on wading and aquatic birds, 305
+
+---- on the eyes of flat fish, 307
+
+---- on man, 311, &c.
+
+---- on a single instance of considerable variation under
+  domestication, 311
+
+---- on speech, 313, 314
+
+---- on the upright position of man and certain apes, 313
+
+---- his, and Étienne Geoffroy's views on conditions of
+  existence, 326, 327, 328
+
+---- his hypothesis, and Isidore Geoffroy, 329
+
+---- Herbert Spencer on, 330, 331
+
+---- desired to discover the law underlying variations, 337
+
+---- the extent to which he and C. Darwin take common ground, 335-337
+
+---- on body and mind, 338, 339, 341
+
+---- on his theory variations will be definite, will appear in large
+  numbers of individuals at the same time, for long periods
+  together, 341
+
+---- how he and C. Darwin treat the winglessness of Madeira beetles
+  respectively, 373-380
+
+---- on the eyes and ears of cave-inhabiting animals, 378, 379
+
+Laputan method of making books, the, and natural selection, 11
+
+Lawyer's deed, if we come across a very intricate, &c., 27
+
+Leopard, the, can change his spots if it becomes worth his while to
+  try long enough, 40
+
+Lewes, G. H., on embryology, 25
+
+---- his objection to the tentativeness with which the same errors
+  are repeated generation after generation, 26
+
+---- his objection to C. Darwin's language concerning natural
+  selection, 346
+
+Lewes, G. H., on natural selection, 348, 349, 359
+
+Life, some remarks about the criterion of, that I must retract, 279
+
+---- one Proteus principal of, 320
+
+"Life and Habit," what I believe to have been its most important
+  features, 67, 203, 204
+
+---- recapitulation of the main principle insisted on, 37, 56,
+  203, 380, 381, 384
+
+---- and Hartmann's philosophy of the unconscious, German review, 56, 57
+
+Lifetime, considerable modifications effected during a single, 304
+
+---- the changes undergone by organisms during a single, Herbert
+  Spencer, on, 332-334
+
+Ligament, the, which binds down the tendons of the instep, 21
+
+Living, Paley is but doing his best to earn an honest, 29
+
+---- forms of faith, or faiths of form, 339
+
+Lines, no sharp can be drawn, 47
+
+Lion and tiger, Buffon on the, 143, 145
+
+Llama, Buffon on the hereditary ills of the, 161
+
+Longevity, the principle underlying, 67, 380, 381
+
+Loopholes for escape, the "Origin of Species" full of, 358
+
+"Loves of the Plants," French translation of the, 63, 259
+
+Lungs for respiration, and corkscrew for corks, Professor
+  Clifford on, 7. (_See_ also p. 58)
+
+Lyell, Sir C., and Lamarck, 277
+
+---- on the similarity between Lamarck's theory and Mr.
+  Darwin's, 336, 337
+
+
+MACHINE, Paley declares animals to be neither wholly machines
+  nor wholly not machines, 14
+
+Madeira beetles, the ways in which Lamarck and C. Darwin would
+  treat their winglessness, 373-380
+
+Maillet, de, referred to, 70
+
+Mainspring, the true, of our existence lies not in these
+  muscles, &c., 32
+
+Man, the designer of man, 30
+
+---- and horse, skeleton of the, 88, 89
+
+---- and the ape, 90
+
+---- and the lower animals, Buffon on, 107, 108
+
+---- Lamarck on, 311, &c.
+
+Manner, the, is the man himself, 77
+
+---- "but this is Mr. Darwin's", 378
+
+Manufacture, the, of tools and of organs, two species of
+  the same genus, 39
+
+Margin, there is a margin in every organic structure, &c., 49, 50
+
+---- on the margin of the self-evident the greatest purchase is
+  obtainable, 197
+
+Market, the higgling and haggling of the, 50
+
+Martins, M., his life of Lamarck, 235, &c.
+
+Matter less important than the manner, 77
+
+---- and mind, inseparable, 371
+
+Matthew, Mr. Patrick, his work on naval timber and arboriculture, 64, 65
+
+---- extracts from, 315, &c.
+
+---- Mr. C. Darwin on, 315
+
+---- on animals and plants under domestication, 324
+
+---- on will as influencing organism, 320, 321, 322
+
+---- on the struggle for existence with survival of the
+  fittest, 320, 322
+
+---- and natural selection, 323
+
+---- on instinct and memory, and on the continued personality
+  of parents in offspring, 321, 322, 323
+
+Means, C. Darwin's dangerous use of this word, 345
+
+---- one _sine quâ non_ for a thing is as much a means of that
+  thing's coming about as anything else is, 349
+
+Mechanism of animals, Paley on the, 14
+
+Mechanism of animals, evidence of design in any ordinary, 15
+
+Memory, and life and heredity, 37, 38, 39, 56, 67, 198-203,
+  332, 380, 381
+
+---- Professor Hering on, 198-200
+
+---- Patrick Matthew on, 322
+
+Meteoric, both want and power are, 44, 45
+
+Meninges, Buffon on the, 132
+
+Microcosm, each organism a history of the universe from its
+  own point of view, 31
+
+Microscope, illustration from successive improvements in the, 46, 47
+
+Mind, "the least inadequate and misleading symbol," for the power
+  that has designed organism, 3, 371
+
+---- and body, Lamarck on, 338, 339, 341
+
+---- and matter inseparable, 371
+
+Misfortune, take advantage of, 51
+
+Misrepresentation, "great is the power of steady," 251
+
+Missionaries should avoid trying to effect sudden modifications, 183
+
+Mistake, the power to make, rated highly, 29
+
+---- importance of, depends on magnitude rather than on the
+  direction, 50
+
+Mivart, Professor, says that, "Mind is the least adequate and
+  misleading symbol," &c., 3, 371
+
+---- referred to, 22, 66, 67
+
+---- admits that his objection does not tell against the Lamarckian
+  theory of evolution, 343
+
+---- points out that the admission of a principle underlying variations
+  is fatal to C. Darwin's theory concerning natural selection, 343
+
+---- on C. Darwin's "haphazard, indefinite variations," 343
+
+---- how Professor Huxley pointed out to him the objection to C.
+  Darwin's theory concerning natural selection, 344
+
+---- asks what is natural selection? and declares it to be repudiated
+  by its propounder, 369
+
+---- declares it to be "nothing," and a puerile
+  hypothesis, 370, 371
+
+---- declares the causes of variation to be the causes of the
+  distinction of species, 370
+
+Model, artificial, of a foot, and true foot, difference between, 24
+
+Modification. It is only on modification that reason reasserts
+  itself, 55
+
+---- there have been two factors of, one producing variations, and
+  the other accumulating them, 227
+
+---- arrived at by struggle round three great wants, Erasmus
+  Darwin on, 226-229
+
+---- Lamarck on the same, 257, 279, 300, 301
+
+---- the cause of survival, not survival the cause of modification, 302
+
+Moral, an organism is most, when looking a little ahead, but not
+  too far, 44
+
+---- struggle, the history of organic development, the history of a, 45
+
+---- more, and safer, to be behind the age than in front of it, 401
+
+Movement, Buffon's great criterion of sensation, 127
+
+Mummies, Egyptian, Lamarck on, 274, 275
+
+Murphy, Rev. J. J., mentioned, 22
+
+---- referred to, 66, 67
+
+Mutability of species commonly held to be incompatible with a
+  belief in design, 9, 10
+
+Mystery-mongering, that Buffon wished to protest against, 81, 171
+
+Mystification, scientific, and orthodoxy, Buffon on, 138
+
+
+NAIVELY, as Mr. Darwin naively adds, "_sometimes_ equally
+  convenient," 354
+
+Natural selection, the essence of the theory is that the variations
+  shall have been mainly accidental, 7
+
+Natural selection, the unerring skill of, 9
+
+---- Sir William Thomson and Sir John Herschel on, 10
+
+---- Button, and, "by _some chance_ common enough with Nature," 122
+
+---- spoken of as though synonymous with descent with
+  modification, 248, 285, 356
+
+---- C. Darwin attributes the instincts of neuter insects to, 249
+
+---- Mr. Patrick Matthew and, 323
+
+---- like the secretion of a cuttle-fish, 332
+
+---- G. H. Lewes's objection to C. Darwin's language concerning, 346
+
+---- if this is declared to be a cause, the fact of variation
+  is declared to be the cause of variation, 347
+
+---- declared by C. Darwin to be a means of variation, 347
+
+---- treated as a cause, 348
+
+---- G. H. Lewes on, 348, 349, 350
+
+---- identity with "conditions of existence," 351-354
+
+---- according to C. Darwin, "fully embraces" and yet "is included
+  in" conditions of existence, 355
+
+---- a cloak for want of precision of thought, and of substantial
+  difference from Lamarck, 358
+
+---- "some have even imagined that it induces variability;" and small
+  wonder, considering C. Darwin's language concerning it, 362
+
+---- C. Darwin's reply to those who have objected to the term, 362-368
+
+---- a cloak of difference from C. Darwin's predecessors, under which
+  there lurks a concealed identity of opinion as to main facts, 362, 363
+
+---- "implies only the preservation of such variations as arise,"
+  &c., 363
+
+---- admitted by C. Darwin to be a false term, 364
+
+---- the complaint is that the expression has been retained when
+  an avowedly more accurate one is to hand, 365, 366
+
+---- only another way of saying Nature, 368, 369
+
+---- the dislike of it is increasing, 368, 369
+
+---- Francis Darwin does not use the expression, 368, 369
+
+---- daily and hourly scrutinizing throughout the world, &c., 369
+
+---- practically repudiated by C. Darwin himself, 369
+
+---- Professor Mivart declares it to be "simply nothing," 370
+
+---- a "puerile hypothesis," 371
+
+---- and not disuse, the true main cause of the winglessness of
+  Madeira beetles, according to C. Darwin, 374
+
+---- _not_ the main cause of the winglessness of Madeira beetles,
+  according to C. Darwin, 377
+
+---- "combined probably with disuse," will account, according to
+  C. Darwin, for the winglessness of Madeira beetles, 375
+
+_Naturalistes_, _le peuple des_, 80, 171
+
+Nature, the personification of comparatively venial, 367
+
+---- and natural selection the same thing, 368, 369
+
+---- the most important means of modification, and variation the
+  cause of variation, 369
+
+Neck, Paley on the human, 17, 18
+
+Need, sense of, the main idea in connection with evolution that is
+  left with the reader by the "Zoonomia," or "Philosophie
+  Zoologique," 363
+
+Needle, 20,000 devils dancing a saraband on the point of a, 216
+
+Nest, a bird will alter its nest a little, to meet altered
+ circumstances, 55
+
+Nests, birds', Dr. E. Darwin on, 201
+
+Neuter insects, "the demonstrative case of neuter insects,"
+  &c., 249, 298, 314
+
+New countries, Buffon a hater of, 146
+
+Nomenclature, mistaken for knowledge, 141
+
+Nottingham market-place, Erasmus Darwin in, 182, 184, 197
+
+
+OAK and man, the germs of, indistinguishable, 334
+
+---- man may become as long-lived as the, 382
+
+Obvious, Erasmus Darwin had no wish to see far beyond the, 197
+
+Oken, alluded to, 72
+
+Old age, the phenomena of, 67, 204, 381
+
+---- and new worlds, Buffon on the fauna of, 145, &c.
+
+One source for all life, Buffon on, 91
+
+---- Erasmus Darwin on, 109, 233
+
+Oneness of personality between parents and offspring, 37, 38, 39
+
+---- Buffon on the, 151
+
+---- Erasmus Darwin and Professor Hering on the, 198-200
+
+---- Dr. E. Darwin's failure to grasp the whole facts in connection
+  with this, 198, 201, 203
+
+---- Dr. E. Darwin on, 214, 215
+
+---- Patrick Matthew on, 322, 323
+
+---- mentioned, 332, 380, 381
+
+Orang-outang, Buffon on the, 156-159
+
+Organ and use. _See_ "Use."
+
+---- and sense, interaction of the, Buffon on, 127
+
+---- and faculty, Lamarck on, 255
+
+Organs are living tools, 2
+
+---- the manufacture of, and that of tools, two species of the
+  same genus, 39, 43, &c.
+
+---- are the expressions of mental phases, 339, 341
+
+Organic structures have a margin, 49, 50
+
+Organic strictures and inorganic, Buffon on the, 153, &c.
+
+Organisms, have been developed as man's inventions
+  have, 44, 46, 47, 384
+
+"Origin of Species," the, cannot take permanent rank in the
+  literature of evolution, 62
+
+---- has no _raison d'être_, if natural selection is not a
+  cause of variation, 346
+
+---- a piece of intellectual sleight of hand, 346
+
+---- compared to the advice of a lawyer who wanted to leave
+  plenty of loopholes, or to a cobbled Act of Parliament, 358
+
+---- is "Hamlet" with the part of Hamlet cut out, 363
+
+---- most readers would say that it advocated natural selection as
+  the most important cause of variation, 363
+
+---- and the "Zoonomia," or the "Philosophie Zoologique"; the one
+  upholds natural selection, the other, sense of need, 363
+
+Orthodoxy, scientific, and mystification, Buffon on, 138
+
+---- scientific, clamouring for endowment, 360
+
+---- dangers of, 368
+
+Overseeing tends to oversight, 197
+
+
+PAINS, genius a supreme capacity for taking, 76
+
+Painting, a man should do _something_, no matter what, 51, 52
+
+Paley, quotations from, 12, &c.
+
+---- his argument a juggle, unless some one designed man, much as
+  man designed the watch, 14, 16
+
+---- on ordinary mechanism, as showing design, 15
+
+---- on the human neck, 16, 17
+
+---- on the patella, 18
+
+---- on the joints, 19, 20
+
+---- as a writer against evolution, 21
+
+---- on the ligament that binds the tendons of the instep, 21, 22
+
+---- opposes the view that structures have been formed through
+  appetency, endeavour or effort, 22, 45
+
+---- we turn on him and say, Show us your designer, 29
+
+---- asks, How will our philosopher get an eye? 46
+
+---- his "Natural Theology" written throughout at the "Zoonomia," 195
+
+---- never gives a reference when quoting an opponent, 195, 306
+
+Pantheism and Rome will in the end be the two sole combatants, 401
+
+---- common ground held by Rome and Pantheism, 403-405
+
+---- of Paul, 404
+
+Parents and offspring, oneness of personality between (_see_
+  "Personality")
+
+Passions, of like passions, men of science are, with other
+  pastors and prophets, 253
+
+Patella, or knee-pan, Paley on the, 18
+
+Paul, St., his pantheistic tendencies, 404
+
+---- we want to accept him literally, 405
+
+Peace, the, that passeth understanding, 35
+
+Perception and sensation, Buffon on the difference between, 129, 130
+
+Personality, oneness of, between parents and offspring, 37, 38, 39
+
+---- Buffon on the, 151
+
+---- Erasmus Darwin and Professor Hering on the, 198-200
+
+---- Erasmus Darwin's failure to grasp the whole conception,
+  198, 201, 203
+
+---- Erasmus Darwin on the, 214, 215
+
+---- Patrick Matthew on the, 322, 323
+
+---- mentioned, 332, 380, 381
+
+Personification, the, of Nature, comparatively venial, 367
+
+Pessimism: "Which is the pessimist I or Mr. Darwin?" 59
+
+Peuple des Naturalistes, le, 80, 171
+
+"Philosophie Zoologique," summary of, 261-314
+
+---- the, leaves "sense of need" on the reader's mind; the
+  "Origin of Species," natural selection, 363
+
+Pig, Buffon on the, 118, &c.
+
+Pigeons and fowls, Buffon on, 169
+
+Plaisanterie, Button's disclaimer of, 93
+
+Planted upside down, the vertebrata regarded as vegetables, 137
+
+Plants under domestication, Buffon on, 167, &c.
+
+---- Dr. Erasmus Darwin, on the life of, 206, &c.
+
+---- Lamarck's assertion that they have no action nor habits, 294, 295
+
+Plato upheld teleology, 4
+
+_Plus il a su_, &c., 44
+
+Poem, a, by Dr. Erasmus Darwin, 189
+
+Poetry, Dr. Erasmus Darwin's, 83, 189, 193
+
+Pope's shoes, scientists would step into the, if we would let
+  them, 360, 394
+
+Portrait of Mr. Day, author of "Sandford and Merton," 180
+
+Potto, the missing forefinger of the, 303
+
+Power and desire, interaction of, 44, 45, 47, 127, 217, 221, 300, 323
+
+Praising, with faint damnation, 111
+
+Prescience, need not extend over more than the next step, and yet the
+  whole road may have been travelled presciently, 52, 384
+
+Present, development due to a wise use of the, 50-52
+
+Probable, whatever in the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas is not probable
+  is to be rejected, 402, 403
+
+Proficiency is due to design if each step was taken designedly, though
+  the end was not far foreseen, 52, 384
+
+Protestantism tends towards disintegration, 396
+
+Proteus principle of life, one, 320
+
+Pump, Erasmus Darwin's poetry about the, 84, 193
+
+Purpose, instinctive actions were once done with a, 54
+
+---- spent or extinct, and rudimentary organs, 38, 383
+
+Purposive, if each step is purposive, the whole is purposive, 52, 384
+
+Purposiveness: I maintain the lungs to be as purposive us the
+  corkscrew, 5, 6, 7, 58
+
+
+RACE, the runners in a, and natural selection, 366, 367
+
+---- significance of the words being used for a breed and a
+  competition, 366, 367
+
+Racehorse or greyhound, "the well-adapted forms of the," 359
+
+Ranunculus aquatilis, Lamarck's passage on, 260, 297
+
+Raleigh, Sir Walter, and evolution, 21, 70
+
+Ray Lankester, Professor, on Hering's theory connecting memory
+  and heredity, 198-200
+
+Reason, there is less reason than feeling in animals, Buffon, 51
+
+---- perfected becomes instinct, but reasserts itself when the
+  circumstances alter, 54, 55, 56, 203
+
+---- and instinct, Buffon on, 110, 116
+
+---- Erasmus Darwin on, 115, 116, 201-205
+
+---- a less remarkable faculty than generation, Hume on, 233
+
+---- and instinct, Lamarck on, 256, 274
+
+---- declared to be incipient instinct, 256
+
+_Réel_, _au_, Buffon's use of these words, 126
+
+Relativity of the sciences, Buffon on the, 140
+
+Religion, Buffon's appeals to, 91, 115
+
+Reopen settled questions, animals cannot, serpents must have no
+  more than four legs, 303
+
+Resume earlier habits, the tendency to, on the approach of a
+  difficulty, 312, 313
+
+Retrogressive, Mr. Darwin's views of evolution retrogressive, 66
+
+Revelation, Buffon's appeals to, against evolution, 91, 115
+
+Reviews of "Evolution, Old and New," 385, &c.
+
+Riches, the normal growth of, and evolution, 222
+
+Roman Empire, the, prophetic, 397
+
+Romanes, G. R., on "Evolution, Old and New," 391-393
+
+Rome, Church of, means the same by "gentleman" as we do, 395
+
+---- I would join, if I could, 395, 396
+
+---- a unifier, 398
+
+---- the only source from which a church can come, 398-401
+
+---- and Pantheism, the ultimate fight will be between, 401
+
+---- points of agreement between Rome and Pantheists, 403-405
+
+---- may, and should get rid of Protestantism by outbidding it, 407
+
+Rousseau, Buffon would not play part of, 81
+
+Rudimentary organs, the crux of the early evolutionist in respect of
+  design, 34
+
+---- are now mere cant formulæ, force of habit, 38, 383
+
+---- like the protuberance at the bottom of a tobacco-pipe, 38
+
+---- Buffon would not accept them as designed, 83
+
+---- Buffon on, 120
+
+---- Professor Haeckel on, 383
+
+Run, how did the winner come to be able to run ever such a little
+  faster than his fellows, 367
+
+Runners in a race and natural selection, 366, 367
+
+
+"SANDFORD and Merton," Miss Seward on the author of, 179, 180
+
+Saints will commonly strain a point or two in their own favour, 253
+
+_Saturday Review_ on "Evolution, Old and New," 389-391
+
+Savery, Captain, 54
+
+Science, men of, of like passions with other priests and prophets, 253
+
+---- not a kingdom into which a poor man can enter easily, 253
+
+---- the leaders of will generally burke new-born wit unless, &c., 315
+
+---- not of that kind which desires to know, 392
+
+Scientific orthodoxy and mystification, Buffon on, 138
+
+---- danger of, 360, 368
+
+Scramble, birds learned to swim through scrambling, 48, 51
+
+Self-indulgence, virtue has ever erred rather on the side of, than
+  on that of asceticism, 35
+
+Sensation, Buffon on, 126, 129
+
+Sense, "in one sense," 355
+
+Sensitive plants, Dr. E. Darwin on, 206, 210
+
+Seriously, Buffon speaking, 126
+
+Serpents, how it is that they have lost their legs, 302
+
+Seward, Miss, her life of Erasmus Darwin, 174, &c.
+
+Shakspeare and Handel address the many as well as the few, 81
+
+Shortest day, and shortest day but one, no difference perceptible
+  between, 48
+
+Skeletons, the, of man and of the horse, 88, &c.
+
+Skill, the unerring, of natural selection, 9
+
+Siamese twins, desire and power compared to, 218, 300
+
+Simplicity, happy, an example of, 276
+
+Sisters, "his, and his cousins and his aunts," 253
+
+Slit, a slit in one tendon to let another pass through, 20
+
+Something a man should do, no matter what, 51
+
+Sometimes, "equally convenient" ("the survival of the fittest"
+  with natural selection), 9, 354, 365
+
+Son, the people who can get good sons and retain their affection
+  are the only ones worth studying from, 76
+
+Sorbonne, the, and Buffon, 82, 84
+
+Sorbonnes, never do like people who write in this way, 143
+
+Specialists, embryos are, 28
+
+Species, Buffon on the causes or means of transformation, 159, &c.
+
+---- Lamarck on, 267, &c.
+
+---- clusters of, Lamarck on, 288
+
+---- C. Darwin on, 289
+
+Specific characteristics vary more than generic, Lamarck on, 287, 288
+
+---- C. Darwin on, 288
+
+Speech, Lamarck on, 313, 314
+
+Spencer, Herbert, on Lamarck's hypothesis, 330, 331
+
+---- a follower of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, 332
+
+Spent, or extinct purpose, and rudimentary organs, 383
+
+Spontaneous: C. Darwin uses this word in connection with
+  variability, 358
+
+---- variability (or unknown causes), C. Darwin, on what it will
+  account for, or make known, 358
+
+Steam engine, latest development of, not foreseen, though each
+  immediate step in advance was so, 54, 384
+
+---- design lost sight of in the most common patterns, as with
+  a bird's-nest, or the wheel, 55
+
+Step, if each step is purposive, the whole road has been
+  travelled purposively, 52, 384
+
+---- only the few nearest are taken definitely, 44, 384
+
+Sterility of hybrids, Lamarck on, 272
+
+---- C. Darwin on, 273
+
+Stock, Buffon on the, and the diaphragm, 130
+
+Stronger, the, succeed, and the weaker fail, 320, 321
+
+Strongest, the, eat the weaker, 282
+
+Struggle for existence, Buffon on the, 123
+
+---- and hence modification, according to Dr. Erasmus Darwin, mainly
+  conversant about three wants, 226-229, 232
+
+---- comparison between Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck's views on the
+  foregoing, 257
+
+---- Lamarck on the foregoing, 279
+
+---- and survival of the fittest, Lamarck on the, 281, 282
+
+---- Patrick Matthew on, 321
+
+Style, Buffon on, 76, 77
+
+Sudden, the question what is too, to be settled by higgling and
+  haggling, 50
+
+---- modifications, missionaries should avoid trying to effect, 183
+
+Superficial, philosophy of the, 34, 35, 36, 198, 204
+
+Supply and demand, and desire and power, 223, 300
+
+Survival of the fittest, a synonym for natural selection, 9
+
+---- Dr. Erasmus Darwin on the, 227
+
+---- in the struggle for existence, Lamarck on the, 281, 282
+
+---- understood and admitted by Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, and
+  Lamarck, 301
+
+---- subsequent to modification, and therefore not the cause
+  of it, 302, 346
+
+---- Patrick Matthew on, 321
+
+---- this is not a theory, but a fact, 356, 357
+
+Swimming, no shore bird ever set itself to learn, of malice
+  prepense, 48, 51
+
+
+TAIL, the beaver's, has become an incarnate trowel, 8
+
+Teething, the pain an infant feels is the death-cry of many a
+  good cell, 75
+
+Teleological, failure of the early evolutionists to see their
+  position as, 34
+
+Teleology, statement of the question, 1
+
+---- Aristotle denied, Plato upheld, 4
+
+---- the, of Paley and the theologians, 12, &c.
+
+---- internal as much teleology as external, 36
+
+---- _See_ also "Design."
+
+Telescope, Lord Rosse's, and dew-drop, 44, 47
+
+Tempering, the felicitous, of two great contradictory principles, 35
+
+Tendon, a slit in one, to let another pass through, 20
+
+Terminology of botany harder than botany, 108
+
+---- Buffon on, 140, 141
+
+Test, Buffon's, as to the name an object is to bear, 115
+
+---- of perception and sensation, Buffon's, 127
+
+Theological writer, few passages in any, displease me more, &c., 368
+
+Theory, the survival of the fittest is a fact, not a theory, 356, 357
+
+Theories, true, Fontenelle on, 22, 23
+
+---- to be ordered out of court if troublesome, 35
+
+This: "I can no more believe in this," &c., 359
+
+---- "it is impossible to attribute to this cause," 358
+
+Thomas, St., Aquinas, Papal encyclical on, 402, 403
+
+Thomson, Sir W., natural selection and design, 10
+
+Thought is expressed in organ, 339, 341
+
+Time, Buffon on, 103
+
+---- Lamarck on, 241
+
+Tobacco-pipe, a rudimentary organ on a, 38
+
+Toes, a man who plays the violin with his, 50
+
+Tools, organs are living tools, 2
+
+---- the manufacture of, and that of organs, two species of the
+  same genus, 39
+
+Touch, all senses modifications of the sense of touch, 47
+
+Transformation of species, Buffon on the causes or means of, 159
+
+Translation of the "Loves of the Plants" into French, 63, 258, 259
+
+Translation of the "Zoonomia" into German, 71
+
+---- of Dr. E. Darwin's other works, 195
+
+Trapa Natans, Erasmus Darwin's note on, 260
+
+Treviranus alluded to, 72
+
+Tree, life seen as a tree, by Lamarck, 269
+
+---- by C. Darwin, 270
+
+---- nature compared to a, by Buffon, 171
+
+Trees, the blind man who saw men as trees walking, 137
+
+Trowel, the beaver has an incarnate trowel, 8
+
+True, vitally, 227
+
+---- all very, as far as it goes (that Nature is the most
+  important means of modification), 369
+
+Truism, the survival of the fittest, a, 351
+
+Tutbury bull running, 187
+
+Tyndall, Professor, a rhapsody about C. Darwin, 41
+
+---- calls evolution C. Darwin's theory, 360, 361
+
+
+UNCLES and aunts do not beget their nephews and nieces, 367, 376
+
+Unconscious, our acquired habits come to be done as unconsciously
+  as though instinctive, on repetition, 56
+
+---- difference between my view of the, and Von Hartmann's, 58
+
+Unconsciousness, the, with which habitual actions come to be
+  performed, 37, 38, 39, 56-58, 67, 203, 332, 381
+
+Understanding, the peace of mind that passeth, 35
+
+Unity of the individual, Buffon on the, 127, 128. (_See_ "Oneness")
+
+"Unknown causes," according to Mr. Darwin, can do so much, but
+  not so much more, 359
+
+---- their identity with spontaneous variability, 359
+
+---- heredity only another name for, unless the "Life and Habit"
+  theory be adopted, 384
+
+Upright position in man and certain apes, and children, Lamarck
+  on, 312
+
+Upside down, the vertebrata are perambulating vegetables planted, 137
+
+Use and organ, 44, 45, 47, 217, 218, 221, 292, 294, 296, 299, 301,
+  302, 304, 305, 307-309, 311, 323
+
+
+VACUUM, an omniscient and omnipotent, 28
+
+Vague, efforts and desires are vague in the outset, 47, 52, 384
+
+Variation, C. Darwin declares the fact of variation to be the cause
+  of variation, 8, 9, 347, 369
+
+Variations, one factor of modification provides, the other
+  accumulates, 227
+
+---- Lamarck strove to discover the law underlying, 337
+
+---- C. Darwin sees no cause underlying them, 339, 340
+
+---- according to Lamarck, they will tend to appear in definite
+  directions in large numbers of individuals, for long periods
+  together; according to C. Darwin they will not do thus, 341
+
+---- must appear before they can be preserved, 346
+
+---- the cause of variations is the cause of species (Professor
+  Mivart on this), 370
+
+Vary, man cannot vary his practices much more than animals can, 55
+
+"Vestiges of Creation," the, 65
+
+---- C. Darwin on the, 65
+
+---- the author of, on Lamarck, 247
+
+---- Darwin's treatment of, 247, 248
+
+Virtue has ever erred on the side of excess than on that of
+  asceticism, 35
+
+Violin, a man who plays the, with his toes, 50
+
+Vitally true, 227
+
+Volition. (_See_ "Will")
+
+Voltaire, Buffon would not play the part of, 81
+
+
+WALLACE, A. R., his review of Professor Haeckel's "Evolution
+  of Man," 382-384
+
+Want and power, interaction of, 44, 45, 47, 48, 217, 218,
+  221, 300, 323
+
+Wasp, cutting a fly in half, Dr. Erasmus Darwin on, 205
+
+Watch, Paley's argument from the, 13
+
+Weaker, the strongest eat the, 282
+
+Wealth, the normal growth of, and evolution, 222
+
+Web-footed, how birds, became, 48, 49, 51
+
+---- development of, birds, Lamarck on, 305
+
+---- Paley on, 305
+
+Wedge, Buffon let in the thin end of the wedge, by saying
+  that changed habits modify form, 105, 106
+
+Whisky, God keep you from--if he can, 176
+
+Will, Patrick Matthew on, as influencing organism, 320-322.
+  (_See_ also "Desire," "Design," "Want," "Wish")
+
+Will-o'-the-wisp, C. Darwin like a, 372
+
+Wish and power, their interaction, 44, 45, 47, 48, 217, 218, 221,
+  300, 323
+
+Wit, brevity may be its soul, but the leaders of science, &c., 315
+
+Worcester, the Marquis of, 54
+
+Words are apt to turn out compendious false analogies, 365
+
+Worms, reasonable creatures, 255
+
+Worth, nothing worth looking at or doing, except at a fair price, 35
+
+Wright, of Derby, his portrait of Mr. Day, 180
+
+
+ZEBRA and horse, Buffon on the, 80, 155, 164
+
+"Zoonomia," German translation of the, 71
+
+---- Paley's "Natural Theology" written at the, 195
+
+---- fuller quotations from the, 214, &c.
+
+---- the, and the "Origin of Species," the different ideas that an
+  average reader would carry away with him from these two works
+  ("Sense of Need" and "Natural Selection"), 363
+
+
+
+
+_The Mayflower Press, Plymouth, England._ William Brendon & Son, Ltd.
+
+
+
+
+
+
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Evolution, Old & New, by Samuel Butler
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Evolution, Old & New
+       Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck,
+              as compared with that of Charles Darwin
+
+Author: Samuel Butler
+
+Release Date: November 9, 2007 [EBook #23427]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EVOLUTION, OLD & NEW ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Stacy Brown, Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i">[Pg i]</a></span></p>
+<h1>Evolution,<br />
+Old &amp; New</h1>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii">[Pg ii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot2 padtop"><p>"The want of a practical acquaintance with Natural History leads the
+author to take an erroneous view of the bearing of his own theories
+on those of Mr. Darwin.&mdash;<i>Review of 'Life and Habit,' by Mr. A. R.
+Wallace, in 'Nature,' March 27, 1879.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Neither lastly would our observer be driven out of his conclusion,
+or from his confidence in its truth, by being told that he knows
+nothing at all about the matter. He knows enough for his argument;
+he knows the utility of the end; he knows the subserviency and
+adaptation of the means to the end. These points being known, his
+ignorance concerning other points, his doubts concerning other
+points, affect not the certainty of his reasoning. The consciousness
+of knowing little need not beget a distrust of that which he does
+know."</p>
+
+<p>Paley's '<i>Natural Theology</i>,' chap. i.</p></div>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[Pg iii]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<h2>Evolution, Old &amp; New</h2>
+
+<p class="subhead2a">Or the Theories of Buffon, Dr.
+Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck,<br />
+as compared with that of
+Charles Darwin</p>
+
+<p class="subhead3"><i>by</i></p>
+
+<p class="subhead1">Samuel Butler</p>
+
+
+<p class="subhead1 padtop">New York<br />
+E. P. Dutton &amp; Company<br />
+681 Fifth Avenue</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[Pg iv]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<p class="subhead3" style="font-weight: normal;"><i>Made and printed in<br />
+Great Britain</i></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p class="subhead1"><a name="NOTE" id="NOTE"></a>NOTE</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot2"><p>The demand for a new edition of "Evolution, Old and New," gives me
+an opportunity of publishing Butler's latest revision of his work.
+The second edition of "Evolution, Old and New," which was published
+in 1882 and re-issued with a new title-page in 1890, was merely a
+re-issue of the first edition with a new preface, an appendix, and
+an index. At a later date, though I cannot say precisely when,
+Butler revised the text of the book in view of a future edition. The
+corrections that he made are mainly verbal and do not, I think,
+affect the argument to any considerable extent. Butler, however,
+attached sufficient importance to them to incur the expense of
+having the stereos of more than fifty pages cancelled and new
+stereos substituted. I have also added a few entries to the index,
+which are taken from a copy of the book, now in my possession, in
+which Butler made a few manuscript notes.</p>
+
+<p>R. A. STREATFEILD.</p>
+
+<p><i>October, 1911.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span></p>
+<p><br /></p>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p class="subhead1">AUTHOR'S PREFACE<br />
+TO<br />
+THE SECOND EDITION</p>
+
+
+<p>Since the proof-sheets of the Appendix to this book left my hands,
+finally corrected, and too late for me to be able to recast the first of
+the two chapters that compose it, I hear, with the most profound regret,
+of the death of Mr. Charles Darwin.</p>
+
+<p>It being still possible for me to refer to this event in a preface, I
+hasten to say how much it grates upon me to appear to renew my attack
+upon Mr. Darwin under the present circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>I have insisted in each of my three books on Evolution upon the
+immensity of the service which Mr. Darwin rendered to that
+transcendently important theory. In "Life and Habit," I said: "To the
+end of time, if the question be asked, 'Who taught people to believe in
+Evolution?' the answer must be that it was Mr. Darwin." This is true;
+and it is hard to see what palm of higher praise can be awarded to any
+philosopher.</p>
+
+<p>I have always admitted myself to be under the deepest obligations to Mr.
+Darwin's works; and it was with the greatest reluctance, not to say
+repugnance,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span> that I became one of his opponents. I have partaken of his
+hospitality, and have had too much experience of the charming simplicity
+of his manner not to be among the readiest to at once admire and envy
+it. It is unfortunately true that I believe Mr. Darwin to have behaved
+badly to me; this is too notorious to be denied; but at the same time I
+cannot be blind to the fact that no man can be judge in his own case,
+and that after all Mr. Darwin may have been right, and I wrong.</p>
+
+<p>At the present moment, let me impress this latter alternative upon my
+mind as far as possible, and dwell only upon that side of Mr. Darwin's
+work and character, about which there is no difference of opinion among
+either his admirers or his opponents.</p>
+
+<p><i>April 21, 1882.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p class="subhead1"><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></a>PREFACE.</p>
+
+
+<p>Contrary to the advice of my friends, who caution me to avoid all
+appearance of singularity, I venture upon introducing a practice, the
+expediency of which I will submit to the judgment of the reader. It is
+one which has been adopted by musicians for more than a century&mdash;to the
+great convenience of all who are fond of music&mdash;and I observe that
+within the last few years two such distinguished painters as Mr.
+Alma-Tadema and Mr. Hubert Herkomer have taken to it. It is a matter for
+regret that the practice should not have been general at an earlier
+date, not only among painters and musicians, but also among the people
+who write books. It consists in signifying the number of a piece of
+music, picture, or book by the abbreviation "Op." and the number
+whatever it may happen to be.</p>
+
+<p>No work can be judged intelligently unless not only the author's
+relations to his surroundings, but also the relation in which the work
+stands to the life and other works of the author, is understood and
+borne in mind; nor do I know any way of conveying this information at a
+glance, comparable to that which I now borrow from musicians. When we
+see the number against a work of Beethoven, we need ask no further to be
+informed concerning the general character of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span> music. The same holds
+good more or less with all composers. Handel's works were not
+numbered&mdash;not at least his operas and oratorios. Had they been so, the
+significance of the numbers on Susanna and Theodora would have been at
+once apparent, connected as they would have been with the number on
+Jephthah, Handel's next and last work, in which he emphatically
+repudiates the influence which, perhaps in a time of self-distrust, he
+had allowed contemporary German music to exert over him. Many painters
+have dated their works, but still more have neglected doing so, and some
+of these have been not a little misconceived in consequence. As for
+authors, it is unnecessary to go farther back than Lord Beaconsfield,
+Thackeray, Dickens, and Scott, to feel how much obliged we should have
+been to any custom that should have compelled them to number their works
+in the order in which they were written. When we think of Shakespeare,
+any doubt which might remain as to the advantage of the proposed
+innovation is felt to disappear.</p>
+
+<p>My friends, to whom I urged all the above, and more, met me by saying
+that the practice was doubtless a very good one in the abstract, but
+that no one was particularly likely to want to know in what order my
+books had been written. To which I answered that even a bad book which
+introduced so good a custom would not be without value, though the value
+might lie in the custom, and not in the book itself; whereon, seeing
+that I was obstinate, they left me, and interpreting their doing so into
+at any rate a modified approbation of my design, I have carried it into
+practice.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The edition of the 'Philosophie Zoologique' referred to in the following
+volume, is that edited by M. Chas. Martins, Paris, Librairie F. Savy,
+24, Rue de Hautefeuille, 1873.</p>
+
+<p>The edition of the 'Origin of Species' is that of 1876, unless another
+edition be especially named.</p>
+
+<p>The italics throughout the book are generally mine, except in the
+quotations from Miss Seward, where they are all her own.</p>
+
+<p>I am anxious also to take the present opportunity of acknowledging the
+obligations I am under to my friend Mr. H. F. Jones, and to other
+friends (who will not allow me to mention their names, lest more errors
+should be discovered than they or I yet know of), for the invaluable
+assistance they have given me while this work was going through the
+press. If I am able to let it go before the public with any comfort or
+peace of mind, I owe it entirely to the carefulness of their
+supervision.</p>
+
+<p>I am also greatly indebted to Mr. Garnett, of the British Museum, for
+having called my attention to many works and passages of which otherwise
+I should have known nothing.</p>
+
+<p><i>March 31, 1879.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[Pg xii]</a></span></p>
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[Pg xiii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p class="subhead1"><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS.</p>
+
+
+<table style="width: 60%;" summary="contents chapter i-v" cellpadding="6"><tbody>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="tt">
+CHAPTER I.
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tl"><span class="smcap">Statement of the Question&mdash;Current Opinion adverse to
+Teleology</span></td>                                                       <td class="tr"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="tt">
+CHAPTER II.
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tl"><span class="smcap">The Teleology of Paley and the Theologians</span></td>                <td class="tr"><a href="#Page_12">12</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="tt">
+CHAPTER III.
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tl"><span class="smcap">Impotence of Paley's Conclusion&mdash;The Teleology of the
+Evolutionist</span></td>                                                  <td class="tr"><a href="#Page_24">24</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="tt">
+CHAPTER IV.
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tl"><span class="smcap">Failure of the First Evolutionists to see their Position
+as Teleological</span></td>                                                <td class="tr"><a href="#Page_34">34</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="tt">
+CHAPTER V.
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tl"><span class="smcap">The Teleological Evolution of Organism&mdash;The Philosophy
+of the Unconscious</span></td>                                            <td class="tr"><a href="#Page_43">43</a></td></tr>
+</tbody></table>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv">[Pg xiv]</a></span></p>
+<table style="width: 60%;" summary="contents chapter vi-xiii"  cellpadding="6"><tbody>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="tt">
+CHAPTER VI.
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tl"><span class="smcap">Scheme of the Remainder of the Work&mdash;Historical Sketch
+of the Theory of Evolution</span></td>                                   <td class="tr"><a href="#Page_60">60</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="tt">
+CHAPTER VII.
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tl"><span class="smcap">Pre-Buffonian Evolution, and some German Writers</span></td>          <td class="tr"><a href="#Page_68">68</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="tt">
+CHAPTER VIII.
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tl"><span class="smcap">Buffon&mdash;Memoir</span></td>                                            <td class="tr"><a href="#Page_74">74</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="tt">
+CHAPTER IX.
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tl"><span class="smcap">Buffon's Method&mdash;The Ironical Character of his Work</span></td>       <td class="tr"><a href="#Page_78">78</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="tt">
+CHAPTER X.
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tl"><span class="smcap">Supposed Fluctuations of Opinion&mdash;Causes or Means of
+the Transformation of Species</span></td>                                 <td class="tr"><a href="#Page_97">97</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="tt">
+CHAPTER XI.
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tl"><span class="smcap">Buffon&mdash;Puller Quotations</span></td>                                <td class="tr"><a href="#Page_107">107</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="tt">
+CHAPTER XII.
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tl"><span class="smcap">Sketch of Dr. Erasmus Darwin's Life</span></td>                      <td class="tr"><a href="#Page_173">173</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="tt">
+CHAPTER XIII.
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tl"><span class="smcap">Philosophy of Dr. Erasmus Darwin</span></td>                          <td class="tr"><a href="#Page_195">195</a></td></tr>
+</tbody></table>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv">[Pg xv]</a></span></p>
+<table style="width: 60%;" summary="contents chapter xiv-xx" cellpadding="6"><tbody>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="tt">
+CHAPTER XIV.
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tl"><span class="smcap">Fuller Quotations from the 'Zoonomia'</span></td>                    <td class="tr"><a href="#Page_214">214</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="tt">
+CHAPTER XV.
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tl"><span class="smcap">Memoir of Lamarck</span></td>                                        <td class="tr"><a href="#Page_235">235</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="tt">
+CHAPTER XVI.
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tl"><span class="smcap">General Misconception concerning Lamarck&mdash;His Philosophical
+Position</span></td>                                                     <td class="tr"><a href="#Page_244">244</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="tt">
+CHAPTER XVII.
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tl"><span class="smcap">Summary of the 'Philosophie Zoologique'</span></td>                 <td class="tr"><a href="#Page_261">261</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="tt">
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tl"><span class="smcap">Mr. Patrick Matthew, MM. &Eacute;tienne and Isidore Geoffroy
+St. Hilaire, and Mr. Herbert Spencer</span></td>                         <td class="tr"><a href="#Page_315">315</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="tt">
+CHAPTER XIX.
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tl"><span class="smcap">Main Points of Agreement and of Difference between the
+Old and New Theories of Evolution</span></td>                            <td class="tr"><a href="#Page_335">335</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="tt">
+CHAPTER XX.
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tl"><span class="smcap">Natural Selection considered as a Means of Modification&mdash;The
+Confusion which this Expression occasions</span></td>                    <td class="tr"><a href="#Page_345">345</a></td></tr>
+</tbody></table>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xvi" id="Page_xvi">[Pg xvi]</a></span></p>
+<table style="width: 60%;" summary="contents chapter xxi-xxii appendix index" cellpadding="6"><tbody>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="tt">
+CHAPTER XXI.
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tl"><span class="smcap">Mr. Darwin's Defence of the Expression, Natural Selection&mdash;Professor
+Mivart and Natural Selection</span></td>                                 <td class="tr"><a href="#Page_362">362</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="tt">
+CHAPTER XXII.
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tl"><span class="smcap">The Case of the Madeira Beetles as illustrating the
+Difference between the Evolution of Lamarck and
+of Mr. Charles Darwin&mdash;Conclusion</span></td>                            <td class="tr"><a href="#Page_373">373</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tl">
+APPENDIX</td>                                                          <td class="tr"><a href="#Page_385">385</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tl">
+INDEX</td>                                                             <td class="tr"><a href="#Page_409">409</a></td>
+</tr>
+</tbody></table>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<h2>EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW</h2>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<p class="subhead1"><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.</p>
+
+<p class="subhead3">STATEMENT OF THE QUESTION. CURRENT OPINION ADVERSE TO TELEOLOGY.</p>
+
+
+<p>Of all the questions now engaging the attention of those whose destiny
+has commanded them to take more or less exercise of mind, I know of none
+more interesting than that which deals with what is called
+teleology&mdash;that is to say, with design or purpose, as evidenced by the
+different parts of animals and plants.</p>
+
+<p>The question may be briefly stated thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Can we or can we not see signs in the structure of animals and plants,
+of something which carries with it the idea of contrivance so strongly
+that it is impossible for us to think of the structure, without at the
+same time thinking of contrivance, or design, in connection with it?</p>
+
+<p>It is my object in the present work to answer this question in the
+affirmative, and to lead my reader to agree with me, perhaps mainly, by
+following the history<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> of that opinion which is now supposed to be fatal
+to a purposive view of animal and vegetable organs. I refer to the
+theory of evolution or descent with modification.</p>
+
+<p>Let me state the question more at large.</p>
+
+<p>When we see organs, or living tools&mdash;for there is no well-developed
+organ of any living being which is not used by its possessor as an
+instrument or tool for the effecting of some purpose which he considers
+or has considered for his advantage&mdash;when we see living tools which are
+as admirably fitted for the work required of them, as is the carpenter's
+plane for planing, or the blacksmith's hammer and anvil for the
+hammering of iron, or the tailor's needle for sewing, what conclusion
+shall we adopt concerning them?</p>
+
+<p>Shall we hold that they must have been designed or contrived, not
+perhaps by mental processes indistinguishable from those by which the
+carpenter's saw or the watch has been designed, but still by processes
+so closely resembling these that no word can be found to express the
+facts of the case so nearly as the word "design"? That is to say, shall
+we imagine that they were arrived at by a living mind as the result of
+scheming and contriving, and thinking (not without occasional mistakes)
+which of the courses open to it seemed best fitted for the occasion, or
+are we to regard the apparent connection between such an organ, we will
+say, as the eye, and the sight which is affected by it, as in no way due
+to the design or plan of a living intelligent being, but as caused
+simply by the accumulation, one upon another, of an almost infinite
+series of small pieces of good fortune?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In other words, shall we see something for which, as Professor Mivart
+has well said, "to us the word 'mind' is the least inadequate and
+misleading symbol," as having given to the eagle an eyesight which can
+pierce the sun, but which, in the night is powerless; while to the owl
+it has given eyes which shun even the full moon, but find a soft
+brilliancy in darkness? Or shall we deny that there has been any purpose
+or design in the fashioning of these different kinds of eyes, and see
+nothing to make us believe that any living being made the eagle's eye
+out of something which was not an eye nor anything like one, or that
+this living being implanted this particular eye of all others in the
+eagle's head, as being most in accordance with the habits of the
+creature, and as therefore most likely to enable it to live contentedly
+and leave plenitude of offspring? And shall we then go on to maintain
+that the eagle's eye was formed little by little by a series of
+accidental variations, each one of which was thrown for, as it were,
+with dice?</p>
+
+<p>We shall most of us feel that there must have been a little cheating
+somewhere with these accidental variations before the eagle could have
+become so great a winner.</p>
+
+<p>I believe I have now stated the question at issue so plainly that there
+can be no mistake about its nature, I will therefore proceed to show as
+briefly as possible what have been the positions taken in regard to it
+by our forefathers, by the leaders of opinion now living, and what I
+believe will be the next conclusion that will be adopted for any length
+of time by any considerable number of people.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In the times of the ancients the preponderance of opinion was in favour
+of teleology, though impugners were not wanting. Aristotle<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> leant
+towards a denial of purpose, while Plato<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> was a firm believer in
+design. From the days of Plato to our own times, there have been but few
+objectors to the teleological or purposive view of nature. If an animal
+had an eye, that eye was regarded as something which had been designed
+in order to enable its owner to see after such fashion as should be most
+to its advantage.</p>
+
+<p>This, however, is now no longer the prevailing opinion either in this
+country or in Germany.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Haeckel holds a high place among the leaders of German
+philosophy at the present day. He declares a belief in evolution and in
+purposiveness to be incompatible, and denies purpose in language which
+holds out little prospect of a compromise.</p>
+
+<p>"As soon, in fact," he writes, "as we acknowledge the exclusive activity
+of the physico-chemical causes in living (organic) bodies as well as in
+so-called inanimate (inorganic) nature,"&mdash;and this is what Professor
+Haeckel holds we are bound to do if we accept the theory of descent with
+modification&mdash;"we concede exclusive dominion to that view of the
+universe, which we may designate as <i>mechanical</i>, and which is opposed
+to the teleological conception. If we compare all the ideas of the
+universe prevalent among different nations at different times, we can
+divide them all into two<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> sharply contrasted groups&mdash;a <i>causal</i> or
+<i>mechanical</i>, and a <i>teleological</i> or <i>vitalistic</i>. The latter has
+prevailed generally in biology until now, and accordingly the animal and
+vegetable kingdoms have been considered as the products of a creative
+power, acting for a definite purpose. In the contemplation of every
+organism, the unavoidable conviction seemed to press itself upon us,
+that such a wonderful machine, so complicated an apparatus for motion as
+exists in the organism, could only be produced by a power analogous to,
+but infinitely more powerful than the power of man in the construction
+of his machines."<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p>
+
+<p>A little lower down he continues:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I maintain with regard to</i>" this "<i>much talked of 'purpose in nature'
+that it has no existence but for those persons who observe phenomena in
+plants and animals in the most superficial manner</i>. Without going more
+deeply into the matter, we can see at once that the rudimentary organs
+are a formidable obstacle to this theory. And, indeed, anyone who makes
+a really close study of the organization and mode of life of the various
+animals and plants, ... must necessarily come to the conclusion, that
+this 'purposiveness' no more exists than the much talked of
+'beneficence' of the Creator."<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p>
+
+<p>Professor Haeckel justly sees no alternative between, upon the one hand,
+the creation of independent species by a Personal God&mdash;by a "Creator,"
+in fact, who "becomes an organism, who designs a plan, reflects upon and
+varies this plan, and finally forms creatures according<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> to it, as a
+human architect would construct his building,"<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a>&mdash;and the denial of all
+plan or purpose whatever. There can be no question but that he is right
+here. To talk of a "designer" who has no tangible existence, no organism
+with which to think, no bodily mechanism with which to carry his
+purposes into effect; whose design is not design inasmuch as it has to
+contend with no impediments from ignorance or impotence, and who thus
+contrives but by a sort of make-believe in which there is no
+contrivance; who has a familiar name, but nothing beyond a name which
+any human sense has ever been able to perceive&mdash;this is an abuse of
+words&mdash;an attempt to palm off a shadow upon our understandings as though
+it were a substance. It is plain therefore that there must either be a
+designer who "becomes an organism, designs a plan, &amp;c.," or that there
+can be no designer at all and hence no design.</p>
+
+<p>We have seen which of these alternatives Professor Haeckel has adopted.
+He holds that those who accept evolution are bound to reject all
+"purposiveness." And here, as I have intimated, I differ from him, for
+reasons which will appear presently. I believe in an organic and
+tangible designer of every complex structure, for so long a time past,
+as that reasonable people will be incurious about all that occurred at
+any earlier time.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Clifford, again, is a fair representative of opinions which
+are finding favour with the majority of our own thinkers. He writes:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"There are here some words, however, which require careful definition.
+And first the word purpose. A<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> thing serves a purpose when it is adapted
+for some end; thus a corkscrew is adapted to the end of extracting corks
+from bottles, and our lungs are adapted to the end of respiration. We
+may say that the extraction of corks is the purpose of the corkscrew,
+and that respiration is the purpose of the lungs, but here we shall have
+used the word in two different senses. A man made the corkscrew with a
+purpose in his mind, and he knew and intended that it should be used for
+pulling out corks. <i>But nobody made our lungs with a purpose in his mind
+and intended that they should be used for breathing.</i> The respiratory
+apparatus was adapted to its purpose by natural selection, namely, by
+the gradual preservation of better and better adaptations, and by the
+killing-off of the worse and imperfect adaptations."<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p>
+
+<p>No denial of anything like design could be more explicit. For Professor
+Clifford is well aware that the very essence of the "Natural Selection"
+theory, is that the variations shall have been mainly accidental and
+without design of any sort, but that the adaptations of structure to
+need shall have come about by the accumulation, through natural
+selection, of any variation that <i>happened</i> to be favourable.</p>
+
+<p>It will be my business on a later page not only to show that the lungs
+are as purposive as the corkscrew, but furthermore that if drawing corks
+had been a matter of as much importance to us as breathing is, the list
+of our organs would have been found to comprise one corkscrew at the
+least, and possibly two, twenty, or ten thousand; even as we see that
+the trowel without which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> the beaver cannot plaster its habitation in
+such fashion as alone satisfies it, is incorporate into the beaver's own
+body by way of a tail, the like of which is to be found in no other
+animal.</p>
+
+<p>To take a name which carries with it a far greater authority, that of
+Mr. Charles Darwin. He writes:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"It is scarcely possible to avoid comparing the eye with a telescope. We
+know that this instrument has been perfected by the long-continued
+efforts of the highest human intellects; and we naturally infer that the
+eye has been formed by a somewhat analogous process. But may not this
+inference be presumptuous? Have we any right to declare that the Creator
+works by intellectual powers like those of man?"<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></p>
+
+<p>Here purposiveness is not indeed denied point-blank, but the intention
+of the author is unmistakable, it is to refer the wonderful result to
+the gradual accumulation of small accidental improvements which were not
+due as a rule, if at all, to anything "analogous" to design.</p>
+
+<p>"Variation," he says, "will cause the slight alterations;" that is to
+say, the slight successive variations whose accumulation results in such
+a marvellous structure as the eye, are caused by&mdash;variation; or in other
+words, they are indefinite, due to nothing that we can lay our hands
+upon, and therefore certainly not due to design. "Generation," continues
+Mr. Darwin, "will multiply them almost infinitely, and natural selection
+will pick out with unerring skill each improvement. Let this process go
+on for millions of years, and during each year on millions of
+individuals of many kinds; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> may we not believe that a living optical
+instrument might be thus formed as superior to one of glass, as the
+works of the Creator are to those of man?"<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></p>
+
+<p>The reader will observe that the only skill&mdash;and this involves
+design&mdash;supposed by Mr. Darwin to be exercised in the foregoing process,
+is the "unerring skill" of natural selection. Natural selection,
+however, is, as he himself tells us, a synonym for the survival of the
+fittest, which last he declares to be the "more accurate" expression,
+and to be "sometimes" equally convenient.<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> It is clear then that he
+only speaks metaphorically when he here assigns "unerring skill" to the
+fact that the fittest individuals commonly live longest and transmit
+most offspring, and that he sees no evidence of design in the numerous
+slight successive "alterations"&mdash;or variations&mdash;which are "caused by
+variation."</p>
+
+<p>It were easy to multiply quotations which should prove that the denial
+of "purposiveness" is commonly conceived to be the inevitable
+accompaniment of a belief in evolution. I will, however, content myself
+with but one more&mdash;from Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire.</p>
+
+<p>"Whoever," says this author, "holds the doctrine of final causes, will,
+if he is consistent, hold also that of the immutability of species; and
+again, the opponent of the one doctrine will oppose the other also."<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a></p>
+
+<p>Nothing can be plainer; I believe, however, that even without quotation
+the reader would have recognized<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> the accuracy of my contention that a
+belief in the purposiveness or design of animal and vegetable organs is
+commonly held to be incompatible with the belief that they have all been
+evolved from one, or at any rate, from not many original, and low, forms
+of life. Generally, however, as this incompatibility is accepted, it is
+not unchallenged. From time to time a voice is uplifted in protest,
+whose tones cannot be disregarded.</p>
+
+<p>"I have always felt," says Sir William Thomson, in his address to the
+British Association, 1871, "that this hypothesis" (natural selection)
+"does not contain the true theory of evolution, if indeed evolution
+there has been, in biology. Sir John Herschel, in expressing a
+favourable judgment on the hypothesis of zoological evolution (with
+however some reservation in respect to the origin of man), objected to
+the doctrine of natural selection on the ground that it was too like the
+Laputan method of making books, and that it did not sufficiently take
+into account a continually guiding and controlling intelligence. This
+seems to me a most valuable and instructive criticism. <i>I feel
+profoundly convinced that the argument of design has been greatly too
+much lost sight of in recent zoological speculations.</i> Reaction against
+the frivolities of teleology such as are to be found in the notes of the
+learned commentators on Paley's 'Natural Theology,' has, I believe, had
+a temporary effect in turning attention from the solid and irrefragable
+argument so well put forward in that excellent old book. But
+overpoweringly strong proofs of intelligent and benevolent design lie
+all around us,"<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> &amp;c.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>Sir William Thomson goes on to infer that all
+living beings depend on an ever-acting Creator and Ruler&mdash;meaning, I am
+afraid, a Creator who is not an organism. Here I cannot follow him, but
+while gladly accepting his testimony to the omnipresence of intelligent
+design in almost every structure, whether of animal or plant, I shall
+content myself with observing the manner in which plants and animals act
+and with the consequences that are legitimately deducible from their
+action.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> See note to Mr. Darwin, Historical Sketch, &amp;c., 'Origin of
+Species, p. xiii. ed. 1876, and Arist. 'Physic&aelig; Auscultationes,' lib.
+ii. cap. viii. s. 2.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> See Ph&aelig;do and Tim&aelig;us.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> 'History of Creation,' vol. i. p. 18 (H. S. King and Co.,
+1876).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Ibid. p. 19.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> 'History of Creation,' vol. i. p. 73 (H. S. King and Co.,
+1876).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> 'Fortnightly Review,' new series, vol. xviii. p. 795.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> 'Origin of Species,' p. 146, ed. 1876.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> 'Origin of Species,' p. 146, ed. 1876.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> Page 49.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> 'Vie et Doctrine scientifique d'&Eacute;tienne Geoffroy St.
+Hilaire,' by Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire. Paris, 1847, p. 344.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> Address to the British Association, 1871.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span></p>
+<p class="subhead1"><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</p>
+
+<p class="subhead3">THE TELEOLOGY OF PALEY AND THE THEOLOGIANS.</p>
+
+
+<p>Let us turn for a while to Paley, to whom Sir W. Thomson has referred
+us. His work should be so well known that an apology is almost due for
+quoting it, yet I think it likely that at least nine out of ten of my
+readers will (like myself till reminded of it by Sir W. Thomson's
+address) have forgotten its existence.</p>
+
+<p>"In crossing a heath," says Paley, "suppose I pitched my foot against a
+stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly
+answer that for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there for
+ever; nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this
+answer. But suppose I had found a <i>watch</i> upon the ground, and it should
+be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly
+think of the answer I had before given&mdash;that for anything I knew the
+watch might have been always there. Yet, why should not this answer
+serve for the watch as well as for the stone? Why is it not as
+admissible in the second case as in the first? For this reason, and for
+no other, viz. that when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive (what
+we could not discover in the stone) that its several parts are framed
+and put together<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> for a purpose, e. g. that they are so formed and
+adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point
+out the hour of the day: that if the different parts had been
+differently shaped from what they are, of a different size from what
+they are, or placed after any other manner, or in any other order, than
+that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been
+carried on in the machine, or none that would have answered the use
+which is now served by it. To reckon up a few of the plainest of these
+parts, and of their offices all tending to one result: we see a
+cylindrical box containing a coiled elastic spring, which, by its
+endeavours to relax itself, turns round the box. We next observe a
+flexible chain (artificially wrought for the sake of flexure)
+communicating the action of the spring from the box to the fusee. We
+then find a series of wheels the teeth of which catch in, and apply to
+each other, conducting the motion from the fusee to the balance, and
+from the balance to the pointer; and at the same time by the size and
+shape of those wheels so regulating the motion as to terminate in
+causing an index, by an equable and measured progression, to pass over a
+given space in a given time. We take notice that the wheels are made of
+brass in order to keep them from rust; the springs of steel, no other
+metal being so elastic; that over the face of the watch there is placed
+a glass, a material employed on no other part of the work, but in the
+room of which if there had been any other than a transparent substance,
+the hour could not have been observed without opening the case. This
+mechanism being observed, ... the inference, we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> think, is inevitable
+that the watch must have had a maker; that there must have existed, at
+<i>some time, and at some place or other, an artificer</i> or artificers who
+formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who
+comprehended its construction and designed its use."<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a></p>
+
+<p class="subhead2a">. . . . . . . . . . .</p>
+
+<p>"That an animal is a machine, is a proposition neither correctly true
+nor wholly false.... I contend that there is a mechanism in animals;
+that this mechanism is as properly such, as it is in machines made by
+art; that this mechanism is intelligible and certain; that it is not the
+less so because it often begins and terminates with something which is
+not mechanical; that wherever it is intelligible and certain, it
+demonstrates intention and contrivance, as well in the works of nature
+as in those of art; and that it is the best demonstration which either
+can afford."<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p>
+
+<p>There is only one legitimate inference deducible from these premises if
+they are admitted as sound, namely, that there must have existed "<i>at
+some time, and in some place, an artificer</i>" who formed the animal
+mechanism after much the same mental processes of observation,
+endeavour, successful contrivance, and after a not wholly unlike
+succession of bodily actions, as those with which a watchmaker has made
+a watch. Otherwise the conclusion is impotent, and the whole argument
+becomes a mere juggle of words.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, supposing or admitting," continues Paley, "that we know nothing of
+the proper internal constitution of a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> gland, or of the mode of its
+acting upon the blood; then our situation is precisely like that of an
+unmechanical looker-on who stands by a stocking loom, a corn mill, a
+carding machine, or a threshing machine, at work, the fabric and
+mechanism of which, as well as all that passes within, is hidden from
+his sight by the outside case; or if seen, would be too complicated for
+his uninformed, uninstructed understanding to comprehend. And what is
+that situation? This spectator, ignorant as he is, sees at one end a
+material enter the machine, as unground grain the mill, raw cotton the
+carding machine, sheaves of unthreshed corn the threshing machine, and
+when he casts his eye to the other end of the apparatus, he sees the
+material issuing from it in a new state and what is more, a state
+manifestly adapted for its future uses: the grain in meal fit for the
+making of bread, the wool in rovings fit for the spinning into threads,
+the sheaf in corn fit for the mill. Is it necessary that this man, in
+order to be convinced that design, that intention, that contrivance has
+been employed about the machine, should be allowed to pull it to pieces,
+should be enabled to examine the parts separately, explore their action
+upon one another, or their operation, whether simultaneous or
+successive, upon the material which is presented to them? He may long to
+do this to satisfy his curiosity; he may desire to do it to improve his
+theoretic knowledge; ... but for the purpose of ascertaining the
+existence of counsel and design in the formation of the machine, he
+wants no such intromission or privity. The effect upon the material, the
+change produced in it, the utility of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> change for future
+applications, abundantly testify, be the concealed part of the machine,
+or of its construction, what it will, <i>the hand and agency of a
+contriver</i>."<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a></p>
+
+<p>This is admirably put, but it will apply to the mechanism of animal and
+vegetable bodies only, if it is used to show that they too must have had
+a contriver who has a hand, or something tantamount to one; who does
+act; who, being a contriver, has what all other contrivers must have, if
+they are to be called contrivers&mdash;a body which can suffer more or less
+pain or chagrin if the contrivance is unsuccessful. If this is what
+Paley means, his argument is indeed irrefragable; but if he does not
+intend this, his words are frivolous, as so clear and acute a reasoner
+must have perfectly well known.</p>
+
+<p>Whether Paley's argument will prove a source of lasting strength to
+himself or no, is a point which my readers will decide presently; but I
+am very clear about its usefulness to my own position. I know few
+writers whom I would willingly quote more largely, or from whom I find
+it harder to leave off quoting when I have once begun. A few more
+passages, however, must suffice.</p>
+
+<p>"I challenge any man to produce in the joints and pivots of the most
+complicated or the most flexible machine that ever was contrived, a
+construction <i>more artificial</i>" (here we have it again), "or more
+evidently artificial than the human neck. Two things were to be done.
+The head was to have the power of bending forward and backward as in the
+act of nodding, stooping,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> looking upwards or downwards; and at the same
+time of turning itself round upon the body to a certain extent, the
+quadrant, we will say, or rather perhaps a hundred and twenty degrees of
+a circle. For these two purposes two distinct contrivances are employed.
+First the head rests immediately upon the uppermost part of the
+vertebra, and is united to it by a hinge-joint; upon this joint the head
+plays freely backward and forward as far either way as is necessary or
+as the ligaments allow, which was the first thing required.</p>
+
+<p>"But then the rotatory motion is thus unprovided for; therefore,
+secondly, to make the head capable of this a further mechanism is
+introduced, not between the head and the uppermost bone of the neck,
+where the hinge is, but between that bone and the next underneath it. It
+is a mechanism resembling a tenon and mortise. This second or uppermost
+bone but one has what the anatomists call a process, viz. a projection
+somewhat similar in size and shape to a tooth, which tooth, entering a
+corresponding hollow socket in the bone above it, forms a pivot or axle,
+upon which that upper bone, together with the head which it supports,
+turns freely in a circle, and as far in the circle as the attached
+muscles permit the head to turn. Thus are both motions perfect without
+interfering with each other. When we nod the head we use the
+hinge-joint, which lies between the head and the first bone of the neck.
+When we turn the head round, we use the tenon and mortise, which runs
+between the first bone of the neck and the second. We see the same
+contrivance and the same principle employed in the frame or mounting of
+a telescope. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> is occasionally requisite that the object end of the
+instrument be moved up and down as well as horizontally or equatorially.
+For the vertical motion there is a hinge upon which the telescope plays,
+for the horizontal or equatorial motion, an axis upon which the
+telescope and the hinge turn round together. And this is exactly the
+mechanism which is applied to the action of the head, nor will anyone
+here doubt of the existence of counsel and design, except it be by that
+debility of mind which can trust to its own reasonings in nothing."<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a></p>
+
+<p class="subhead2a">. . . . . . . . . . .</p>
+
+<p>"The patella, or knee-pan, is a curious little bone; in its form and
+office unlike any other bone in the body. It is circular, the size of a
+crown-piece, pretty thick, a little convex on both sides, and covered
+with a smooth cartilage. It lies upon the front of the knee, and the
+powerful tendons by which the leg is brought forward pass through it (or
+rather make it a part of their continuation) from their origin in the
+thigh to their insertion in the tibia. It protects both the tendon and
+the joint from any injury which either might suffer by the rubbing of
+one against the other, or by the pressure of unequal surfaces. It also
+gives to the tendons a very considerable mechanical advantage by
+altering the line of their direction, and by advancing it farther out of
+the centre of motion; and this upon the principles of the resolution of
+force, upon which all machinery is founded. These are its uses. But what
+is most observable in it is that it appears to be supplemental, as it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>
+were, to the frame; added, as it should almost seem, afterwards; not
+quite necessary, but very convenient. It is separate from the other
+bones; that is, it is not connected with any other bones by the common
+mode of union. It is soft, or hardly formed in infancy; and is produced
+by an ossification, of the inception or progress of which no account can
+be given from the structure or exercise of the part."<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is positively painful to me to pass over Paley's description of the
+joints, but I must content myself with a single passage from this
+admirable chapter.</p>
+
+<p>"The joints, or rather the ends of the bones which form them, display
+also in their configuration another use. The nerves, blood-vessels, and
+tendons which are necessary to the life, or for the motion of the limbs,
+must, it is evident in their way from the trunk of the body to the place
+of their destination, travel over the moveable joints; and it is no less
+evident that in this part of their course they will have from sudden
+motions, and from abrupt changes of curvature, to encounter the danger
+of compression, attrition, or laceration. To guard fibres so tender
+against consequences so injurious, their path is in those parts
+protected with peculiar care; and that by a provision in the figure of
+the bones themselves. The nerves which supply the fore arm, especially
+the inferior cubital nerves, are at the elbow conducted by a kind of
+covered way, between the condyle, or rather under the inner
+extuberances, of the bone which composes the upper part of the arm. At
+the knee the extremity of the thigh-bone is divided by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> a sinus or cliff
+into two heads or protuberances; and these heads on the back part stand
+out beyond the cylinder of the bone. Through the hollow which lies
+between the hind parts of these two heads, that is to say, under the
+ham, between the ham strings, and within the concave recess of the bone
+formed by the extuberances on either side; in a word, along a defile
+between rocks pass the great vessels and nerves which go to the leg. Who
+led these vessels by a road so defended and secured? In the joint at the
+shoulder, in the edge of the cup which receives the head of the bone, is
+a notch which is covered at the top with a ligament. Through this hole
+thus guarded the blood-vessels steal to their destination in the arm
+instead of mounting over the edge of the concavity."<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></p>
+
+<p class="subhead2a">. . . . . . . . . . .</p>
+
+<p>"What contrivance can be more mechanical than the following, viz.: a
+slit in one tendon to let another tendon pass through it? This structure
+is found in the tendons which move the toes and fingers. The long
+tendon, as it is called in the foot, which bends the first joint of the
+toe, passes through the short tendon which bends the second joint; which
+course allows to the sinews more liberty and a more commodious action
+than it would otherwise have been capable of exerting. There is nothing,
+I believe, in a silk or cotton mill, in the belts or straps or ropes by
+which the motion is communicated from one part of the machine to another
+that is more artificial, or more evidently so, than this perforation.</p>
+
+<p>"The next circumstance which I shall mention under<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> this head of
+muscular arrangement, is so decidedly a mark of intention, that it
+always appeared to me to supersede in some measure the necessity of
+seeking for any other observation upon the subject; and that
+circumstance is the tendons which pass from the leg to the foot being
+bound down by a ligament at the ankle, the foot is placed at a
+considerable angle with the leg. It is manifest, therefore, that
+flexible strings passing along the interior of the angle, if left to
+themselves, would, when stretched, start from it. The obvious" (and it
+must not be forgotten that the preventive <i>was</i> obvious) "preventive is
+to tie them down. And this is done in fact. Across the instep, or rather
+just above it, the anatomist finds a strong ligament, under which the
+tendons pass to the foot. The effect of the ligament as a bandage can be
+made evident to the senses, for if it be cut the tendons start up. The
+simplicity, yet the clearness of this contrivance, its exact resemblance
+to established resources of art, place it amongst the most indubitable
+manifestations of design with which we are acquainted."</p>
+
+<p>Then follows a passage which is interesting, as being the earliest
+attempt I know of to bring forward an argument against evolution, which
+was, even in Paley's day, called "Darwinism," after Dr. Erasmus Darwin
+its propounder.<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> The argument, I mean, which is drawn from the
+difficulty of accounting for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> incipiency of complex structures. This
+has been used with greater force by the Rev. J. J. Murphy, Professor
+Mivart, and others, against that (as I believe) erroneous view of
+evolution which is now generally received as Darwinism.</p>
+
+<p>"There is also a further use," says Paley, "to be made of this present
+example, and that is as it precisely contradicts the opinion, that the
+parts of animals may have been all formed by what is called appetency,
+i. e. endeavour, perpetuated and imperceptibly working its effect
+through an incalculable series of generations. We have here no
+endeavour, but the reverse of it; a constant resistency and reluctance.
+The endeavour is all the other way. The pressure of the ligament
+constrains the tendons; the tendons react upon the pressure of the
+ligament. It is impossible that the ligament should ever have been
+generated by the exercise of the tendons, or in the course of that
+exercise, forasmuch as the force of the tendon perpendicularly resists
+the fibre which confines it, and is constantly endeavouring not to form
+but to rupture and displace the threads of which the ligament is
+composed."<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a></p>
+
+<p>This must suffice.</p>
+
+<p>"True theories," says M. Flourens, inspired by a passage from
+Fontenelle, which he proceeds to quote, "true theories make themselves,"
+they are not made, but are born and grow; they cannot be stopped from
+insisting upon their vitality by anything short of intellectual
+violence, nor will a little violence only suffice to kill them. "True
+theories," he continues,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> "are but the spontaneous mental coming
+together of facts, which have combined with one another by virtue only
+of their own natural affinity."<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a></p>
+
+<p>When a number of isolated facts, says Fontenelle, take form, group
+themselves together coherently, and present the mind so vividly with an
+idea of their interdependence and mutual bearing upon each other, that
+no matter how violently we tear them asunder they insist on coming
+together again; then, and not till then, have we a theory.</p>
+
+<p>Now I submit that there is hardly one of my readers who can be
+considered as free from bias or prejudice, who will not feel that the
+idea of design&mdash;or perception by an intelligent living being, of ends to
+be obtained and of the means of obtaining them&mdash;and the idea of the
+tendons of the foot and of the ligament which binds them down, come
+together so forcibly, that no matter how strongly Professors Haeckel and
+Clifford and Mr. Darwin may try to separate them, they are no sooner
+pulled asunder than they straightway fly together again of themselves.</p>
+
+<p>I shall argue, therefore, no further upon this head, but shall assume it
+as settled, and shall proceed at once to the consideration that next
+suggests itself.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> 'Natural Theology,' ch. i. &sect; 1.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> Ch. vii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> Ch. vii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> 'Natural Theology.' ch. viii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> 'Natural Theology,' ch. viii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> 'Natural Theology,' ch. viii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> "What!" says Coleridge, in a note on Stillingfleet, to
+which Mr. Garnett, of the British Museum, has kindly called my
+attention, "Did Sir Walter Raleigh believe that a male and female ounce
+(and if so why not two tigers and lions, &amp;c.?) would have produced in
+course of generations a cat, or a cat a lion? This is Darwinising with a
+vengeance."&mdash;See 'Athen&aelig;um,' March 27, 1875, p. 423.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> 'Natural Theology,' ch. ix.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> "La vraie th&eacute;orie n'est que l'encha&icirc;nement naturel des
+faits, qui d&egrave;s qu'ils sont assez nombreux, se touchent, et se lient, les
+uns aux autres par leur seule vertu propre."&mdash;Flourens, 'Buffon, Hist.
+de ses Travaux.' Paris, 1844, p. 82.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span></p>
+<p class="subhead1"><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.</p>
+
+<p class="subhead3">IMPOTENCE OF PALEY'S CONCLUSION. THE TELEOLOGY OF THE EVOLUTIONIST.</p>
+
+
+<p>Though the ideas of design, and of the foot, have come together in our
+minds with sufficient spontaneity, we yet feel that there is a
+difference&mdash;and a wide difference if we could only lay our hands upon
+it&mdash;between the design and manufacture of the ligament and tendons of
+the foot on the one hand, and on the other the design, manufacture, and
+combination of artificial strings, pieces of wood, and bandages, whereby
+a model of the foot might be constructed.</p>
+
+<p>If we conceive of ourselves as looking simultaneously upon a real foot,
+and upon an admirably constructed artificial one, placed by the side of
+it, the idea of design, and design by an intelligent living being with a
+body and soul (without which, as has been already insisted on, the use
+of the word design is delusive), will present itself strongly to our
+minds in connection both with the true foot, and with the model; but we
+find another idea asserting itself with even greater strength, namely,
+that the design of the true foot is far more intricate, and yet is
+carried into execution in far more masterly manner than that of the
+model. We not only feel that there is a wider difference between the
+ability, time,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> and care which have been lavished on the real foot and
+upon the model, than there is between the skill and the time taken to
+produce Westminster Abbey, and that bestowed upon a gingerbread cake
+stuck with sugar plums so as to represent it, but also that these two
+objects must have been manufactured on different principles. We do not
+for a moment doubt that the real foot was designed, but we are so
+astonished at the dexterity of the designer that we are at a loss for
+some time to think who could have designed it, where he can live, in
+what manner he studied, for how long, and by what processes he carried
+out his design, when matured, into actual practice. Until recently it
+was thought that there was no answer to many of these questions, more
+especially to those which bear upon the mode of manufacture. For the
+last hundred years, however, the importance of a study has been
+recognized which does actually reveal to us in no small degree the
+processes by which the human foot is manufactured, so that in the
+endeavour to lay our hands upon the points of difference between the
+kind of design with which the foot itself is designed, and the design of
+the model, we turn naturally to the guidance of those who have made this
+study their specialty; and a very wide difference does this study,
+embryology, at once reveal to us.</p>
+
+<p>Writing of the successive changes through which each embryo is forced to
+pass, the late Mr. G. H. Lewes says that "none of these phases have any
+adaptation to the future state of the animal, but are in positive
+contradiction to it or are simply purposeless; whereas<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> all show stamped
+on them the unmistakable characters of <i>ancestral</i> adaptation, and the
+progressions of organic evolution. What does the fact imply? There is
+not a single known example of a complex organism which is not developed
+out of simpler forms. Before it can attain the complex structure which
+distinguishes it, there must be an evolution of forms similar to those
+which distinguish the structure of organisms lower in the series. On the
+hypothesis of a plan which prearranged the organic world, nothing could
+be more unworthy of a supreme intelligence than this inability to
+construct an organism at once, without making several previous tentative
+efforts, undoing to-day what was so carefully done yesterday, and
+<i>repeating for centuries the same tentatives in the same succession</i>. Do
+not let us blink this consideration. There is a traditional phrase much
+in vogue among the anthropomorphists, which arose naturally enough from
+a tendency to take human methods as an explanation of the Divine&mdash;a
+phrase which becomes a sort of argument&mdash;'The Great Architect.' But if
+we are to admit the human point of view, a glance at the facts of
+embryology must produce very uncomfortable reflections. For what should
+we say to an architect who was unable, or being able was obstinately
+unwilling, to erect a palace except by first using his materials in the
+shape of a hut, then pulling them down and rebuilding them as a cottage,
+then adding story to story and room to room, <i>not</i> with any reference to
+the ultimate purposes of the palace, but wholly with reference to the
+way in which houses were constructed in ancient times? What should we
+say to the architect<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> who could not form a museum out of bricks and
+mortar, but was forced to begin as if going to construct a mansion, and
+after proceeding some way in this direction, altered his plan into a
+palace, and that again into a museum? Yet this is the sort of succession
+on which organisms are constructed. The fact has long been familiar; how
+has it been reconciled with infinite wisdom? Let the following passage
+answer for a thousand:&mdash;'The embryo is nothing like the miniature of the
+adult. For a long while the body in its entirety and in its details,
+presents the strangest of spectacles. Day by day and hour by hour, the
+aspect of the scene changes, and this instability is exhibited by the
+most essential parts no less than by the accessory parts. One would say
+that nature feels her way, and only reaches the goal after many times
+missing the path' (on dirait que la nature t&acirc;tonne et ne conduit son
+&oelig;uvre &agrave; bon fin, qu'apr&egrave;s s'&ecirc;tre souvent tromp&eacute;e)."<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a></p>
+
+<p>The above passage does not, I think, affect the evidence for design
+which we adduced in the preceding chapter. However strange the process
+of manufacture may appear, when the work comes to be turned out the
+design is too manifest to be doubted.</p>
+
+<p>If the reader were to come upon some lawyer's deed which dealt with
+matters of such unspeakable intricacy, that it baffled his imagination
+to conceive how it could ever have been drafted, and if in spite of this
+he were to find the intricacy of the provisions to be made, exceeded
+only by the ease and simplicity with which the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> deed providing for them
+was found to work in practice; and after this, if he were to discover
+that the deed, by whomsoever drawn, had nevertheless been drafted upon
+principles which at first seemed very foreign to any according to which
+he was in the habit of drafting deeds himself, as for example, that the
+draftsman had begun to draft a will as a marriage settlement, and so
+forth&mdash;yet an observer would not, I take it, do either of two things. He
+would not in the face of the result deny the design, making himself
+judge rather of the method of procedure than of the achievement. Nor yet
+after insisting in the manner of Paley, on the wonderful proofs of
+intention and on the exquisite provisions which were to be found in
+every syllable&mdash;thus leading us up to the highest pitch of
+expectation&mdash;would he present us with such an impotent conclusion as
+that the designer, though a living person and a true designer, was yet
+immaterial and intangible, a something, in fact, which proves to be a
+nothing: an omniscient and omnipotent vacuum.</p>
+
+<p>Our observer would feel he need not have been at such pains to establish
+his design if this was to be the upshot of his reasoning. He would
+therefore admit the design, and by consequence the designer, but would
+probably ask a little time for reflection before he ventured to say who,
+or what, or where the designer was. Then gaining some insight into the
+manner in which the deed had been drawn, he would conclude that the
+draftsman was a specialist who had had long practice in this particular
+kind of work, but who now worked almost as it might be said
+automatically and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> without consciousness, and found it difficult to
+depart from a habitual method of procedure.</p>
+
+<p>We turn, then, on Paley, and say to him: "We have admitted your design
+and your designer. Where is he? Show him to us. If you cannot show him
+to us as flesh and blood, show him as flesh and sap; show him as a
+living cell; show him as protoplasm. Lower than this we should not
+fairly go; it is not in the bond or <i>nexus</i> of our ideas that something
+utterly inanimate and inorganic should scheme, design, contrive, and
+elaborate structures which can make mistakes: it may elaborate low
+unerring things, like crystals, but it cannot elaborate those which have
+the power to err. Nevertheless, we will commit such abuse with our
+understandings as to waive this point, and we will ask you to show him
+to us as air which, if it cannot be seen, yet can be felt, weighed,
+handled, transferred from place to place, be judged by its effects, and
+so forth; or if this may not be, give us half a grain of hydrogen,
+diffused through all space and invested with some of the minor
+attributes of matter; or if you cannot do this, give us an imponderable
+like electricity, or even the higher mathematics, but give us something
+or throw off the mask and tell us fairly out that it is your paid
+profession to hoodwink us on this matter if you can, and that you are
+but doing your best to earn an honest living."</p>
+
+<p>We may fancy Paley as turning the tables upon us and as saying: "But you
+too have admitted a designer&mdash;you too then must mean a designer with a
+body and soul, who must be somewhere to be found in space, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> who must
+live in time. Where is this your designer? Can you show him more than I
+can? Can you lay your finger on him and demonstrate him so that a child
+shall see him and know him, and find what was heretofore an isolated
+idea concerning him, combine itself instantaneously with the idea of the
+designer, we will say, of the human foot, so that no power on earth
+shall henceforth tear those two ideas asunder? Surely if you cannot do
+this, you too are trifling with words, and abusing your own mind and
+that of your reader. Where, then, is your designer of man? Who made him?
+And where, again, is your designer of beasts and birds, of fishes, and
+of plants?"</p>
+
+<p>Our answer is simple enough; it is that we can and do point to a living
+tangible person with flesh, blood, eyes, nose, ears, organs, senses,
+dimensions, who did of his own cunning after infinite proof of every
+kind of hazard and experiment scheme out, and fashion each organ of the
+human body. This is the person whom we claim as the designer and
+artificer of that body, and he is the one of all others the best fitted
+for the task by his antecedents, and his practical knowledge of the
+requirements of the case&mdash;for he is man himself.</p>
+
+<p>Not man, the individual of any given generation, but man in the entirety
+of his existence from the dawn of life onwards to the present moment. In
+like manner we say that the designer of all organisms is so incorporate
+with the organisms themselves&mdash;so lives, moves, and has its being in
+those organisms, and is so one with them&mdash;they in it, and it in
+them&mdash;that it is more consistent with reason and the common use<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> of
+words to see the designer of each living form in the living form itself,
+than to look for its designer in some other place or person.</p>
+
+<p>Thus we have a third alternative presented to us.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Charles Darwin and his followers deny design, as having any
+appreciable share in the formation of organism at all.</p>
+
+<p>Paley and the theologians insist on design, but upon a designer outside
+the universe and the organism.</p>
+
+<p>The third opinion is that suggested in the first instance, and carried
+out to a very high degree of development by Buffon. It was improved,
+and, indeed, made almost perfect by Dr. Erasmus Darwin, but too much
+neglected by him after he had put it forward. It was borrowed, as I
+think we may say with some confidence, from Dr. Darwin by Lamarck, and
+was followed up by him ardently thenceforth, during the remainder of his
+life, though somewhat less perfectly comprehended by him than it had
+been by Dr. Darwin. It is that the design which has designed organisms,
+has resided within, and been embodied in, the organisms themselves.</p>
+
+<p>With but a very little change in the present signification of words, the
+question resolves itself into this.</p>
+
+<p>Shall we see God henceforth as embodied in all living forms; as dwelling
+in them; as being that power in them whereby they have learnt to fashion
+themselves, each one according to its ideas of its own convenience, and
+to make itself not only a microcosm, or little world, but a little
+unwritten history of the universe from its own point of view into the
+bargain? From everlasting, in time past, only in so far as life has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>
+lasted; invisible, only in so far as the ultimate connection between the
+will to do and the thing which does is invisible; imperishable, only in
+so far as life as a whole is imperishable; omniscient and omnipotent,
+within the limits only of a very long and large experience, but ignorant
+and impotent in respect of all else&mdash;limited in all the above respects,
+yet even so incalculably vaster than anything that we can conceive?</p>
+
+<p>Or shall we see God as we were taught to say we saw him when we were
+children&mdash;as an artificial and violent attempt to combine ideas which
+fly asunder and asunder, no matter how often we try to force them into
+combination?</p>
+
+<p>"The true mainspring of our existence," says Buffon, "lies not in those
+muscles, veins, arteries, and nerves, which have been described with so
+much minuteness, it is to be found in the more hidden forces which are
+not bounden by the gross mechanical laws which we would fain set over
+them. Instead of trying to know these forces by their effects, we have
+endeavoured to uproot even their very idea, so as to banish them utterly
+from philosophy. But they return to us and with renewed vigour; they
+return to us in gravitation, in chemical affinity, in the phenomena of
+electricity, &amp;c. Their existence rests upon the clearest evidence; the
+omnipresence of their action is indisputable, but that action is hidden
+away from our eyes, and is a matter of inference only; we cannot
+actually see them, therefore we find difficulty in admitting that they
+exist; we wish to judge of everything by its exterior; we imagine that
+the exterior is the whole, and deeming<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> that it is not permitted us to
+go beyond it, we neglect all that may enable us to do so."<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a></p>
+
+<p>Or may we not say that the unseen parts of God are those deep buried
+histories, the antiquity and the repeatedness of which go as far beyond
+that of any habit handed down to us from our earliest protoplasmic
+ancestor, as the distance of the remotest star in space transcends our
+distance from the sun?</p>
+
+<p>By vivisection and painful introspection we can rediscover many a long
+buried history&mdash;rekindling that sense of novelty in respect of its
+action, whereby we can alone become aware of it. But there are other
+remoter histories, and more repeated thoughts and actions, before which
+we feel so powerless to reawaken fresh interest concerning them, that we
+give up the attempt in despair, and bow our heads, overpowered by the
+sense of their immensity. Thus our inability to comprehend God is
+coextensive with our difficulty in going back upon the past&mdash;and our
+sense of him is a dim perception of our own vast and now inconceivably
+remote history.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> Quatrefages, 'Metamorphoses de l'Homme et des Animaux,'
+1862, p. 42; G. H. Lewes, 'Physical Basis of Mind,' 1877, p. 83.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> Tom. ii. p. 486, 1794.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span></p>
+<p class="subhead1"><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.</p>
+
+<p class="subhead3">FAILURE OF THE FIRST EVOLUTIONISTS TO SEE THEIR POSITION AS
+TELEOLOGICAL.</p>
+
+
+<p>It follows necessarily from the doctrine of Dr. Erasmus Darwin and
+Lamarck, if not from that of Buffon himself, that the greater number of
+organs are as purposive to the evolutionist as to the theologian, and
+far more intelligibly so. Circumstances, however, prevented these
+writers from acknowledging this fact to the world, and perhaps even to
+themselves. Their <i>crux</i> was, as it still is to so many evolutionists,
+the presence of rudimentary organs, and the processes of embryological
+development. They would not admit that rudimentary and therefore useless
+organs were designed by a Creator to take their place once and for ever
+as part of a scheme whose main idea was, that every animal structure was
+to serve some useful end in connection with its possessor.</p>
+
+<p>This was the doctrine of final causes as then commonly held; in the face
+of rudimentary organs it was absurd. Buffon was above all things else a
+plain matter of fact thinker, who refused to go far beyond the obvious.
+Like all other profound writers, he was, if I may say so, profoundly
+superficial. He felt that the aim of research does not consist in the
+knowing this or that, but in the easing of the desire to know or
+understand<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> more completely&mdash;in the peace of mind which passeth all
+understanding. His was the perfection of a healthy mental organism by
+which over effort is felt instinctively to be as vicious and
+contemptible as indolence. He knew this too well to know the grounds of
+his knowledge, but we smaller people who know it less completely, can
+see that such felicitous instinctive tempering together of the two great
+contradictory principles, love of effort and love of ease, has underlain
+every step of all healthy growth through all conceivable time. Nothing
+is worth looking at which is seen either too obviously or with too much
+difficulty. Nothing is worth doing or well done which is not done fairly
+easily, and some little deficiency of effort is more pardonable than any
+very perceptible excess; for virtue has ever erred rather on the side of
+self-indulgence than of asceticism, and well-being has ever advanced
+through the pleasures rather than through austerity.</p>
+
+<p>According to Buffon, then&mdash;as also according to Dr. Darwin, who was just
+such another practical and genial thinker, and who was distinctly a
+pupil of Buffon, though a most intelligent and original one&mdash;if an organ
+after a reasonable amount of inspection appeared to be useless, it was
+to be called useless without more ado, and theories were to be ordered
+out of court if they were troublesome. In like manner, if animals bred
+freely <i>inter se</i> before our eyes, as for example the horse and ass, the
+fact was to be noted, but no animals were to be classed as capable of
+interbreeding until they had asserted their right to such classification
+by breeding with tolerable certainty. If,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> again, an animal looked as if
+it felt, that is to say, if it moved about pretty quickly or made a
+noise, it must be held to feel; if it did neither of these things, it
+did not look as if it felt and therefore it must be said not to feel.
+<i>De non apparentibus et non existentibus eadem est lex</i> was one of the
+chief axioms of their philosophy; no writers have had a greater horror
+of mystery or of ideas that have not become so mastered as to be, or to
+have been, superficial. Lamarck was one of those men of whom I believe
+it has been said that they have brain upon the brain. He had his theory
+that an animal could not feel unless it had a nervous system, and at
+least a spinal marrow&mdash;and that it could not think at all without a
+brain&mdash;all his facts, therefore, have to be made to square with this.
+With Buffon and Dr. Darwin we feel safe that however wrong they may
+sometimes be, their conclusions have always been arrived at on that
+fairly superficial view of things in which, as I have elsewhere said,
+our nature alone permits us to be comforted.</p>
+
+<p>To these writers, then, the doctrine of final causes for rudimentary
+organs was a piece of mystification and an absurdity; no less fatal to
+any such doctrine were the processes of embryological development. It
+was plain that the commonly received teleology must be given up; but the
+idea of design or purpose was so associated in their minds with
+theological design that they avoided it altogether. They seem to have
+forgotten that an internal teleology is as much teleology as an external
+one; hence, unfortunately, though their whole theory of development is
+intensely purposive, it is the fact<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> rather than the name of teleology
+which has hitherto been insisted upon, even by the greatest writers on
+evolution&mdash;the name having been denied even by those who were most
+insisting on the thing itself.</p>
+
+<p>It is easy to understand the difficulty felt by the fathers of evolution
+when we remember how much had to be seen before the facts could lie well
+before them. It was necessary to attain, firstly, to a perception of the
+unity of person between parents and offspring in successive generations;
+secondly, it must be seen that an organism's memory goes back for
+generations beyond its birth, to the first beginnings in fact, of which
+we know anything whatever; thirdly, the latency of that memory, as of
+memory generally till the associated ideas are reproduced, must be
+brought to bear upon the facts of heredity; and lastly, the
+unconsciousness with which habitual actions come to be performed, must
+be assigned as the explanation of the unconsciousness with which we grow
+and discharge most of our natural functions.</p>
+
+<p>Buffon was too busy with the fact that animals descended with
+modification at all, to go beyond the development and illustration of
+this great truth. I doubt whether he ever saw more than the first, and
+that dimly, of the four considerations above stated.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Darwin was the first to point out the first two considerations with
+some clearness, but he can hardly be said to have understood their full
+importance: the two latter ideas do not appear to have occurred to him.</p>
+
+<p>Lamarck had little if any perception of any one of the four. When,
+however, they are firmly seized and brought into their due bearings one
+upon another,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> the facts of heredity become as simple as those of a man
+making a tobacco pipe, and rudimentary organs are seen to be essentially
+of the same character as the little rudimentary protuberance at the
+bottom of the pipe to which I referred in 'Erewhon.'<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a></p>
+
+<p>These organs are now no longer useful, but they once were so, and were
+therefore once purposive, though not so now. They are the expressions of
+a bygone usefulness; sayings, as it were, about which there was at one
+time infinite wrangling, as to what both the meaning and the expression
+should best be, so that they then had living significance in the mouths
+of those who used them, though they have become such mere shibboleths
+and cant formul&aelig; to ourselves that we think no more of their meaning
+than we do of Julius C&aelig;sar in the month of July. They continue to be
+reproduced through the force of habit, and through indisposition to get
+out of any familiar groove of action until it becomes too unpleasant for
+us to remain in it any longer. It has long been felt that embryology and
+rudimentary structures indicated community of descent. Dr. Darwin and
+Lamarck insisted on this, as have all subsequent writers on evolution;
+but the explanation of why and how the structures come to be
+repeated&mdash;namely, that they are simply examples of the force of
+habit&mdash;can only be perceived intelligently by those who admit so much
+unity between parents and offspring that the self-development of the
+latter can be properly called habitual (as being a repetition of an act
+by one and the same individual), and can only be fully sympathized<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> with
+by those who recognize that if habit be admitted as the key to the fact
+at all, the unconscious manner in which the habit comes to be repeated
+is only of a piece with all our other observations concerning habit. For
+the fuller development of the foregoing, I must refer the reader to my
+work 'Life and Habit.'</p>
+
+<p>The purposiveness, which even Dr. Darwin, and Lamarck still less, seem
+never to have quite recognized in spite of their having insisted so much
+on what amounts to the same thing, now comes into full view. It is seen
+that the organs external to the body, and those internal to it are, the
+second as much as the first, things which we have made for our own
+convenience, and with a prevision that we shall have need of them; the
+main difference between the manufacture of these two classes of organs
+being, that we have made the one kind so often that we can no longer
+follow the processes whereby we make them, while the others are new
+things which we must make introspectively or not at all, and which are
+not yet so incorporate with our vitality as that we should think they
+grow instead of being manufactured. The manufacture of the tool, and the
+manufacture of the living organ prove therefore to be but two species of
+the same genus, which, though widely differentiated, have descended as
+it were from one common filament of desire and inventive faculty. The
+greater or less complexity of the organs goes for very little. It is
+only a question of the amount of intelligence and voluntary
+self-adaptation which we must admit, and this must be settled rather by
+an appeal to what we find<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> in organism, and observe concerning it, than
+by what we may have imagined <i>&agrave; priori</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Given a small speck of jelly with some kind of circumstance-suiting
+power, some power of slightly varying its actions in accordance with
+slightly varying circumstances and desires&mdash;given such a jelly-speck
+with a power of assimilating other matter, and thus, of reproducing
+itself, given also that it should be possessed of a memory, and we can
+show how the whole animal world can have descended it may be from an
+am&oelig;ba without interference from without, and how every organ in every
+creature is designed at first roughly and tentatively but finally
+fashioned with the most consummate perfection, by the creature which has
+had need of that organ, which best knew what it wanted, and was never
+satisfied till it had got that which was the best suited to its varying
+circumstances in their entirety. We can even show how, if it becomes
+worth the Ethiopian's while to try and change his skin, or the leopard's
+to change his spots, they can assuredly change them within a not
+unreasonable time and adapt their covering to their own will and
+convenience, and to that of none other; thus what is commonly conceived
+of as direct creation by God is moved back to a time and space
+inconceivable in their remoteness, while the aim and design so obvious
+in nature are shown to be still at work around us, growing ever busier
+and busier, and advancing from day to day both in knowledge and power.</p>
+
+<p>It was reserved for Mr. Darwin and for those who have too rashly
+followed him to deny purpose as having<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> had any share in the development
+of animal and vegetable organs; to see no evidence of design in those
+wonderful provisions which have been the marvel and delight of observers
+in all ages. The one who has drawn our attention more than perhaps any
+other living writer to those very marvels of coadaptation, is the
+foremost to maintain that they are the result not of desire and design,
+either within the creature or without it, but of blind chance, working
+no whither, and due but to the accumulation of innumerable lucky
+accidents.</p>
+
+<p>"There are men," writes Professor Tyndall in the 'Nineteenth Century,'
+for last November, "and by no means the minority, who, however wealthy
+in regard to facts, can never rise into the region of principles; and
+they are sometimes intolerant of those that can. They are formed to plod
+meritoriously on in the lower levels of thought; unpossessed of the
+pinions necessary to reach the heights, they cannot realize the mental
+act&mdash;the act of inspiration it might well be called&mdash;by which a man of
+genius, after long pondering and proving, reaches a theoretic conception
+which unravels and illuminates the tangle of centuries of observation
+and experiment. There are minds, it may be said in passing, who, at the
+present moment, stand in this relation to Mr. Darwin."</p>
+
+<p>The more rhapsodical parts of the above must go for what they are worth,
+but I should be sorry to think that what remains conveyed a censure
+which might fall justly on myself. As I read the earlier part of the
+passage I confess that I imagined the conclusion was going to be very
+different from what it proved to be.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> Fresh from the study of the older
+men and also of Mr. Darwin himself, I failed to see that Mr. Darwin had
+"unravelled and illuminated" a tangled skein, but believed him, on the
+contrary, to have tangled and obscured what his predecessors had made in
+great part, if not wholly, plain. With the older writers, I had felt as
+though in the hands of men who wished to understand themselves and to
+make their reader understand them with the smallest possible exertion.
+The older men, if not in full daylight, at any rate saw in what quarter
+of the sky the dawn was breaking, and were looking steadily towards it.
+It is not they who have put their hands over their own eyes and ours,
+and who are crying out that there is no light, but chance and blindness
+everywhere.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> Page 210, first edition.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span></p>
+<p class="subhead1"><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V.</p>
+
+<p class="subhead3">THE TELEOLOGICAL EVOLUTION OF ORGANISM&mdash;THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE
+UNCONSCIOUS.</p>
+
+
+<p>I have stated the foregoing in what I take to be an extreme logical
+development, in order that the reader may more easily perceive the
+consequences of those premises which I am endeavouring to re-establish.
+But it must not be supposed that an animal or plant has ever conceived
+the idea of some organ widely different from any it was yet possessed
+of, and has set itself to design it in detail and grow towards it.</p>
+
+<p>The small jelly-speck, which we call the am&oelig;ba, has no organs save
+what it can extemporize as occasion arises. If it wants to get at
+anything, it thrusts out part of its jelly, which thus serves it as an
+arm or hand: when the arm has served its purpose, it is absorbed into
+the rest of the jelly, and has now to do the duty of a stomach by
+helping to wrap up what it has just purveyed. The small round
+jelly-speck spreads itself out and envelops its food, so that the whole
+creature is now a stomach, and nothing but a stomach. Having digested
+its food, it again becomes a jelly-speck, and is again ready to turn
+part of itself into hand or foot as its next convenience may dictate. It
+is not to be believed that such a creature as this, which is probably
+just sensitive to light and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> nothing more, should be able to form a
+conception of an eye and set itself to work to grow one, any more than
+it is believable that he who first observed the magnifying power of a
+dew drop, or even he who first constructed a rude lens, should have had
+any idea in his mind of Lord Rosse's telescope with all its parts and
+appliances. Nothing could be well conceived more foreign to experience
+and common sense. Animals and plants have travelled to their present
+forms as man has travelled to any one of his own most complicated
+inventions. Slowly, step by step, through many blunders and mischances
+which have worked together for good to those that have persevered in
+elasticity. They have travelled as man has travelled, with but little
+perception of a want till there was also some perception of a power, and
+with but little perception of a power till there was a dim sense of
+want; want stimulating power, and power stimulating want; and both so
+based upon each other that no one can say which is the true foundation,
+but rather that they must be both baseless and, as it were, meteoric in
+mid air. They have seen very little ahead of a present power or need,
+and have been then most moral, when most inclined to pierce a little
+into futurity, but also when most obstinately declining to pierce too
+far, and busy mainly with the present. They have been so far blindfolded
+that they could see but for a few steps in front of them, yet so far
+free to see that those steps were taken with aim and definitely, and not
+in the dark.</p>
+
+<p>"Plus il a su," says Buffon, speaking of man, "plus il a pu, mais aussi
+moins il a fait, moins il a su." This<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> holds good wherever life holds
+good. Wherever there is life there is a moral government of rewards and
+punishments understood by the am&oelig;ba neither better nor worse than by
+man. The history of organic development is the history of a moral
+struggle.</p>
+
+<p>We know nothing as yet about the origin of a creature able to feel want
+and power, nor yet what want and power spring from. It does not seem
+worth while to go into these questions until an understanding has been
+come to as to whether the interaction of want and power in some low form
+or forms of life which could assimilate matter, reproduce themselves,
+vary their actions, and be capable of remembering, will or will not
+suffice to explain the development of the varied organs and desires
+which we see in the higher vertebrates and man. When this question has
+been settled, then it will be time to push our inquiries farther back.</p>
+
+<p>But given such a low form of life as here postulated, and there is no
+force in Paley's pretended objection to the Darwinism of his time.</p>
+
+<p>"Give our philosopher," he says, "appetencies; give him a portion of
+living irritable matter (a nerve or the clipping of a nerve) to work
+upon; give also to his incipient or progressive forms the power of
+propagating their like in every stage of their alteration; and if he is
+to be believed, he could replenish the world with all the vegetable and
+animal productions which we now see in it."<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a></p>
+
+<p>After meeting this theory with answers which need not detain us, he
+continues:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The senses of animals appear to me quite incapable of receiving the
+explanation of their origin which this theory affords. Including under
+the word 'sense' the organ and the perception, we have no account of
+either. How will our philosopher get at vision or make an eye? Or,
+suppose the eye formed, would the perception follow? The same of the
+other senses. And this objection holds its force, ascribe what you will
+to the hand of time, to the power of habit, to changes too slow to be
+observed by man, or brought within any comparison which he is able to
+make of past things with the present. Concede what you please to these
+arbitrary and unattested superstitions, how will they help you? Here is
+no inception. No laws, no course, no powers of nature which prevail at
+present, nor any analogous to these would give commencement to a new
+sense; and it is in vain to inquire how that might proceed which would
+never <i>begin</i>."</p>
+
+<p>In answer to this, let us suppose that some inhabitants of another world
+were to see a modern philosopher so using a microscope that they should
+believe it to be a part of the philosopher's own person, which he could
+cut off from and join again to himself at pleasure, and suppose there
+were a controversy as to how this microscope had originated, and that
+one party maintained the man had made it little by little because he
+wanted it, while the other declared this to be absurd and impossible; I
+ask, would this latter party be justified in arguing that microscopes
+could never have been perfected by degrees through the preservation of
+and accumulation of small successive improvements, inasmuch<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> as men
+could not have begun to want to use microscopes until they had had a
+microscope which should show them that such an instrument would be
+useful to them, and that hence there is nothing to account for the
+<i>beginning</i> of microscopes, which might indeed make some progress when
+once originated, but which could never originate?</p>
+
+<p>It might be pointed out to such a reasoner, firstly, that as regards any
+acquired power the various stages in the acquisition of which he might
+be supposed able to remember, he would find that, logic notwithstanding,
+the wish did originate the power, and yet was originated by it, both
+coming up gradually out of something which was not recognisable as
+either power or wish, and advancing through vain beating of the air, to
+a vague effort, and from this to definite effort with failure, and from
+this to definite effort with success, and from this to success with
+little consciousness of effort, and from this to success with such
+complete absence of effort that he now acts unconsciously and without
+power of introspection, and that, do what he will, he can rarely or
+never draw a sharp dividing line whereat anything shall be said to
+begin, though none less certain that there has been a continuity in
+discontinuity, and a discontinuity in continuity between it and certain
+other past things; moreover, that his opponents postulated so much
+beginning of the microscope as that there should be a dew drop, even as
+our evolutionists start with a sense of touch, of which sense all the
+others are modifications, so that not one of them but is resolvable into
+touch by more or less easy stages; and secondly,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> that the question is
+one of fact and of the more evident deductions therefrom, and should not
+be carried back to those remote beginnings where the nature of the facts
+is so purely a matter of conjecture and inference.</p>
+
+<p>No plant or animal, then, according to our view, would be able to
+conceive more than a very slight improvement on its organization at a
+given time, so clearly as to make the efforts towards it that would
+result in growth of the required modification; nor would these efforts
+be made with any far-sighted perception of what next and next and after,
+but only of what next; while many of the happiest thoughts would come
+like all other happy thoughts&mdash;thoughtlessly; by a chain of reasoning
+too swift and subtle for conscious analysis by the individual, as will
+be more fully insisted on hereafter. Some of these modifications would
+be noticeable, but the majority would involve no more noticeable
+difference than can be detected between the length of the shortest day,
+and that of the shortest but one.</p>
+
+<p>Thus a bird whose toes were not webbed, but who had under force of
+circumstances little by little in the course of many generations learned
+to swim, either from having lived near a lake, and having learnt the art
+owing to its fishing habits, or from wading about in shallow pools by
+the sea-side at low water, and finding itself sometimes a little out of
+its depth and just managing to scramble over the intermediate yard or so
+between it and safety&mdash;such a bird did not probably conceive the idea of
+swimming on the water and set itself to learn to do so, and then
+conceive the idea of webbed feet and set itself to get webbed feet. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>
+bird found itself in some small difficulty, out of which it either saw,
+or at any rate found that it could extricate itself by striking out
+vigorously with its feet and extending its toes as far as ever it could;
+it thus began to learn the art of swimming and conceived the idea of
+swimming synchronously, or nearly so; or perhaps wishing to get over a
+yard or two of deep water, and trying to do so without being at the
+trouble of rising to fly, it would splash and struggle its way over the
+water, and thus practically swim, though without much perception of what
+it had been doing. Finding that no harm had come to it, the bird would
+do the same again, and again; it would thus presently lose fear, and
+would be able to act more calmly; then it would begin to find out that
+it could swim a little, and if its food lay much in the water so that it
+would be of great advantage to it to be able to alight and rest without
+being forced to return to land, it would begin to make a practice of
+swimming. It would now discover that it could swim the more easily
+according as its feet presented a more extended surface to the water; it
+would therefore keep its toes extended whenever it swam, and as far as
+in it lay, would make the most of whatever skin was already at the base
+of its toes. After very many generations it would become web-footed, if
+doing as above described should have been found continuously convenient,
+so that the bird should have continuously used the skin about its toes
+as much as possible in this direction.</p>
+
+<p>For there is a margin in every organic structure (and perhaps more than
+we imagine in things inorganic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> also), which will admit of references,
+as it were, side notes, and glosses upon the original text. It is on
+this margin that we may err or wander&mdash;the greatness of a mistake
+depending rather upon the extent of the departure from the original
+text, than on the direction that the departure takes. A little error on
+the bad side is more pardonable, and less likely to hurt the organism
+than a too great departure upon the right one. This is a fundamental
+proposition in any true system of ethics, the question what is too much
+or too sudden being decided by much the same higgling as settles the
+price of butter in a country market, and being as invisible as the link
+which connects the last moment of desire with the first of power and
+performance, and with the material result achieved.</p>
+
+<p>It is on this margin that the fulcrum is to be found, whereby we obtain
+the little purchase over our structure, that enables us to achieve great
+results if we use it steadily, with judgment, and with neither too
+little effort nor too much. It is by employing this that those who have
+a fancy to move their ears or toes without moving other organs learn to
+do so. There is a man at the Agricultural Hall now playing the violin
+with his toes, and playing it, as I am told, sufficiently well. The eye
+of the sailor, the wrist of the conjuror, the toe of the professional
+medium, are all found capable of development to an astonishing degree,
+even in a single lifetime; but in every case success has been attained
+by the simple process of making the best of whatever power a man has had
+at any given time, and by being on the look out to take advantage of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>
+accident, and even of misfortune. If a man would learn to paint, he must
+not theorize concerning art, nor think much what he would do beforehand,
+but he must do <i>something</i>&mdash;it does not matter what, except that it
+should be whatever at the moment will come handiest and easiest to him;
+and he must do that something as well as he can. This will presently
+open the door for something else, and a way will show itself which no
+conceivable amount of searching would have discovered, but which yet
+could never have been discovered by sitting still and taking no pains at
+all. "Dans l'animal," says Buffon, "il y a moins de jugement que de
+sentiment."<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a></p>
+
+<p>It may appear as though this were blowing hot and cold with the same
+breath, inasmuch as I am insisting that important modifications of
+structure have been always purposive; and at the same time am denying
+that the creature modified has had any purpose in the greater part of
+all those actions which have at length modified both structure and
+instinct. Thus I say that a bird learns to swim without having any
+purpose of learning to swim before it set itself to make those movements
+which have resulted in its being able to do so. At the same time I
+maintain that it has only learned to swim by trying to swim, and this
+involves the very purpose which I have just denied. The reconciliation
+of these two apparently irreconcilable contentions must be found in the
+consideration that the bird was not the less trying to swim, merely
+because it did not know the name we have chosen to give to the art<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>
+which it was trying to master, nor yet how great were the resources of
+that art. A person, who knew all about swimming, if from some bank he
+could watch our supposed bird's first attempt to scramble over a short
+space of deep water, would at once declare that the bird was trying to
+swim&mdash;if not actually swimming. Provided then that there is a very
+little perception of, and prescience concerning, the means whereby the
+next desired end may be attained, it matters not how little in advance
+that end may be of present desires or faculties; it is still reached
+through purpose, and must be called purposive. Again, no matter how many
+of these small steps be taken, nor how absolute was the want of purpose
+or prescience concerning any but the one being actually taken at any
+given moment, this does not bar the result from having been arrived at
+through design and purpose. If each one of the small steps is purposive
+the result is purposive, though there was never purpose extended over
+more than one, two, or perhaps at most three, steps at a time.</p>
+
+<p>Returning to the art of painting for an example, are we to say that the
+proficiency which such a student as was supposed above will certainly
+attain, is not due to design, merely because it was not until he had
+already become three parts excellent that he knew the full purport of
+all that he had been doing? When he began he had but vague notions of
+what he would do. He had a wish to learn to represent nature, but the
+line into which he has settled down has probably proved very different
+from that which he proposed to himself originally. Because he has taken
+advantage of his accidents, is it,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> therefore, one whit the less true
+that his success is the result of his desires and his design? The
+'Times' pointed out not long ago that the theory which now associates
+meteors and comets in the most unmistakable manner, was suggested by one
+accident, and confirmed by another. But the writer added well that "such
+accidents happen only to the zealous student of nature's secrets." In
+the same way the bird that is taking to the habit of swimming, and of
+making the most of whatever skin it already has between its toes, will
+have doubtless to thank accidents for no small part of its progress; but
+they will be such accidents as could never have happened to, or been
+taken advantage of by any creature which was not zealously trying to
+make the most of itself&mdash;and between such accidents as this, and design,
+the line is hard to draw; for if we go deep enough we shall find that
+most of our design resolves itself into as it were a shaking of the bag
+to see what will come out that will suit our purpose, and yet at the
+same time that most of our shaking of the bag resolves itself into a
+design that the bag shall contain only such and such things, or
+thereabouts.</p>
+
+<p>Again, the fact that animals are no longer conscious of
+design and purpose in much that they do, but act unreflectingly,
+and as we sometimes say concerning ourselves "automatically" or
+"mechanically"&mdash;that they have no idea whatever of the steps whereby
+they have travelled to their present state, and show no sign of doubt
+about what must have been at one time the subject of all manner of
+doubts, difficulties, and discussions&mdash;that whatever sign of reflection
+they now exhibit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> is to be found only in case of some novel feature or
+difficulty presenting itself; these facts do not bar that the results
+achieved should be attributed to an inception in reason, design, and
+purpose, no matter how rapidly and as we call it instinctively, the
+creatures may now act.</p>
+
+<p>For if we look closely at such an invention as the steam engine in its
+latest and most complicated developments, about which there can be no
+dispute but that they are achievements of reason, purpose, and design,
+we shall find them present us with examples of all those features the
+presence of which in the handiwork of animals is too often held to bar
+reason and purpose from having had any share therein.</p>
+
+<p>Assuredly such men as the Marquis of Worcester and Captain Savery had
+very imperfect ideas as to the upshot of their own action. The simplest
+steam engine now in use in England is probably a marvel of ingenuity as
+compared with the highest development which appeared possible to these
+two great men, while our newest and most highly complicated engines
+would seem to them more like living beings than machines. Many, again,
+of the steps leading to the present development have been due to action
+which had but little heed of the steam engine, being the inventions of
+attendants whose desire was to save themselves the trouble of turning
+this or that cock, and who were indifferent to any other end than their
+own immediate convenience. No step in fact along the whole route was
+ever taken with much perception of what would be the next step after the
+one being taken at any given moment.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Nor do we find that an engine made after any old and well-known pattern
+is now made with much more consciousness of design than we can suppose a
+bird's nest to be built with. The greater number of the parts of any
+such engine, are made by the gross as it were like screws and nuts,
+which are turned out by machinery and in respect of which the labour of
+design is now no more felt than is the design of him who first invented
+the wheel. It is only when circumstances require any modification in the
+article to be manufactured that thought and design will come into play
+again; but I take it few will deny that if circumstances compel a bird
+either to give up a nest three-parts built altogether, or to make some
+trifling deviation from its ordinary practice, it will in nine cases out
+of ten make such deviation as shall show that it had thought the matter
+over, and had on the whole concluded to take such and such a course,
+that is to say, that it had reasoned and had acted with such purpose as
+its reason had dictated.</p>
+
+<p>And I imagine that this is the utmost that anyone can claim even for
+man's own boasted powers. Set the man who has been accustomed to make
+engines of one type, to make engines of another type without any
+intermediate course of training or instruction, and he will make no
+better figure with his engines than a thrush would do if commanded by
+her mate to make a nest like a blackbird. It is vain then to contend
+that the ease and certainty with which an action is performed, even
+though it may have now become matter of such fixed habit that it cannot
+be suddenly and seriously modified without rendering the whole<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>
+performance abortive, is any argument against that action having been an
+achievement of design and reason in respect of each one of the steps
+that have led to it; and if in respect of each one of the steps then as
+regards the entire action; for we see our own most reasoned actions
+become no less easy, unerring, automatic, and unconscious, than the
+actions which we call instinctive when they have been repeated a
+sufficient number of times.</p>
+
+<p>This has been often pointed out, but I insisted upon it and developed it
+in 'Life and Habit,' more I believe than has been done hitherto, at the
+same time making it the key to many phenomena of growth and heredity
+which without such key seem explained by words rather than by any
+corresponding peace of mind in our ideas concerning them. Seeing that I
+dwelt much on the importance of bearing in mind the vanishing tendency
+of consciousness, volition, and memory upon their becoming intense, a
+tendency which no one after five minutes' reflection will venture to
+deny, some reviewers have imagined that I am advocating the same views
+as have been put forward by Von Hartmann under the title of 'the
+Philosophy of the Unconscious.' Unless, however, I am much mistaken,
+their opinion is without foundation. For so far as I can gather, Von
+Hartmann personifies the unconscious and makes it act and think&mdash;in fact
+deifies it&mdash;whereas I only infer a certain history for certain of our
+growths and actions in consequence of observing that often repeated
+actions come in time to be performed unconsciously. I cannot think I
+have done more than note a fact which all must acknowledge, and drawn
+from it an inference which may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> or may not be true, but which is at any
+rate perfectly intelligible, whereas if Von Hartmann's meaning is
+anything like what Mr. Sully says it is,<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> I can only say that it has
+not been given to me to form any definite conception whatever as to what
+that meaning may be. I am encouraged moreover to hope that I am not in
+the same condemnation with Von Hartmann&mdash;if, indeed, Von Hartmann is to
+be condemned, about which I know nothing&mdash;by the following extract from
+a German Review of 'Life and Habit.'</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Der erste dieser beiden Erkl&auml;rungsversuche, ist eine wahre
+'Philosophie des Unbewussten' nicht des Hartmann'schen Unbewussten
+welches hellsehend und wunderth&auml;tig von aussen in die nat&uuml;rliche
+Entwickelung der Organismen eingreift, sondern eines Unbewussten
+welches wie der Verfasser zeigt, in allen organischen Wesen
+anzunehmen unsere eigene Erfahrung und die Stufenfolge der
+Organismen von den Moneren und Am&oelig;ben bis zu den h&ouml;chsten
+Pflanzen und Thieren und uns selbst aufw&auml;rts&mdash;uns gestattet, wenn
+nicht uns n&ouml;thigt. Der Gedankengang dieser neuen oder wenigstens in
+diesem Sinne wohl zum ersten Male consequent im Einzelnen
+durchgef&uuml;hrten Philosophie des Unbewussten ist, seinen Hauptz&uuml;gen
+nach kurz angedeutet, folgender."<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a></p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Even here I am made to personify more than I like; I do not wish to say
+that the unconscious does this or that, but that when we have done this
+or that sufficiently often we do it unconsciously.</p>
+
+<p>If the foregoing be granted, and it be admitted that the unconsciousness
+and seeming automatism with which any action may be performed is no bar
+to its having a foundation in memory, reason, and at one time
+consciously recognized effort&mdash;and this I believe to be the chief
+addition which I have ventured to make to the theory of Buffon and Dr.
+Erasmus Darwin&mdash;then the wideness of the difference between the
+Darwinism of eighty years ago and the Darwinism of to-day becomes
+immediately apparent, and it also becomes apparent, how important and
+interesting is the issue which is raised between them.</p>
+
+<p>According to the older Darwinism the lungs are just as purposive as the
+corkscrew. They, no less than the corkscrew, are a piece of mechanism
+designed and gradually improved upon and perfected by an intelligent
+creature for the gratification of its own needs. True there are many
+important differences between mechanism which is part of the body, and
+mechanism which is no such part, but the differences are such as do not
+affect the fact that in each case the result, whether, for example,
+lungs or corkscrew, is due to desire, invention, and design.</p>
+
+<p>And now I will ask one more question, which may seem, perhaps, to have
+but little importance, but which I find personally interesting. I have
+been told by a reviewer, of whom upon the whole I have little reason<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> to
+complain, that the theory I put forward in 'Life and Habit,' and which I
+am now again insisting on, is pessimism&mdash;pure and simple. I have a very
+vague idea what pessimism means, but I should be sorry to believe that I
+am a pessimist. Which, I would ask, is the pessimist? He who sees love
+of beauty, design, steadfastness of purpose, intelligence, courage, and
+every quality to which success has assigned the name of "worth," as
+having drawn the pattern of every leaf and organ now and in all past
+time, or he who sees nothing in the world of nature but a chapter of
+accidents and of forces interacting blindly?</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> 'Nat. Theol.,' ch. xxiii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> 'Oiseaux,' vol. i. p. 5.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> 'Westminster Review,' vol. xlix. p. 124.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> Translation: "The first of these two attempts is a true
+'philosophy of the unconscious,' not Hartmann's unconscious, which
+influences the natural evolution of organism from without as though by
+Providence and miracle, but of an unconscious, which, as the author
+shows, our own experience and the progressive succession of organisms
+from the monads and am&oelig;b&aelig; up to the highest plants and animals,
+including ourselves, allows, if it does not compel us to assume [as
+obtaining] in all organic beings. This philosophy of the unconscious is
+new, or at any rate now for the first time carried out consequentially
+in detail; its main features, briefly stated are as follows."</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span></p>
+<p class="subhead1"><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.</p>
+
+<p class="subhead3">SCHEME OF THE REMAINDER OF THE WORK. HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE THEORY OF
+EVOLUTION.</p>
+
+
+<p>I have long felt that evolution must stand or fall according as it is
+made to rest or not on principles which shall give a definite purpose
+and direction to the variations whose accumulation results in specific,
+and ultimately in generic differences. In other words, according as it
+is made to stand upon the ground first clearly marked out for it by Dr.
+Erasmus Darwin and afterwards adopted by Lamarck, or on that taken by
+Mr. Charles Darwin.</p>
+
+<p>There is some reason to fear that in consequence of the disfavour into
+which modern Darwinism is seen to be falling by those who are more
+closely watching the course of opinion upon this subject, evolution
+itself may be for a time discredited as something inseparable from the
+theory that it has come about mainly through "the means" of natural
+selection. If people are shown that the arguments by which a somewhat
+startling conclusion has been reached will not legitimately lead to that
+conclusion, they are very ready to assume that the conclusion must be
+altogether unfounded, especially when, as in the present case, there is
+a vast mass of vested interests opposed to the conclusion. Few know that
+there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> are other great works upon descent with modification besides Mr.
+Darwin's. Not one person in ten thousand has any distinct idea of what
+Buffon, Dr. Darwin, and Lamarck propounded. Their names have been
+discredited by the very authors who have been most indebted to them;
+there is hardly a writer on evolution who does not think it incumbent
+upon him to warn Lamarck off the ground which he at any rate made his
+own, and to cast a stone at what he will call the "shallow speculations"
+or "crude theories" or the "well-known doctrine" of the foremost
+exponent of Buffon and Dr. Darwin. Buffon is a great name, Dr. Darwin is
+no longer even this, and Lamarck has been so systematically laughed at
+that it amounts to little less than philosophical suicide for anyone to
+stand up in his behalf. Not one of our scientific elders or chief
+priests but would caution a student rather to avoid the three great men
+whom I have named than to consult them. It is a perilous task therefore
+to try and take evolution from the pedestal on which it now appears to
+stand so securely, and to put it back upon the one raised for it by its
+propounders; yet this is what I believe will have to be done sooner or
+later unless the now general acceptance of evolution is to be shaken
+more rudely than some of its upholders may anticipate. I propose
+therefore to give a short biographical sketch of the three writers whose
+works form new departures in the history of evolution, with a somewhat
+full <i>r&eacute;sum&eacute;</i> of the positions they took in regard to it. I will also
+touch briefly upon some other writers who have handled the same subject.
+The reader will thus be enabled to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> follow the development of a great
+conception as it has grown up in the minds of successive men of genius,
+and by thus growing with it, as it were, through its embryonic stages,
+he will make himself more thoroughly master of it in all its bearings.</p>
+
+<p>I will then contrast the older with the newer Darwinism, and will show
+why the 'Origin of Species,' though an episode of incalculable value,
+cannot, any more than the 'Vestiges of Creation,' take permanent rank in
+the literature of evolution.</p>
+
+<p>It will appear that the evolution of evolution has gone through the
+following principal stages:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>I. A general conception of the fact that specific types were not always
+immutable.</p>
+
+<p>This was common to many writers, both ancient and modern; it has been
+occasionally asserted from the times of Anaximander and Lucretius to
+those of Bacon and Sir Walter Raleigh.</p>
+
+<p>II. A definite conception that animal and vegetable forms were so
+extensively mutable that few (and, if so, perhaps but one) could claim
+to be of an original stock; the direct effect of changed conditions
+being assigned as the cause of modification, and the important
+consequences of the struggle for existence being in many respects fully
+recognized. The fact of design or purpose in connection with organism,
+as causing habits and thus as underlying all variation, was also
+indicated with some clearness, but was not thoroughly understood.</p>
+
+<p>This phase must be identified with the name of Buffon, who, as I will
+show reason for believing, would have carried his theory much further if
+he had not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> felt that he had gone as far in the right direction as was
+then desirable. Buffon put forward his opinions, with great reserve and
+yet with hardly less frankness, in volume after volume from 1749 to
+1788, the year of his death, but they do not appear to have taken root
+at once in France. They took root in England, and were thence
+transplanted back to France.</p>
+
+<p>III. A development in England of the Buffonian system, marked by
+glimpses of the unity between offspring and parents, and broad
+suggestions to the effect that the former must be considered as capable
+of remembering, under certain circumstances, what had happened to it,
+and what it did, when it was part of the personality of those from whom
+it had descended.</p>
+
+<p>A definite belief, openly expressed, that not only are many species
+mutable, but that all living forms, whether animal or vegetable, are
+descended from a single, or at any rate from not many, original low
+forms of life, and this as the direct consequence of the actions and
+requirements of the living forms themselves, and as the indirect
+consequence of changed conditions. A definite cause is thus supposed to
+underlie variations, and the resulting adaptations become purposive; but
+this was not said, nor, I am afraid, seen.</p>
+
+<p>This is the original Darwinism of Dr. Erasmus Darwin. It was put forward
+in his 'Zoonomia,' in 1794, and was adopted almost in its entirety by
+Lamarck, who, when he had caught the leading idea (probably through a
+French translation of the 'Loves of the Plants,' which appeared in
+1800), began to expound it in 1801; in 1802, 1803, 1806, and 1809,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> he
+developed it with greater fulness of detail than Dr. Darwin had done,
+but perhaps with a somewhat less nice sense of some important points.
+Till his death, in 1831, Lamarck, as far as age and blindness would
+permit, continued to devote himself to the exposition of the theory of
+descent with modification.</p>
+
+<p>IV. A more distinct perception of the unity of parents and offspring,
+with a bolder reference of the facts of heredity (whether of structure
+or instinct), to memory pure and simple; a clearer perception of the
+consequences that follow from the survival of the fittest, and a just
+view of the relation in which those consequences stand to "the
+circumstance-suiting" power of animals and plants; a reference of the
+variations whose accumulation results in species, to the volition of the
+animal or plant which varies, and perhaps a dawning perception that all
+adaptations of structure to need must therefore be considered as
+"purposive."</p>
+
+<p>This must be connected with Mr. Matthew's work on 'Naval Timber and
+Arboriculture,' which appeared in 1831. The remarks which it contains in
+reference to evolution are confined to an appendix, but when brought
+together, as by Mr. Matthew himself, in the 'Gardeners' Chronicle' for
+April 7, 1860, they form one of the most perfect yet succinct
+expositions of the theory of evolution that I have ever seen. I shall
+therefore give them in full.<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> This book was well received, and was
+reviewed in the 'Quarterly Review,'<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> but seems to have been valued
+rather for its views on naval timber than on evolution. Mr. Matthew's
+merit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> lies in a just appreciation of the importance of each one of the
+principal ideas which must be present in combination before we can have
+a correct conception of evolution, and of their bearings upon one
+another. In his scheme of evolution I find each part kept in due
+subordination to the others, so that the whole theory becomes more
+coherent and better articulated than I have elsewhere found it; but I do
+not detect any important addition to the ideas which Dr. Darwin and
+Lamarck had insisted upon.</p>
+
+<p>I pass over the 'Vestiges of Creation,' which should be mentioned only
+as having, as Mr. Charles Darwin truly says, "done excellent service in
+this country, in calling attention to this subject, in removing
+prejudice, and in thus preparing the ground for the reception of
+analogous views."<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a> The work neither made any addition to ideas which
+had been long familiar, nor arranged old ones in a satisfactory manner.
+Such as it is, it is Dr. Darwin and Lamarck, but Dr. Darwin and Lamarck
+spoiled. The first edition appeared in 1844.</p>
+
+<p>I also pass over Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire's 'Natural History,' which
+appeared 1854-62, and the position of which is best described by calling
+it intermediate between the one which Buffon thought fit to pretend to
+take, and that actually taken by Lamarck. The same may be said also of
+&Eacute;tienne Geoffroy. I will, however, just touch upon these writers later
+on.</p>
+
+<p>A short notice, again, will suffice for the opinions of Goethe,
+Treviranus, and Oken, none of whom can I discover as having originated
+any important new idea;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> but knowing no German, I have taken this
+opinion from the r&eacute;sum&eacute; of each of these writers, given by Professor
+Haeckel in his 'History of Creation.'</p>
+
+<p>V. A time of retrogression, during which we find but little apparent
+appreciation of the unity between parents and offspring; no reference to
+memory in connection with heredity, whether of instinct or structure; an
+exaggerated view of the consequences which may be deduced from the fact
+that the fittest commonly survive in the struggle for existence; the
+denial of any known principle as underlying variations; comparatively
+little appreciation of the circumstance-suiting power of plants and
+animals, and a rejection of purposiveness. By far the most important
+exponent of this phase of opinion concerning evolution is Mr. Charles
+Darwin, to whom, however, we are more deeply indebted than to any other
+living writer for the general acceptance of evolution in one shape or
+another. The 'Origin of Species' appeared in 1859, the same year, that
+is to say, as the second volume of Isidore Geoffroy's 'Histoire
+Naturelle G&eacute;n&eacute;rale.'</p>
+
+<p>VI. A reaction against modern Darwinism, with a demand for definite
+purpose and design as underlying variations. The best known writers who
+have taken this line are the Rev. J. J. Murphy and Professor Mivart,
+whose 'Habit and intelligence' and 'Genesis of Species' appeared in 1869
+and 1871 respectively. In Germany Professor Hering has revived the idea
+of memory as explaining the phenomena of heredity satisfactorily,
+without probably having been more aware that it had been advanced
+already than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> I was myself when I put it forward recently in 'Life and
+Habit.' I have never seen the lecture in which Professor Hering has
+referred the phenomena of heredity to memory, but will give an extract
+from it which appeared in the 'Athen&aelig;um,' as translated by Professor Ray
+Lankester.<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> The only new feature which I believe I may claim to have
+added to received ideas concerning evolution, is a perception of the
+fact that the unconsciousness with which we go through our embryonic and
+infantile stages, and with which we discharge the greater number and
+more important of our natural functions, is of a piece with what we
+observe concerning all habitual actions, as well as concerning memory;
+an explanation of the phenomena of old age; and of the main principle
+which underlies longevity. I may, perhaps, claim also to have more fully
+explained the passage of reason into instinct than I yet know of its
+having been explained elsewhere.<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> See ch. <a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">xviii.</a> of this volume.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> Vol. xlix. p. 125.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> 'Origin of Species,' Hist. Sketch, xvii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> See page <a href="#Page_199">199</a> of this volume.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> Apropos of this, a friend has kindly sent me the following
+extract from Balzac:&mdash;"Historiquement, les paysans sont encore au
+lendemain de la Jacquerie, leur d&eacute;faite est rest&eacute;e inscrite dans leur
+cervelle. <i>Ils ne se souviennent plus du fait, il est pass&eacute; &agrave; l'&eacute;tat
+d'id&eacute;e instinctive.</i>"&mdash;Balzac, 'Les Paysans,' v.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span></p>
+<p class="subhead1"><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.</p>
+
+<p class="subhead3">PRE-BUFFONIAN EVOLUTION, AND SOME GERMAN WRITERS.</p>
+
+
+<p>Let us now proceed to the fuller development of the foregoing sketch.</p>
+
+<p>"Undoubtedly," says Isidore Geoffroy, "from the most ancient times many
+philosophers have imagined vaguely that one species can be transformed
+into another. This doctrine seems to have been adopted by the Ionian
+school from the sixth century before our era.... Undoubtedly also the
+same opinion reappeared on several occasions in the middle ages, and in
+modern times; it is to be found in some of the hermetic books, where the
+transmutation of animal and vegetable species, and that of metals, are
+treated as complementary to one another. In modern times we again find
+it alluded to by some philosophers, and especially by Bacon, whose
+boldness is on this point extreme. Admitting it as 'incontestable that
+plants sometimes degenerate so far as to become plants of another
+species,' Bacon did not hesitate to try and put his theory into
+practice. He tried, in 1635, to give 'the rules' for the art of changing
+'plants of one species into those of another.'"</p>
+
+<p>This must be an error. Bacon died in 1626. The passage of Bacon referred
+to is in 'Nat. Hist.,' Cent. vi.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> ("Experiments in consort touching the
+degenerating of plants, and the transmutation of them one into
+another"), and is as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"518. This rule is certain, that plants for want of culture degenerate
+to be baser in the same kind; and sometimes so far as to change into
+another kind. 1. The standing long and not being removed maketh them
+degenerate. 2. Drought unless the earth, of itself, be moist doth the
+like. 3. So doth removing into worse earth, or forbearing to compost the
+earth; as we see that water mint turneth into field mint, and the
+colewort into rape by neglect, &amp;c."</p>
+
+<p>"525. It is certain that in very steril years corn sown will grow to
+another kind:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Grandia s&aelig;pe quibus mandavimus hordea sulcis,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Infelix lolium, et steriles dominantur aven&aelig;.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And generally it is a rule that plants that are brought forth for
+culture, as corn, will sooner change into other species, than those that
+come of themselves; for that culture giveth but an adventitious nature,
+which is more easily put off."</p>
+
+<p>Changed conditions, according to Bacon (though he does not use these
+words), appear to be "the first rule for the transmutation of plants."</p>
+
+<p>"But how much value," continues M. Geoffroy, "ought to be attached to
+such prophetic glimpses, when they were neither led up to, nor justified
+by any serious study? They are conjectures only, which, while bearing
+evidence to the boldness or rashness of those who hazarded them, remain
+almost without effect upon the advance of science. Bacon excepted, they
+hardly deserve<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> to be remembered. As for De Maillet, who makes birds
+spring from flying fishes, reptiles from creeping fishes, and men from
+tritons, his dreams, taken in part from Anaximander, should have their
+place not in the history of science, but in that of the aberrations of
+the human mind."<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a></p>
+
+<p>A far more forcible and pregnant passage, however, is the following,
+from Sir Walter Raleigh's 'History of the World,' which Mr. Garnett has
+been good enough to point out to me:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"For mine owne opinion I find no difference but only in magnitude
+between the Cat of Europe, and the Ounce of India; and even those dogges
+which are become wild in Hispagniola, with which the Spaniards used to
+devour the naked Indians, are now changed to Wolves, and begin to
+destroy the breed of their Cattell, and doe often times teare asunder
+their owne children. The common crow and rooke of India is full of red
+feathers in the droun'd and low islands of Caribana, and the blackbird
+and thrush hath his feathers mixt with black and carnation in the north
+parts of Virginia. The Dog-fish of England is the Sharke of the South
+Ocean. For if colour or magnitude made a difference of Species, then
+were the Negroes, which wee call the Blacke-Mores, <i>non animalia
+rationalia</i>, not Men but some kind of strange Beasts, and so the giants
+of the South America should be of another kind than the people of this
+part of the World. We also see it dayly that the nature of fruits are
+changed by transplantation."<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
+For information concerning the earliest German writers on evolution, I
+turn to Professor Haeckel's 'History of Creation,' and find Goethe's
+name to head the list. I do not gather, however, that Goethe added much
+to the ideas which Buffon had already made sufficiently familiar.
+Professor Haeckel does not seem to be aware of Buffon's work, and quotes
+Goethe as making an original discovery when he writes, in the year
+1796:&mdash;"Thus much then we have gained, that we may assert without
+hesitation that all the more perfect organic natures, such as fishes,
+amphibious animals, birds, mammals, and man at the head of the last,
+were all formed upon one original type, which only varies more or less
+in parts which were none the less permanent, and still daily changes and
+modifies its form by propagation."<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> But these, as we shall see, are
+almost Buffon's own words&mdash;words too that Buffon insisted on for many
+years. Again Professor Haeckel quotes Goethe as writing in the year
+1807:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"If we consider plants and animals in their most imperfect condition,
+they can hardly be distinguished." This, however, had long been insisted
+upon by Bonnet and Dr. Erasmus Darwin, the first of whom was a
+naturalist of world-wide fame, while the 'Zoonomia' of Dr. Darwin had
+been translated into German between the years 1795 and 1797, and could
+hardly have been unknown to Goethe in 1807, who continues: "But this
+much we may say, that the creatures which by degrees emerge as plants
+and animals out of a common phase where they are barely distinguishable,
+arrive at perfection in two opposite directions, so that the plant in
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> end reaches its highest glory in the tree, which is immovable and
+stiff, the animal in man who possesses the greatest elasticity and
+freedom." Professor Haeckel considers this to be a remarkable passage,
+but I do not think it should cause its author to rank among the founders
+of the evolution theory, though he may justly claim to have been one of
+the first to adopt it. Goethe's anatomical researches appear to have
+been more important, but I cannot find that he insisted on any new
+principle, or grasped any unfamiliar conception, which had not been long
+since grasped and widely promulgated by Buffon and by Dr. Erasmus
+Darwin.</p>
+
+<p>Treviranus (1776-1837), whom Professor Haeckel places second to Goethe,
+is clearly a disciple of Buffon, and uses the word "degeneration" in the
+same sense as Buffon used it many years earlier, that is to say, as
+"descent with modification," without any reference to whether the
+offspring was, as Buffon says, "perfectionn&eacute; ou d&eacute;grad&eacute;." He cannot
+claim, any more than Goethe, to rank as a principal figure in the
+history of evolution.</p>
+
+<p>Of Oken, Professor Haeckel says that his 'Naturphilosophie,' which
+appeared in 1809&mdash;in the same year, that is to say, as the 'Philosophie
+Zoologique' of Lamarck&mdash;was "the nearest approach to the natural theory
+of descent, newly established by Mr. Charles Darwin," of any work that
+appeared in the first decade of our century. But I do not detect any
+important difference of principle between his system and that of Dr.
+Erasmus Darwin, among whose disciples he should be reckoned.</p>
+
+<p>"We now turn," says Professor Haeckel after referring to a few more
+German writers who adopted a belief in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> evolution, "from the German to
+the French nature-philosophers who have likewise held the theory of
+descent, since the beginning of this century. At their head stands Jean
+Lamarck, who occupies the first place next to Darwin and Goethe in the
+history of the doctrine of Filiation."<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> This is rather a surprising
+assertion, but I will leave the reader of the present volume to assign
+the value which should be attached to it.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Haeckel devotes ten lines to Dr. Erasmus Darwin, who he
+declares "expresses views very similar to those of Goethe and Lamarck,
+without, however, <i>then</i> knowing anything about these two men;" which is
+all the more strange inasmuch as Dr. Darwin preceded them, and was a
+good deal better known to them, probably, than they to him; but it is
+plain Professor Haeckel has no acquaintance with the 'Zoonomia' of Dr.
+Erasmus Darwin. From all, then, that I am able to collect, I conclude
+that I shall best convey to the reader an idea of the different phases
+which the theory of descent with modification has gone through, by
+confining his attention almost entirely to Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin,
+Lamarck, and Mr. Charles Darwin.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> 'Hist. Nat. Gen.,' vol. ii. p. 385, 1859.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> 'History of the World,' bk. i. ch. vii. &sect; 9 ('Athen&aelig;um,'
+March 27, 1875).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> 'History of Creation,' vol. i. p. 91.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> 'History of Creation,' bk. i. ch. iii. (H. S. King,
+1876).</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span></p>
+<p class="subhead1"><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</p>
+
+<p class="subhead3">BUFFON&mdash;MEMOIR.</p>
+
+
+<p>Buffon, says M. Flourens, was born at Montbar, on the 7th of September,
+1707; he died in Paris, at the Jardin du Roi, on the 16th of April,
+1788, aged 81 years. More than fifty of these years, as he used himself
+to say, he had passed at his writing-desk. His father was a councillor
+of the parliament of Burgundy. His mother was celebrated for her wit,
+and Buffon cherished her memory.</p>
+
+<p>He studied at Dijon with much <i>&eacute;clat</i>, and shortly after leaving became
+accidentally acquainted with the Duke of Kingston, a young Englishman of
+his own age, who was travelling abroad with a tutor. The three travelled
+together in France and Italy, and Buffon then passed some months in
+England.</p>
+
+<p>Returning to France, he translated Hales's 'Vegetable Statics' and
+Newton's 'Treatise on Fluxions.' He refers to several English writers on
+natural history in the course of his work, but I see he repeatedly
+spells the English name Willoughby, "Willulghby." He was appointed
+superintendent of the Jardin du Roi in 1739, and from thenceforth
+devoted himself to science.</p>
+
+<p>In 1752 Buffon married Mdlle. de Saint B&eacute;lin, whose beauty and charm of
+manner were extolled by all her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> contemporaries. One son was born to
+him, who entered the army, became a colonel, and I grieve to say, was
+guillotined at the age of twenty-nine, a few days only before the
+extinction of the Reign of Terror.</p>
+
+<p>Of this youth, who inherited the personal comeliness and ability of his
+father, little is recorded except the following story. Having fallen
+into the water and been nearly drowned when he was about twelve years
+old, he was afterwards accused of having been afraid: "I was so little
+afraid," he answered, "that though I had been offered the hundred years
+which my grandfather lived, I would have died then and there, if I could
+have added one year to the life of my father;" then thinking for a
+minute, a flush suffused his face, and he added, "but I should petition
+for one quarter of an hour in which to exult over the thought of what I
+was about to do."</p>
+
+<p>On the scaffold he showed much composure, smiling half proudly, half
+reproachfully, yet wholly kindly upon the crowd in front of him.
+"Citoyens," he said, "Je me nomme Buffon," and laid his head upon the
+block.</p>
+
+<p>The noblest outcome of the old and decaying order, overwhelmed in the
+most hateful birth frenzy of the new. So in those cataclysms and
+revolutions which take place in our own bodies during their development,
+when we seem studying in order to become fishes and suddenly make, as it
+were, different arrangements and resolve on becoming men&mdash;so, doubtless,
+many good cells must go, and their united death cry comes up, it may be,
+in the pain which an infant feels on teething.</p>
+
+<p>But to return. The man who could be father of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> such a son, and who could
+retain that son's affection, as it is well known that Buffon retained
+it, may not perhaps always be strictly accurate, but it will be as well
+to pay attention to whatever he may think fit to tell us. These are the
+only people whom it is worth while to look to and study from.</p>
+
+<p>"Glory," said Buffon, after speaking of the hours during which he had
+laboured, "glory comes always after labour if she can&mdash;<i>and she
+generally can</i>." But in his case she could not well help herself. "He
+was conspicuous," says M. Flourens, "for elevation and force of
+character, for a love of greatness and true magnificence in all he did.
+His great wealth, his handsome person, and graceful manners seemed in
+correspondence with the splendour of his genius, so that of all the
+gifts which Fortune has it in her power to bestow she had denied him
+nothing."</p>
+
+<p>Many of his epigrammatic sayings have passed into proverbs: for example,
+that "genius is but a supreme capacity for taking pains." Another and
+still more celebrated passage shall be given in its entirety and with
+its original setting.</p>
+
+<p>"Style," says Buffon, "is the only passport to posterity. It is not
+range of information, nor mastery of some little known branch of
+science, nor yet novelty of matter that will ensure immortality. Works
+that can claim all this will yet die if they are conversant about
+trivial objects only, or written without taste, genius and true nobility
+of mind; for range of information, knowledge of details, novelty of
+discovery are of a volatile essence and fly off readily into other
+hands<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> that know better how to treat them. The matter is foreign to the
+man, and is not of him; the manner is the man himself."<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a></p>
+
+<p>"Le style, c'est l'homme m&ecirc;me." Elsewhere he tells us what true style
+is, but I quote from memory and cannot be sure of the passage. "Le
+style," he says, "est comme le bonheur; il vient de la douceur de
+l'&acirc;me."</p>
+
+<p>Is it possible not to think of the following?&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"But whether there be prophecies they shall fail; whether there be
+tongues they shall cease; whether there be knowledge it shall vanish
+away ... and now abideth faith, hope and charity, these three; but the
+greatest of these is charity."<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> 'Discours de R&eacute;ception &agrave; l'Acad&eacute;mie Fran&ccedil;aise.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> 1 Cor. xiii. 8, 13.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span></p>
+<p class="subhead1"><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX.</p>
+
+<p class="subhead3">BUFFON'S METHOD&mdash;THE IRONICAL CHARACTER OF HIS WORK.</p>
+
+
+<p>Buffon's idea of a method amounts almost to the denial of the
+possibility of method at all. "The true method," he writes, "is the
+complete description and exact history of each particular object,"<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a>
+and later on he asks, "is it not more simple, more natural and more true
+to call an ass an ass, and a cat a cat, than to say, without knowing
+why, that an ass is a horse, and a cat a lynx."<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a></p>
+
+<p>He admits such divisions as between animals and vegetables, or between
+vegetables and minerals, but that done, he rejects all others that can
+be founded on the nature of things themselves. He concludes that one who
+could see things in their entirety and without preconceived opinions,
+would classify animals according to the relations in which he found
+himself standing towards them:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Those which he finds most necessary and useful to him will occupy the
+first rank; thus he will give the precedence among the lower animals to
+the dog and the horse; he will next concern himself with those which
+without being domesticated, nevertheless occupy the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> same country and
+climate as himself, as for example stags, hares, and all wild animals;
+nor will it be till after he has familiarized himself with all these
+that curiosity will lead him to inquire what inhabitants there may be in
+foreign climates, such as elephants, dromedaries, &amp;c. The same will hold
+good for fishes, birds, insects, shells, and for all nature's other
+productions; he will study them in proportion to the profit which he can
+draw from them; he will consider them in that order in which they enter
+into his daily life; he will arrange them in his head according to this
+order, which is in fact that in which he has become acquainted with
+them, and in which it concerns him to think about them. This order&mdash;the
+most natural of all&mdash;is the one which I have thought it well to follow
+in this volume. My classification has no more mystery in it than the
+reader has just seen ... it is preferable to the most profound and
+ingenious that can be conceived, for there is none of all the
+classifications which ever have been made or ever can be, which has not
+more of an arbitrary character than this has. Take it for all in all,"
+he concludes, "it is more easy, more agreeable, and more useful, to
+consider things in their relation to ourselves than from any other
+standpoint."<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a></p>
+
+<p>"Has it not a better effect not only in a treatise on natural history,
+but in a picture or any work of art to arrange objects in the order and
+place in which they are commonly found, than to force them into
+association in virtue of some theory of our own? Is it not better to let
+the dog which has toes, come after the horse which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> has a single hoof,
+in the same way as we see him follow the horse in daily life, than to
+follow up the horse by the zebra, an animal which is little known to us,
+and which has no other connection with the horse than the fact that it
+has a single hoof?"<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a></p>
+
+<p>Can we suppose that Buffon really saw no more connection than this? The
+writer whom we shall presently find<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> declining to admit any essential
+difference between the skeletons of man and of the horse, can here see
+no resemblance between the zebra and the horse, except that they each
+have a single hoof. Is he to be taken at his word?</p>
+
+<p>It is perhaps necessary to tell the reader that Buffon carried the
+foregoing scheme into practice as nearly as he could in the first
+fifteen volumes of his 'Natural History.' He begins with man&mdash;and then
+goes on to the horse, the ass, the cow, sheep, goat, pig, dog, &amp;c. One
+would be glad to know whether he found it always more easy to decide in
+what order of familiarity this or that animal would stand to the
+majority of his readers than other classifiers have found it to know
+whether an individual more resembles one species or another; probably he
+never gave the matter a thought after he had gone through the first
+dozen most familiar animals, but settled generally down into a
+classification which becomes more and more specific&mdash;as when he treats
+of the apes and monkeys&mdash;till he reaches the birds, when he openly
+abandons his original idea, in deference, as he says, to the opinion of
+"le peuple des naturalistes."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span></p><p>Perhaps the key to this piece of apparent extravagance is to be found
+in the word "myst&eacute;rieuse."<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> Buffon wished to raise a standing protest
+against mystery mongering. Or perhaps more probably, he wished at once
+"to turn to animals and plants under domestication," so as to insist
+early on the main object of his work&mdash;the plasticity of animal forms.</p>
+
+<p>I am inclined to think that a vein of irony pervades the whole, or much
+the greater part of Buffon's work, and that he intended to convey, one
+meaning to one set of readers, and another to another; indeed, it is
+often impossible to believe that he is not writing between his lines for
+the discerning, what the undiscerning were not intended to see. It must
+be remembered that his 'Natural History' has two sides,&mdash;a scientific
+and a popular one. May we not imagine that Buffon would be unwilling to
+debar himself from speaking to those who could understand him, and yet
+would wish like Handel and Shakespeare to address the many, as well as
+the few? But the only manner in which these seemingly irreconcilable
+ends could be attained, would be by the use of language which should be
+self-adjusting to the capacity of the reader. So keen an observer can
+hardly have been blind to the signs of the times which were already
+close at hand. Free-thinker though he was, he was also a powerful member
+of the aristocracy, and little likely to demean himself&mdash;for so he would
+doubtless hold it&mdash;by playing the part of Voltaire or Rousseau. He would
+help those who could see to see still further, but he would not dazzle
+eyes that were yet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> imperfect with a light brighter than they could
+stand. He would therefore impose upon people, as much as he thought was
+for their good; but, on the other hand, he would not allow inferior men
+to mystify them.</p>
+
+<p>"In the private character of Buffon," says Sir William Jardine in a
+characteristic passage, "we regret there is not much to praise; his
+disposition was kind and benevolent, and he was generally beloved by his
+inferiors, followers, and dependents, which were numerous over his
+extensive property; he was strictly honourable, and was an affectionate
+parent. In early youth he had entered into the pleasures and
+dissipations of life, and licentious habits seem to have been retained
+to the end. But the great blemish in such a mind was his declared
+infidelity; it presents one of those exceptions among the persons who
+have been devoted to the study of nature; and it is not easy to imagine
+a mind apparently with such powers, scarcely acknowledging a Creator,
+and when noticed, only by an arraignment for what appeared wanting or
+defective in his great works. So openly, indeed, was the freedom of his
+religious opinions expressed, that the indignation of the Sorbonne was
+provoked. He had to enter into an explanation which he in some way
+rendered satisfactory; and while he afterwards attended to the outward
+ordinances of religion, he considered them as a system of faith for the
+multitude, and regarded those most impolitic who most opposed them."<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a></p>
+
+<p>This is partly correct and partly not. Buffon was a free-thinker, and as
+I have sufficiently explained, a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> decided opponent of the doctrine that
+rudimentary and therefore useless organs were designed by a Creator in
+order to serve some useful end throughout all time to the creature in
+which they are found.</p>
+
+<p>He was not, surely, to hide the magnificent conceptions which he had
+been the first to grasp, from those who were worthy to receive them; on
+the other hand he would not tell the uninstructed what they would
+interpret as a license to do whatever they pleased, inasmuch as there
+was no God. What he did was to point so irresistibly in the right
+direction, that a reader of any intelligence should be in no doubt as to
+the road he ought to take, and then to contradict himself so flatly as
+to reassure those who would be shocked by a truth for which they were
+not yet ready. If I am right in the view which I have taken of Buffon's
+work, it is not easy to see how he could have formed a finer scheme, nor
+have carried it out more finely.</p>
+
+<p>I should, however, warn the reader to be on his guard against accepting
+my view too hastily. So far as I know I stand alone in taking it.
+Neither Dr. Darwin nor Flourens, nor Isidore Geoffroy, nor Mr. Charles
+Darwin see any subrisive humour in Buffon's pages; but it must be
+remembered that Flourens was a strong opponent of mutability, and
+probably paid but little heed to what Buffon said on this question;
+Isidore Geoffroy is not a safe guide, as will appear presently; Mr.
+Charles Darwin seems to have adopted the one half of Isidore Geoffroy's
+conclusions without verifying either; and Dr. Erasmus Darwin, who has no
+small share of a very pleasant conscious humour, yet sometimes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> rises to
+such heights of unconscious humour, that Buffon's puny labour may well
+have been invisible to him. Dr. Darwin wrote a great deal of poetry,
+some of which was about the common pump. Miss Seward tells us, as we
+shall see later on, that he "illustrated this familiar object with a
+picture of Maternal Beauty administering sustenance to her infant."
+Buffon could not have done anything like this.</p>
+
+<p>Buffon never, then, "arraigned the Creator for what was wanting or
+defective in His works;" on the contrary, whenever he has led up by an
+irresistible chain of reasoning to conclusions which should make men
+recast their ideas concerning the Deity, he invariably retreats under
+cover of an appeal to revelation. Naturally enough, the Sorbonne
+objected to an artifice which even Buffon could not conceal completely.
+They did not like being undermined; like Buffon himself, they preferred
+imposing upon the people, to seeing others do so. Buffon made his peace
+with the Sorbonne immediately, and, perhaps, from that time forward,
+contradicted himself a little more impudently than heretofore.</p>
+
+<p>It is probably for the reasons above suggested that Buffon did not
+propound a connected scheme of evolution or descent with modification,
+but scattered his theory in fragments up and down his work in the
+prefatory remarks with which he introduces the more striking animals or
+classes of animals. He never wastes evolutionary matter in the preface
+to an uninteresting animal; and the more interesting the animal, the
+more evolution will there be commonly found. When he comes to describe
+the animal more familiarly&mdash;and he generally<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> begins a fresh chapter or
+half chapter when he does so&mdash;he writes no more about evolution, but
+gives an admirable description, which no one can fail to enjoy, and
+which I cannot think is nearly so inaccurate as is commonly supposed.
+These descriptions are the parts which Buffon intended for the general
+reader, expecting, doubtless, and desiring that such a reader should
+skip the dry parts he had been addressing to the more studious. It is
+true the descriptions are written <i>ad captandum</i>, as are all great
+works, but they succeed in captivating, having been composed with all
+the pains a man of genius and of great perseverance could bestow upon
+them. If I am not mistaken, he looked to these parts of his work to keep
+the whole alive till the time should come when the philosophical side of
+his writings should be understood and appreciated.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the goat breeds with the sheep, and may therefore serve as the text
+for a dissertation on hybridism, which is accordingly given in the
+preface to this animal. The presence of rudimentary organs under a pig's
+hoof suggests an attack upon the doctrine of final causes in so far as
+it is pretended that every part of every animal or plant was specially
+designed with a view to the wants of the animal or plant itself once and
+for ever throughout all time. The dog with his great variety of breeds
+gives an opportunity for an article on the formation of breeds and
+sub-breeds by man's artificial selection. The cat is not honoured with
+any philosophical reflections, and comes in for nothing but abuse. The
+hare suggests the rabbit, and the rabbit is a rapid breeder, although
+the hare is an unusually slow one; but this is near<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> enough, so the hare
+shall serve us for the theme of a discourse on the geometrical ratio of
+increase and the balance of power which may be observed in nature. When
+we come to the carnivora, additional reflections follow upon the
+necessity for death, and even for violent death; this leads to the
+question whether the creatures that are killed suffer pain; here, then,
+will be the proper place for considering the sensations of animals
+generally.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the most pregnant passage concerning evolution is to be found in
+the preface to the ass, which is so near the beginning of the work as to
+be only the second animal of which Buffon treats after having described
+man himself. It points strongly in the direction of his having believed
+all animal forms to have been descended from one single common ancestral
+type. Buffon did not probably choose to take his very first opportunity
+in order to insist upon matter that should point in this direction; but
+the considerations were too important to be deferred long, and are
+accordingly put forward under cover of the ass, his second animal.</p>
+
+<p>When we consider the force with which Buffon's conclusion is led up to;
+the obviousness of the conclusion itself when the premises are once
+admitted; the impossibility that such a conclusion should be again lost
+sight of if the reasonableness of its being drawn had been once
+admitted; the position in his scheme which is assigned to it by its
+propounder; the persistency with which he demonstrates during forty
+years thereafter that the premises, which he has declared should
+establish the conclusion in question, are indisputable;&mdash;when we
+consider, too, that we are dealing with a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> man of unquestionable genius,
+and that the times and circumstances of his life were such as would go
+far to explain reserve and irony&mdash;is it, I would ask, reasonable to
+suppose that Buffon did not, in his own mind, and from the first, draw
+the inference to which he leads his reader, merely because from time to
+time he tells the reader, with a shrug of the shoulders, that <i>he</i> draws
+no inferences opposed to the Book of Genesis? Is it not more likely that
+Buffon intended his reader to draw his inferences for himself, and
+perhaps to value them all the more highly on that account?</p>
+
+<p>The passage to which I am alluding is as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"If from the boundless variety which animated nature presents to us, we
+choose the body of some animal or even that of man himself to serve as a
+model with which to compare the bodies of other organized beings, we
+shall find that though all these beings have an individuality of their
+own, and are distinguished from one another by differences of which the
+gradations are infinitely subtle, there exists at the same time a
+primitive and general design which we can follow for a long way, and the
+departures from which (<i>d&eacute;g&eacute;n&eacute;rations</i>) are far more gentle than those
+from mere outward resemblance. For not to mention organs of digestion,
+circulation, and generation, which are common to all animals, and
+without which the animal would cease to be an animal, and could neither
+continue to exist nor reproduce itself&mdash;there is none the less even in
+those very parts which constitute the main difference in outward
+appearance, a striking resemblance which carries with it irresistibly
+the idea of a single pattern<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> after which all would appear to have been
+conceived. The horse, for example&mdash;what can at first sight seem more
+unlike mankind? Yet when we compare man and horse point by point and
+detail by detail, is not our wonder excited rather by the points of
+resemblance than of difference that are to be found between them? Take
+the skeleton of a man; bend forward the bones in the region of the
+pelvis, shorten the thigh bones, and those of the leg and arm, lengthen
+those of the feet and hands, run the joints together, lengthen the jaws,
+and shorten the frontal bone, finally, lengthen the spine, and the
+skeleton will now be that of a man no longer, but will have become that
+of a horse&mdash;for it is easy to imagine that in lengthening the spine and
+the jaws we shall at the same time have increased the number of the
+vertebr&aelig;, ribs, and teeth. It is but in the number of these bones, which
+may be considered accessory, and by the lengthening, shortening, or mode
+of attachment of others, that the skeleton of the horse differs from
+that of the human body.... We find ribs in man, in all the quadrupeds,
+in birds, in fishes, and we may find traces of them as far down as the
+turtle, in which they seem still to be sketched out by means of furrows
+that are to be found beneath the shell. Let it be remembered that the
+foot of the horse, which seems so different from a man's hand, is,
+nevertheless, as M. Daubenton has pointed out, composed of the same
+bones, and that we have at the end of each of our fingers a nail
+corresponding to the hoof of a horse's foot. Judge, then, whether this
+hidden resemblance is not more marvellous than any outward
+differences<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>&mdash;whether this constancy to a single plan of structure which
+we may follow from man to the quadrupeds, from the quadrupeds to the
+cetacea, from the cetacea to birds, from birds to reptiles, from
+reptiles to fishes&mdash;in which all such essential parts as heart,
+intestines, spine, are invariably found&mdash;whether, I say, this does not
+seem to indicate that the Creator when He made them would use but a
+single main idea, though at the same time varying it in every
+conceivable way, so that man might admire equally the magnificence of
+the execution and the simplicity of the design.<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a></p>
+
+<p>"If we regard the matter thus, not only the ass and the horse, <i>but even
+man himself, the apes, the quadrupeds, and all animals might be regarded
+but as forming members of one and the same family</i>. But are we to
+conclude that within this vast family which the Creator has called into
+existence out of nothing, there are other and smaller families,
+projected as it were by Nature, and brought forth by her in the natural
+course of events and after a long time, of which some contain but two
+members, as the ass and the horse, others many members, as the weasel,
+martin, stoat, ferret, &amp;c., and that on the same principle there are
+families of vegetables, containing ten, twenty, or thirty plants, as the
+case may be? If such families had any real existence they could have
+been formed only by crossing, by the accumulation of successive
+variations (<i>variation successive</i>), and by degeneration from an
+original type; but if we once admit that there are families of plants
+and animals, so that the ass may be of the family of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> horse, and
+that the one may only differ from the other through degeneration from a
+common ancestor, we might be driven to admit that the ape is of the
+family of man, that he is but a degenerate man, and that he and man have
+had a common ancestor, even as the ass and horse have had. It would
+follow then that every family, whether animal or vegetable, had sprung
+from a single stock, which after a succession of generations, had become
+higher in the case of some of its descendants and lower in that of
+others."</p>
+
+<p>What inference could be more aptly drawn? But it was not one which
+Buffon was going to put before the general public. He had said enough
+for the discerning, and continues with what is intended to make the
+conclusions they should draw even plainer to them, while it conceals
+them still more carefully from the general reader.</p>
+
+<p>"The naturalists who are so ready to establish families among animals
+and vegetables, do not seem to have sufficiently considered the
+consequences which should follow from their premises, for these would
+limit direct creation to as small a number of forms as anyone might
+think fit (reduisoient le produit imm&eacute;diat de la cr&eacute;ation, &agrave; un nombre
+d'individus aussi petit que l'on voudroit). <i>For if it were once shown
+that we had right grounds for establishing these families; if the point
+were once gained that among animals and vegetables there had been, I do
+not say several species, but even a single one, which had been produced
+in the course of direct descent from another species; if for example it
+could be once shown that the ass was but a degeneration from the
+horse&mdash;then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> there is no further limit to be set to the power of nature,
+and we should not be wrong in supposing that with sufficient time she
+could have evolved all other organized forms from one primordial type
+(et l'on n'auroit pas tort de supposer, que d'un seul &ecirc;tre elle a su
+tirer avec le temps tous les autres &ecirc;tres organis&eacute;s).</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Buffon now felt that he had sailed as near the wind as was desirable.
+His next sentence is as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"But no! It is certain <i>from revelation</i> that all animals have alike
+been favoured with the grace of an act of direct creation, and that the
+first pair of every species issued full formed from the hands of the
+Creator."<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a></p>
+
+<p>This might be taken as <i>bon&acirc; fide</i>, if it had been written by Bonnet,
+but it is impossible to accept it from Buffon. It is only those who
+judge him at second hand, or by isolated passages, who can hold that he
+failed to see the consequences of his own premises. No one could have
+seen more clearly, nor have said more lucidly, what should suffice to
+show a sympathetic reader the conclusion he ought to come to. Even when
+ironical, his irony is not the ill-natured irony of one who is merely
+amusing himself at other people's expense, but the serious and
+legitimate irony of one who must either limit the circle of those to
+whom he appeals, or must know how to make the same language appeal
+differently to the different capacities of his readers, and who trusts
+to the good sense of the discerning to understand the difficulty of his
+position, and make due allowance for it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The compromise which he thought fit to put before the public was that
+"Each species has a type of which the principal features are engraved in
+indelible and eternally permanent characters, while all accessory
+touches vary."<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a> It would be satisfactory to know where an accessory
+touch is supposed to begin and end.</p>
+
+<p>And again:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The essential characteristics of every animal have been conserved
+without alteration in their most important parts.... The individuals of
+each genus still represent the same forms as they did in the earliest
+ages, especially in the case of the larger animals" (so that the generic
+forms even of the larger animals prove not to be the same, but only
+'especially' the same as in the earliest ages).<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a></p>
+
+<p>This transparently illogical position is maintained ostensibly from
+first to last, much in the same spirit as in the two foregoing passages,
+written at intervals of thirteen years. But they are to be read by the
+light of the earlier one&mdash;placed as a lantern to the wary upon the
+threshold of his work in 1753&mdash;to the effect that a single, well
+substantiated case of degeneration would make it conceivable that all
+living beings were descended from a single common ancestor. If after
+having led up to this by a remorseless logic, a man is found
+five-and-twenty years later still substantiating cases of degeneration,
+as he has been substantiating them unceasingly in thirty quartos during
+the whole interval, there should be little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> question how seriously we
+are to take him when he wishes us to stop short of the conclusions he
+has told us we ought to draw from the premises that he has made it the
+business of his life to establish&mdash;especially when we know that he has a
+Sorbonne to keep a sharp eye upon him.</p>
+
+<p>I believe that if the reader will bear in mind the twofold, serious and
+ironical, character of Buffon's work he will understand it, and feel an
+admiration for it which will grow continually greater and greater the
+more he studies it, otherwise he will miss the whole point.</p>
+
+<p>Buffon on one of the early pages of his first volume protested against
+the introduction of either "<i>plaisanterie</i>" or "<i>&eacute;quivoque</i>" (p. 25)
+into a serious work. But I have observed that there is an unconscious
+irony in most disclaimers of this nature. When a writer begins by saying
+that he has "an ineradicable tendency to make things clear," we may
+infer that we are going to be puzzled; so when he shows that he is
+haunted by a sense of the impropriety of allowing humour to intrude into
+his work, we may hope to be amused as well as interested. As showing how
+far the objection to humour which he expressed upon his twenty-fifth
+page succeeded in carrying him safely over his twenty-sixth and
+twenty-seventh, I will quote the following, which begins on page
+twenty-six:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Aldrovandus is the most learned and laborious of all naturalists; after
+sixty years of work he has left an immense number of volumes behind him,
+which have been printed at various times, the greater number of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> them
+after his death. It would be possible to reduce them to a tenth part if
+we could rid them of all useless and foreign matter, and of a prolixity
+which I find almost overwhelming; were this only done, his books should
+be regarded as among the best we have on the subject of natural history
+in its entirety. The plan of his work is good, his classification
+distinguished for its good sense, his dividing lines well marked, his
+descriptions sufficiently accurate&mdash;monotonous it is true, but
+painstaking; the historical part of his work is less good; it is often
+confused and fabulous, and the author shows too manifestly the credulous
+tendencies of his mind.</p>
+
+<p>"While going over his work, I have been struck with that defect, or
+rather excess, which we find in almost all the books of a hundred or a
+couple of hundred years ago, and which prevails still among the
+Germans&mdash;I mean with that quantity of useless erudition with which they
+intentionally swell out their works, and the result of which is that
+their subject is overlaid with a mass of extraneous matter on which they
+enlarge with great complacency, but with no consideration whatever for
+their readers. They seem, in fact, to have forgotten what they have to
+say in their endeavour to tell us what has been said by other people.</p>
+
+<p>"I picture to myself a man like Aldrovandus, after he has once conceived
+the design of writing a complete natural history. I see him in his
+library reading, one after the other, ancients, moderns, philosophers,
+theologians, jurisconsults, historians, travellers, poets, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> reading
+with no other end than with that of catching at all words and phrases
+which can be forced from far or near into some kind of relation with his
+subject. I see him copying all these passages, or getting them copied
+for him, and arranging them in alphabetical order. He fills many
+portfolios with all manner of notes, often taken without either
+discrimination or research, and at last sets himself to write with a
+resolve that not one of all these notes shall remain unused. The result
+is that when he comes to his account of the cow or of the hen, he will
+tell us all that has ever yet been said about cows or hens; all that the
+ancients ever thought about them; all that has ever been imagined
+concerning their virtues, characters, and courage; every purpose to
+which they have ever yet been put; every story of every old woman that
+he can lay hold of; all the miracles which certain religions have
+ascribed to them; all the superstitions they have given rise to; all the
+metaphors and allegories which poets have drawn from them; the
+attributes that have been assigned to them; the representations that
+have been made of them in hieroglyphics and armorial bearings, in a word
+all the histories and all fables in which there was ever yet any mention
+either of a cow or hen. How much natural history is likely to be found
+in such a lumber room? and how is one to lay one's hand upon the little
+that there may actually be?"<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is hoped that the reader will see Buffon, much us Buffon saw the
+learned Aldrovandus. He should see<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> him going into his library, &amp;c., and
+quietly chuckling to himself as he wrote such a passage as the one in
+which we lately found him saying that the larger animals had
+"especially" the same generic forms as they had always had. And the
+reader should probably see Daubenton chuckling also.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> Tom. i. p. 24, 1749.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> Tom. i. p. 40, 1749.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> Vol. i. p. 34, 1749.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> Tom. i. p. 36.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> See p. <a href="#Page_88">88</a> of this volume; see
+also p. <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, and <a href="#Page_164">164</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> Tom. i. p. 33.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> 'The Naturalist's Library,' vol. ii. p. 23, Edinburgh,
+1843.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> Tom. iv. p. 381, 1753.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> Tom. iv. p. 383, 1753 (this was the first volume on the
+lower animals).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> Tom. xiii. p. ix. 1765.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> Sup. tom. v. p. 27, 1778.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> Tom. i. p. 28, 1749.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span></p>
+<p class="subhead1"><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X.</p>
+
+<p class="subhead3">SUPPOSED FLUCTUATIONS OF OPINION&mdash;CAUSES OR MEANS OF THE TRANSFORMATION
+OF SPECIES.</p>
+
+
+<p>Enough, perhaps, has been already said to disabuse the reader's mind of
+the common misconception of Buffon, namely, that he was more or less of
+an elegant trifler with science, who cared rather about the language in
+which his ideas were clothed than about the ideas themselves, and that
+he did not hold the same opinions for long together; but the accusation
+of instability has been made in such high quarters that it is necessary
+to refute it still more completely.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Darwin, for example, in his "Historical Sketch of the Recent
+Progress of Opinion on the Origin of Species" prefixed to all the later
+editions of his own 'Origin of Species,' says of Buffon that he "was the
+first author who, in modern times, has treated" the origin of species
+"in a scientific spirit. But," he continues, "as his opinions fluctuated
+greatly at different periods, and as he does not enter on the causes or
+means of the transformation of species, I need not here enter on
+details."<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Darwin seems to have followed the one half of Isidore Geoffroy St.
+Hilaire's "full account of Buffon's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> conclusions" upon the subject of
+descent with modification,<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a> to which he refers with approval on the
+second page of his historical sketch.<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a></p>
+
+<p>Turning, then, to Isidore Geoffroy's work, I find that in like manner he
+too has been following the one half of what Buffon actually said. But
+even so, he awards Buffon very high praise.</p>
+
+<p>"Buffon," he writes, "is to the doctrine of the mutability of species
+what Linn&aelig;us is to that of its fixity. It is only since the appearance
+of Buffon's 'Natural History,' and in consequence thereof, that the
+mutability of species has taken rank among scientific questions."<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a></p>
+
+<p class="subhead2a">. . . . . . . . . . .</p>
+
+<p>"Buffon, who comes next in chronological order after Bacon, follows him
+in no other respect than that of time. He is entirely original in
+arriving at the doctrine of the variability of organic types, and in
+enouncing it after long hesitation, during which one can watch the
+labour of a great intelligence freeing itself little by little from the
+yoke of orthodoxy.</p>
+
+<p>"But from this source come difficulties in the interpretation of
+Buffon's work which have misled many writers. Buffon expresses
+absolutely different opinions in different parts of his natural
+history&mdash;so much so that partisans and opponents of the doctrine of the
+fixity of species have alike believed and still believe themselves at
+liberty to claim Buffon as one of the great authorities upon their
+side."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then follow the quotations upon which M. Geoffroy relies&mdash;to which I
+will return presently&mdash;after which the conclusion runs thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The dates, however, of the several passages in question are sufficient
+to explain the differences in their tenor, in a manner worthy of Buffon.
+Where are the passages in which Buffon affirms the immutability of
+species? At the beginning of his work. His first volume on animals<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a>
+is dated 1753. The two following are those in which Buffon still shares
+the views of Linn&aelig;us; they are dated 1755 and 1756. Of what date are
+those in which Buffon declares for variability? From 1761 to 1766. And
+those in which, after having admitted variability and declared in favour
+of it, he proceeds to limit it? From 1765 to 1778.</p>
+
+<p>"The inference is sufficiently simple. Buffon does but correct himself.
+He does not fluctuate. He goes once for all from one opinion to the
+other, from what he accepted at starting on the authority of another to
+what he recognized as true after twenty years of research. If while
+trying to set himself free from the prevailing notions, he in the first
+instance went, like all other innovators, somewhat to the opposite
+extreme, he essays as soon as may be to retrace his steps in some
+measure, and thenceforward to remain unchanged.</p>
+
+<p>"Let the reader cast his eye over the general table of contents wherein
+Buffon, at the end of his 'Natural History,' gives a <i>r&eacute;sum&eacute;</i> of all of
+it that he is anxious to preserve. He passes over alike the passages in
+which he affirms and those in which he unreservedly denies<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> the
+immutability of species, and indicates only the doctrine of the
+permanence of essential features and the variability of details (toutes
+les touches accessoires); he repeats this eleven years later in his
+'&Eacute;poques de la Nature'" (published 1778).<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a></p>
+
+<p>But I think I can show that the passages which M. Geoffroy brings
+forward, to prove that Buffon was in the first instance a supporter of
+invariability, do not bear him out in the deduction he has endeavoured
+to draw from them.</p>
+
+<p>"What author," he asks, "has ever pronounced more decidedly than Buffon
+in favour of the invariability of species? Where can we find a more
+decided expression of opinion than the following?</p>
+
+<p>"'The different species of animals are separated from one another by a
+space which Nature cannot overstep.'"</p>
+
+<p>On turning, however, to Buffon himself, I find the passage to stand as
+follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Although</i> the different species of animals are separated from one
+another by a space which Nature cannot overstep&mdash;<i>yet some of them
+approach so nearly to one another in so many respects that there is only
+room enough left for the getting in of a line of separation between
+them</i>,"<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a> and on the following page he distinctly encourages the idea
+of the mutability of species in the following passage:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"In place of regarding the ass as a degenerate horse, there would be
+more reason in calling the horse a more perfect kind of ass (un &acirc;ne
+perfectionn&eacute;), and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> sheep a more delicate kind of goat, that we have
+tended, perfected, and propagated for our use, and that the more perfect
+animals in general&mdash;especially the domestic animals&mdash;<i>draw their origin
+from some less perfect species of that kind of wild animal which they
+most resemble. Nature alone not being able to do as much as Nature and
+man can do in concert with one another</i>."<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a></p>
+
+<p>But Buffon had long ago declared that if the horse and the ass could be
+considered as being blood relations there was no stopping short of the
+admission that all animals might also be blood relations&mdash;that is to
+say, descended from common ancestors&mdash;and now he tells us that the ass
+and horse <i>are</i> in all probability descended from common ancestors. Will
+a reader of any literary experience hold that so laborious, and yet so
+witty a writer, and one so studious of artistic effect, could ignore the
+broad lines he had laid down for himself, or forget how what he had said
+would bear on subsequent passages, and subsequent passages on it? A less
+painstaking author than Buffon may yet be trusted to remember his own
+work well enough to avoid such literary bad workmanship as this. If
+Buffon had seen reason to change his mind he would have said so, and
+would have contradicted the inference he had originally pronounced to be
+deducible from an admission of kinship between the ass and the horse.
+This, it is hardly necessary to say, he never does, though he frequently
+thinks it well to remind his reader of the fact that the ass and the
+horse are in all probability<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> closely related. This is bringing two and
+two together with sufficient closeness for all practical purposes.</p>
+
+<p>Should not M. Geoffroy's question, then, have rather been "Who has ever
+pronounced more grudgingly, even in an early volume, &amp;c., &amp;c., and who
+has more completely neutralized whatever concession he might appear to
+have been making?"</p>
+
+<p>Nor does the only other passage which M. Geoffroy brings forward to
+prove that Buffon was originally a believer in the fixity of species
+bear him out much better. It is to be found on the opening page of a
+brief introduction to the wild animals. M. Geoffroy quotes it thus: "We
+shall see Nature dictating her laws, so simple yet so unchangeable, and
+imprinting her own immutable characters upon every species." But M.
+Geoffroy does not give the passage which, on the same page, admits
+mutability among domesticated animals, in the case of which he declares
+we find Nature "rarement perfectionn&eacute;e, souvent alter&eacute;e, d&eacute;figur&eacute;e;" nor
+yet does he deem it necessary to show that the context proves that this
+unchangeableness of wild animals is only relative; and this he should
+certainly have done, for two pages later on Buffon speaks of the
+American tigers, lions, and panthers as being "degenerated, if their
+original nature was cruel and ferocious; or, rather, they have
+experienced the effect of climate, and under a milder sky have assumed a
+milder nature, their excesses have become moderated, and by the changes
+which they have undergone they have become more in conformity with the
+country they inhabit."<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>And again:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"If we consider each species in the different climates which it
+inhabits, we shall find perceptible varieties as regards size and form:
+they all derive an impress to a greater or less extent from the climate
+in which they live. <i>These changes are only made slowly and
+imperceptibly.</i> Nature's great workman is Time. He marches ever with an
+even pace, and does nothing by leaps and bounds, but by degrees,
+gradations, and succession he does all things; and the changes which he
+works&mdash;at first imperceptible&mdash;become little by little perceptible, and
+show themselves eventually in results about which there can be no
+mistake.</p>
+
+<p>"Nevertheless animals in a free, wild state are perhaps less subject
+than any other living beings, man not excepted, to alterations, changes,
+and variations of all kinds. Being free to choose their own food and
+climate, they vary less than domestic animals vary."<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id="FNanchor_60_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a> The conditions
+of their existence, in fact, remaining practically constant, the animals
+are no less constant themselves.</p>
+
+<p>The writer of the above could hardly be claimed as a very thick and thin
+partisan of immutability, even though he had not shown from the first
+how clearly he saw that there was no middle position between the denial
+of all mutability, and the admission that in the course of sufficient
+time any conceivable amount of mutability is possible. I will give a
+considerable part of what I have found in the first six volumes of
+Buffon to bear one way or the other on his views concerning the
+mutability of species; and I think the reader, so far from agreeing with
+M. Isidore Geoffroy that Buffon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> began his work with a belief in the
+fixity of species, will find, that from the very first chapter onward,
+he leant strongly to mutability, even if he did not openly avow his
+belief in it.</p>
+
+<p>In support of this assertion, one quotation must suffice:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Nature advances by gradations which pass unnoticed. She passes from one
+species, and often from one genus to another by imperceptible degrees,
+so that we meet with a great number of mean species and objects of such
+doubtful characters that we know not where to place them."<a name="FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a></p>
+
+<p>The reader who turns to Buffon himself will find the idea that Buffon
+took a less advanced position in his old age than he had taken in middle
+life is also without foundation.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Darwin has said that Buffon "does not enter into the causes or means
+of the transformation of species." It is not easy to admit the justice
+of this. Independently of his frequently insisting on the effect of all
+kinds of changed surroundings, he has devoted a long chapter of over
+sixty quarto pages to this very subject; it is to be found in his
+fourteenth volume, and is headed "De la D&eacute;g&eacute;n&eacute;ration des Animaux," of
+which words "On descent with modification" will be hardly more than a
+literal translation. I shall give a fuller but still too brief outline
+of the chapter later on, and will confine myself here to saying that the
+three principal causes of modification which Buffon brings forward are
+changes of climate, of food, and the effects of domestication.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> He may
+be said to have attributed variation to the direct and specific action
+of changed conditions of life, and to have had but little conception of
+the view which he was himself to suggest to Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and
+through him to Lamarck.</p>
+
+<p>Isidore Geoffroy, writing of Lamarck, and comparing his position with
+that taken by Buffon, says, on the whole truly, that "what Buffon
+ascribes to the general effects of climate, Lamarck maintains to be
+caused, especially in the case of animals, by the force of habits; <i>so
+that, according to him, they are not, properly speaking, modified by the
+conditions of their existence, but are only induced by these conditions
+to set about modifying themselves</i>."<a name="FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a> But it is very hard to say how
+much Buffon saw and how much he did not see. He may be trusted to have
+seen that if he once allowed the thin end of this wedge into his system,
+he could no more assign limits to the effect which living forms might
+produce upon their own organisms by effort and ingenuity in the course
+of long time, than he could set limits to what he had called the power
+of Nature if he was once to admit that an ass and a horse might, through
+that power, have been descended from a common ancestor. Nevertheless, he
+shows no unwillingness or recalcitrancy about letting the wedge enter,
+for he speaks of domestication as inducing modifications "sufficiently
+profound to become constant and hereditary in successive generations ...
+<i>by its action on bodily habits it influences also their natures,
+instincts, and most inward qualities</i>."<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id="FNanchor_63_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>
+This is a very thick thin end to have been allowed to slip in unawares;
+but it is astonishing how little Buffon can see when he likes. I hardly
+doubt but he would have been well enough pleased to have let the wedge
+enter still farther, but this fluctuating writer had assigned himself
+his limits some years before, and meant adhering to them. Again, in this
+very chapter on Degeneration, to which M. Geoffroy has referred, there
+are passages on the callosities on a camel's knees, on the llama, and on
+the haunches of pouched monkeys which might have been written by Dr.
+Darwin himself.<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a> They will appear more fully presently. Buffon now
+probably felt that he had said enough, and that others might be trusted
+to carry the principle farther when the time was riper for its
+enforcement.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> 'Origin of Species,' p. xiii. ed. 1876.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> 'Hist. Nat. G&eacute;n.,' tom. ii. p. 405, 1859.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> 'Origin of Species,' p. xiv. 1876.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> 'Hist. Nat. G&eacute;n.,' tom. ii. p. 383.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> Tom. iv.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a> 'Hist. Nat. G&eacute;n.,' tom. ii. p. 391, 1859.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> Tom. v. p. 59, 1755.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> Tom. v. p. 60.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a> Tom. vi. p. 58, 1756.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> Tom. vi. pp. 59-60, 1756.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> Tom. i. p. 13, 1749.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a> 'Hist. Nat. G&eacute;n.,' tom. ii. p. 411, 1859.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a> Tom. xi. p. 290, 1764 (misprinted on title-page 1754).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a> See tom. xiv. p. 326, 1766; and
+p. <a href="#Page_162">162</a> of this volume.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span></p>
+<p class="subhead1"><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI.</p>
+
+<p class="subhead3">BUFFON&mdash;FULLER QUOTATIONS.</p>
+
+
+<p>Let us now proceed to those fuller quotations which may answer the
+double purpose of bearing me out in the view of Buffon's work which I
+have taken in the foregoing pages, and of inducing the reader to turn to
+Buffon himself.</p>
+
+<p>I have already said that from the very commencement of his work Buffon
+showed a proclivity towards considerations which were certain to lead
+him to a theory of evolution, even though he had not, as I believe he
+had, already taken a more comprehensive view of the subject than he
+thought fit to proclaim unreservedly.</p>
+
+<p>In 1749, at the beginning of his first volume he writes:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The first truth that makes itself apparent on serious study of Nature,
+is one that man may perhaps find humiliating; it is this&mdash;that he, too,
+must take his place in the ranks of animals, being, as he is, an animal
+in every material point. It is possible also that the instinct of the
+lower animals will strike him as more unerring, and their industry more
+marvellous than his own. Then, running his eye over the different
+objects of which the universe is composed, he will observe with
+astonishment<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> that we can descend by almost imperceptible degrees from
+the most perfect creature to the most formless matter&mdash;from the most
+highly organized animal to the most entirely inorganic substance. He
+will recognize this gradation as the great work of Nature; and he will
+observe it not only as regards size and form, but also in respect of
+movements, and in the successive generations of every species.<a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a></p>
+
+<p>"Hence," he continues, "arises the difficulty of arriving at any perfect
+system or method in dealing either with Nature as a whole or even with
+any single one of her subdivisions. The gradations are so subtle that we
+are often obliged to make arbitrary divisions. Nature knows nothing
+about our classifications, and does not choose to lend herself to them
+without reserve. We therefore see a number of intermediate species and
+objects which it is very hard to classify, and which of necessity
+derange our system whatever it may be."<a name="FNanchor_66_66" id="FNanchor_66_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a></p>
+
+<p>"The attempt to form perfect systems has led to such disastrous results
+that it is now more easy to learn botany than the terminology which has
+been adopted as its language."<a name="FNanchor_67_67" id="FNanchor_67_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a></p>
+
+<p>After saying that "<i>la marche de la Nature</i>" has been misunderstood, and
+that her progress has ever been by a succession of slow steps, he
+maintains that the only proper course is to class together whatever
+objects resemble one another, and to separate those which are unlike. If
+individual specimens are absolutely alike, or differ so little that the
+differences can hardly be perceived, they must be classed as of the same
+species;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> if the differences begin to be perceptible, but if at the same
+time there is more resemblance than difference, the individuals
+presenting these features should be classed as of a different species,
+but as of the same genus; if the differences are still more marked, but
+nevertheless do not exceed the resemblances, then they must be taken as
+not only specific but generic, though as not sufficient to warrant
+the individuals in which they appear, being placed in different
+classes. If they are still greater, then the individuals are not even
+of the same class; but it should be always understood that the
+resemblances and differences are to be considered in reference to the
+entirety of the plant or animal, and not in reference to any particular
+part only.<a name="FNanchor_68_68" id="FNanchor_68_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a> The two rocks which are equally to be avoided are, on
+the one hand, absence of method, and, on the other, a tendency to
+over-systematize.<a name="FNanchor_69_69" id="FNanchor_69_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a></p>
+
+<p>Like Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and more recently Mr. Francis Darwin, Buffon is
+more struck with the resemblances than with the differences between
+animals and plants, but he supposes the vegetable kingdom to be a
+continuation of the animal, extending lower down the scale, instead of
+holding as Dr. Darwin did, that animals and vegetables have been
+contemporaneous in their degeneration from a common stock.</p>
+
+<p>"We see," he writes, "that there is no absolute and essential difference
+between animals and vegetables, but that Nature descends by subtle
+gradations from what we deem the most perfect animal to one which is
+less so, and again from this to the vegetable. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> fresh-water polypus
+may perhaps be considered as the lowest animal, and as at the same time
+the highest plant."<a name="FNanchor_70_70" id="FNanchor_70_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a></p>
+
+<p>Looking to the resemblances between animals and plants, he declares that
+their modes of reproduction and growth involve such close analogy that
+no difference of an essential nature can be admitted between them.<a name="FNanchor_71_71" id="FNanchor_71_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a></p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, Buffon appears, at first sight, to be more struck
+with the points of difference between the mental powers of the lower
+animals and man than with those which they present in common. It is
+impossible, however, to accept this as Buffon's real opinion, on the
+strength of isolated passages, and in face of a large number of others
+which point stealthily but irresistibly to an exactly opposite
+conclusion. We find passages which show a clear apprehension of facts
+that the world is only now beginning to consider established, followed
+by others which no man who has kept a dog or cat will be inclined to
+agree with. I think I have already explained this sufficiently by
+referring it to the impossibility of his taking any other course under
+the circumstances of his own position and the times in which he lived.
+Buffon does not deal with such pregnant facts, as, for example, the
+geometrical ratio of increase, in such manner as to suggest that he was
+only half aware of their importance and bearing. On the contrary, in the
+very middle of those passages which, if taken literally, should most
+shake confidence in his judgment, there comes a sustaining sentence, so
+quiet that it shall pass unnoticed by all who are not attentive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>
+listeners, yet so encouraging to those who are taking pains to
+understand their author that their interest is revived at once.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, he has insisted, and means insisting much further, on the many
+points of resemblance between man and the lower animals, and it has now
+become necessary to neutralize the effect of what he has written upon
+the minds of those who are not yet fitted to see instinct and reason as
+differentiations of a single faculty. He accordingly does this, and, as
+is his wont, he does it handsomely; so handsomely that even his most
+admiring followers begin to be uncomfortable. Whereon he begins his next
+paragraph with "Animals have excellent senses, but not <i>generally, all
+of them</i>, as good as man's."<a name="FNanchor_72_72" id="FNanchor_72_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a> We have heard of damning with faint
+praise. Is not this to praise with faint damnation? Yet we can lay hold
+of nothing. It was not Buffon's intention that we should. An ironical
+writer, concerning whom we cannot at once say whether he is in earnest
+or not, is an actor who is continually interrupting his performance in
+order to remind the spectator that he is acting. Complaint, then,
+against an ironical writer on the score that he puzzles us, is a
+complaint against irony itself; for a writer is not ironical unless he
+puzzles. He should not puzzle unless he believes that this is the best
+manner of making his reader understand him in the end, or without having
+a <i>bonne bouche</i> for those who will be at the pains to puzzle over him;
+and he should make it plain that for long parts of his work together he
+is to be taken according to the literal interpretation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> of his words;
+but if he has observed the above duly, he is a successful or
+unsuccessful writer according as he puzzles or fails to do so, and
+should be praised or blamed accordingly. To condemn irony entirely, is
+to say that there should be no people allowed to go about the world but
+those to whom irony would be an impertinence.</p>
+
+<p>Having already in some measure reassured us by the faintness with which
+he disparages the senses of the lower animals, Buffon continues, that
+these senses, whether in man or in animals, may be greatly developed by
+exercise: which we may suppose that a man of even less humour than
+Buffon must know to be great nonsense, unless it be taken to involve
+that animals as well as man can reflect and remember; it now, therefore,
+becomes necessary to reassure the other side, and to maintain that
+animals cannot reflect, and have no memory. "<i>Je crois</i>," he writes,
+"<i>qu'on peut d&eacute;montrer que les animaux n'ont aucune connaissance du
+pass&eacute;, aucune id&eacute;e du temps, et que par cons&eacute;quent ils n'ont pas la
+m&eacute;moire</i>."<a name="FNanchor_73_73" id="FNanchor_73_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a></p>
+
+<p>I am ashamed of even arguing seriously against the supposition that this
+was Buffon's real opinion. The very sweepingness of the assertion, the
+baldness, and I might say brutality with which it is made, are
+convincing in their suggestiveness of one who is laughing very quietly
+in his sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>"Society," he continues, later on, "considered even in the case of a
+single human family, involves the power of reason; it involves feeling
+in such of the lower<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> animals as form themselves into societies freely
+and of their own accord, but it involves nothing whatever in the case of
+bees, who have found themselves thrown together through no effort of
+their own. Such societies can only be, and it is plain have only been,
+the results&mdash;neither foreseen, nor ordained, nor conceived by those who
+achieve them&mdash;of the universal mechanism and of the laws of movement
+established by the Creator."<a name="FNanchor_74_74" id="FNanchor_74_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_74_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a> A hive of bees, in fact, is to be
+considered as composed of "ten thousand animated automata."<a name="FNanchor_75_75" id="FNanchor_75_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_75_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a> Years
+later he repeats these views with little if any modification.<a name="FNanchor_76_76" id="FNanchor_76_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_76_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a> A
+still more remarkable passage is to be found a little farther on. "If,"
+he asks, "animals have neither understanding, mind, nor memory, if they
+are wholly without intelligence, and if they are limited to the exercise
+and experience of feeling only," and it must be remembered that Buffon
+has denied all these powers to the inferior animals, "whence comes that
+remarkable prescient instinct which so many of them exhibit? Is the mere
+power of feeling sensations sufficient to make them garner up food
+during the summer, on which food they may subsist in winter? Does not
+this involve the power of comparing dates, and the idea of a coming
+future, an '<i>inqui&eacute;tude raisonn&eacute;e</i>'? Why do we find in the hole of the
+field-mouse enough acorns to keep him until the following summer? Why do
+we find such an abundant store of honey and wax within the bee-hive? Why
+do ants store food? Why should birds make nests if they do not know that
+they will have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> need of them? Whence arise the stories that we hear of
+the wisdom of foxes, which hide their prey in different spots, that they
+may find it at their need and live upon it for days together? Or of the
+subtilty of owls, which husband their store of mice by biting off their
+feet, so that they cannot run away? Or of the marvellous penetration of
+bees, which know beforehand that their queen should lay so many eggs in
+such and such a time, and that so many of these eggs should be of a kind
+which will develop into drones, and so many more of such another kind as
+should become neuters; and who in consequence of this their
+foreknowledge build so many larger cells for the first, and so many
+smaller for the second?"<a name="FNanchor_77_77" id="FNanchor_77_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_77_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a></p>
+
+<p>Buffon answers these questions thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Before replying to them," he says, "we should make sure of the facts
+themselves;&mdash;are they to be depended upon? Have they been narrated by
+men of intelligence and philosophers, or are they popular fables only?"
+(How many delightful stories of the same character does he not soon
+proceed to tell us himself). "I am persuaded that all these pretended
+wonders will disappear, and the cause of each one of them be found upon
+due examination. But admitting their truth for a moment, and granting to
+the narrators of them that animals have a presentiment, a forethought,
+and even a certainty concerning coming events, does it therefore follow
+that this should spring from intelligence? If so, theirs is assuredly
+much greater than our own. For our foreknowledge amounts to conjecture
+only; the vaunted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> light of our reason doth but suffice to show us a
+little probability; whereas the forethought of animals is unerring, and
+must spring from some principle far higher than any we know of through
+our own experience. Does not such a consequence, I ask, <i>prove repugnant
+alike to religion and common sense</i>?"<a name="FNanchor_78_78" id="FNanchor_78_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_78_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a></p>
+
+<p>This is Buffon's way. Whenever he has shown us clearly what we ought to
+think, he stops short suddenly on religious grounds. It is incredible
+that the writer who at the very commencement of his work makes man take
+his place among the animals, and who sees a subtle gradation extending
+over all living beings "from the most perfect creature"&mdash;who must be
+man&mdash;"to the most entirely inorganic substance"&mdash;I say it is incredible
+that such a writer should not see that he had made out a stronger case
+in favour of the reason of animals than against it.</p>
+
+<p>According to him, the test whether a thing is to have such and such a
+name is whether it looks fairly like other things to which the same name
+is given; if it does, it is to have the name; if it does not, it is not.
+No one accepted this lesson more heartily than Dr. Darwin, whose shrewd
+and homely mind, if not so great as Buffon's, was still one of no common
+order. Let us see the view he took of this matter. He writes:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"If we were better acquainted with the histories of those insects which
+are formed into societies, as the bees, wasps, and ants, I make no doubt
+but we should find that their arts and improvements are not so similar<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>
+and uniform as they now appear to us, but that they arose in the same
+manner from experience and tradition, as the arts of our own species;
+though their reasoning is from fewer ideas, is busied about fewer
+objects, and is executed with less energy."<a name="FNanchor_79_79" id="FNanchor_79_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_79_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a></p>
+
+<p>And again, a little later:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"According to the late observations of Mr. Hunter, it appears that
+beeswax is not made from the dust of the anthers of flowers, which they
+bring home on their thighs, but that this makes what is termed
+bee-bread, and is used for the purpose of feeding the bee-maggots; in
+the same way butterflies live on honey, but the previous caterpillar
+lives on vegetable leaves, while the maggots of large flies require
+flesh for their food. What induces the bee, who lives on honey, to lay
+up vegetable powder for its young? What induces the butterfly to lay its
+eggs on leaves when itself feeds on honey?... If these are not
+deductions from their own previous experience or observation, all the
+actions of mankind must be resolved into instincts."<a name="FNanchor_80_80" id="FNanchor_80_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_80_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a></p>
+
+<p>Or again:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Common worms stop up their holes with leaves or straws to prevent the
+frost from injuring them, or the centipes from devouring them. The
+habits of peace or the stratagems of war of these subterranean nations
+are covered from our view; but a friend of mine prevailed on a
+distressed worm to enter the hole of another worm on a bowling green,
+and he presently returned much wounded about the head, ... which
+evinces<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> they have design in stopping the mouths of their
+habitations."<a name="FNanchor_81_81" id="FNanchor_81_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_81_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a></p>
+
+<p>Does it not look as if Dr. Darwin had in his mind the very passage of
+Buffon which I have been last quoting? and is it likely that the facts
+which were accepted by Dr. Darwin without question, or the conclusions
+which were obvious to him, were any less accepted by or obvious to
+Buffon?</p>
+
+
+<p class="center padtop"><i>The Goat&mdash;Hybridism.</i></p>
+
+<p>In his prefatory remarks upon the goat, Buffon complains of the want of
+systematic and certified experiment as to what breeds and species will
+be fertile <i>inter se</i>, and with what results. The passage is too long to
+quote, but is exceedingly good, and throughout involves belief in a very
+considerable amount of modification in the course of successive
+generations. I may give the following as an example:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"We do not know whether or no the zebra would breed with the horse or
+ass&mdash;whether the large-tailed Barbary sheep would be fertile if crossed
+with our own&mdash;whether the chamois is not a wild goat; and whether it
+would not form an intermediate breed if crossed with our domesticated
+goats; we do not know whether the differences between apes are really
+specific, or whether apes are not like dogs, one single species, of
+which there are many different breeds.... Our ignorance concerning all
+these facts is almost inevitable, as the experiments which would decide
+them require more time, pains, and money than can be spared from, the
+life and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> fortune of an ordinary man. I have spent many years in
+experiments of this kind, and will give my results when I come to my
+chapter on mules; but I may as well say at once that they have thrown
+but little light upon the subject, and have been for the most part
+unsuccessful."<a name="FNanchor_82_82" id="FNanchor_82_82"></a><a href="#Footnote_82_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a></p>
+
+<p>"But these," he continues, "are the very points which must determine our
+whole knowledge concerning animals, their right division into species,
+and the true understanding of their history." He proposes therefore, in
+the present lack of knowledge, "to regard all animals as different
+species which do not breed together under our eyes," and to leave time
+and experiment to correct mistakes.<a name="FNanchor_83_83" id="FNanchor_83_83"></a><a href="#Footnote_83_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a></p>
+
+
+<p class="center padtop"><i>The Pig&mdash;Doctrine of Final Causes.</i></p>
+
+<p>We have seen that the doctrine of the mutability of species has been
+unfortunately entangled with that of final causes, or the belief that
+every organ and every part of each animal or plant has been designed to
+serve some purpose useful to the animal, and this not only useful at
+some past time, but useful now, and for all time to come. He who
+believes species to be mutable will see in many organs signs of the
+history of the individual, but nothing more. Buffon, as I have said, is
+explicit in his denial of final causes in the sense expressed above.
+After pointing out that the pig is an animal whose relation to other
+animals it is difficult to define, he says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"In a word, it is of a nature altogether equivocal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> and ambiguous, or,
+rather, it must appear so to those who believe the hypothetical order of
+their own ideas to be the real order of things, and who see nothing in
+the infinite chain of existences but a few apparent points to which they
+will refer everything.</p>
+
+<p>"But we cannot know Nature by inclosing her action within the narrow
+circle of our own thoughts.... Instead of limiting her action, we should
+extend it through immensity itself; we should regard nothing as
+impossible, but should expect to find all things&mdash;supposing that all
+things are possible&mdash;nay, <i>are</i>. Doubtful species, then, irregular
+productions, anomalous existences will henceforth no longer surprise us,
+and will find their place in the infinite order of things as duly as any
+others. They fill up the links of the chain; they form knots and
+intermediate points, and also they mark its extremities: they are of
+especial value to human intelligence, as providing it with cases in
+which Nature, being less in conformity with herself, is taken more
+unawares, so that we can recognize singular characters and fleeting
+traits which show us that her ends are much more general than are our
+own views of those ends, and that, though she does nothing in vain, yet
+she does but little with the designs which we ascribe to her."<a name="FNanchor_84_84" id="FNanchor_84_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_84_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a></p>
+
+<p>"The pig," he continues, "is not formed on an original, special, and
+perfect type; its type is compounded of that of many other animals. It
+has parts which are evidently useless, or which at any rate it cannot
+use&mdash;such as toes, all the bones of which are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> perfectly formed but
+which are yet of no service to it. Nature then is far from subjecting
+herself to final causes in the composition of her creatures. Why should
+she not sometimes add superabundant parts, seeing she so often omits
+essential ones?" "How many animals are there not which lack sense and
+limbs? Why is it considered so necessary that every part in an
+individual should be useful to the other parts and to the whole animal?
+Should it not be enough that they do not injure each other nor stand in
+the way of each other's fair development? All parts coexist which do not
+injure each other enough to destroy each other, and perhaps in the
+greater number of living beings the parts which must be considered as
+relative, useful, or necessary, are fewer than those which are
+indifferent, useless, and superabundant. But we&mdash;ever on the look out to
+refer all parts to a certain end&mdash;when we can see no apparent use for
+them suppose them to have hidden uses, and imagine connections which are
+without foundation, and serve only to obscure our perception of Nature
+as she really is: we fail to see that we thus rob philosophy of her true
+character, which is to inquire into the 'how' of things&mdash;into the manner
+in which Nature acts&mdash;and that we substitute for this true object a vain
+idea, seeking to divine the 'why'&mdash;the ends which she has proposed in
+acting."<a name="FNanchor_85_85" id="FNanchor_85_85"></a><a href="#Footnote_85_85" class="fnanchor">[85]</a></p>
+
+
+<p class="center padtop"><i>The Dog&mdash;Varieties in consequence of Man's Selection.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Of all animals the dog is most susceptible of impressions, and becomes
+most easily modified by moral<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> causes. He is also the one whose nature
+is most subject to the variations and alterations caused by physical
+influences: he varies to a prodigious extent, in temperament, mental
+powers, and in habits: his very form is not constant;" ... but presents
+so many differences that "dogs have nothing in common but conformity of
+interior organization, and the power of interbreeding freely."...</p>
+
+<p>... "How then can we detect the characters of the original race? How
+recognize the effects produced by climate, food, &amp;c.? How, again,
+distinguish these from those other effects which come from the
+intermixture of races, either when wild or in a state of domestication?
+All these causes, in the course of time, alter even the most constant
+forms, so that the imprint of Nature does not preserve its sharpness in
+races which man has dealt with largely. Those animals which are free to
+choose climate and food for themselves can best conserve their original
+character, ... but those which man has subjected to his own
+influence&mdash;which he has taken with him from clime to clime, whose food,
+habits, and manner of life he has altered&mdash;must also have changed their
+form far more than others; and as a matter of fact we find much greater
+variety in the species of domesticated animals than in those of wild
+ones. Of all these, however, the dog is the one most closely attached to
+man, living like man the least regular manner of life; he is also the
+one whose feelings so master him as to make him docile, obedient,
+susceptible of every kind of impression, and even of every kind of
+constraint; it is not surprising, then, that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> he should of all animals
+present us with the greatest variety in shape, stature, colour, and all
+physical and mental qualities."</p>
+
+<p>Here again the direct cause of modification is given as being the inner
+feelings of the animal modified, change of conditions being the indirect
+cause as with Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck.</p>
+
+<p>"Other circumstances, however, concur to produce these results. The dog
+is short-lived: he breeds often and freely: he is perpetually under the
+eye of man; hence when&mdash;by some chance common enough with Nature&mdash;a
+variation or special feature has made its appearance, man has tried to
+perpetuate it by uniting together the individuals in which it has
+appeared, as people do now who wish to form new breeds of dogs and other
+animals. Moreover, though species were all formed at the same time, yet
+the number of generations since the creation has been much greater in
+the short-lived than in the long-lived species: hence variations,
+alterations, and departure from the original type, may be expected to
+have become more perceptible in the case of animals which are so much
+farther removed from their original stock.</p>
+
+<p>"Man is now eight times nearer Adam than the dog is to the first
+dog&mdash;for man lives eighty years, while the dog lives but ten. If, then,
+these species have an equal tendency to depart from their original type,
+the departure should be eight times more apparent with the dog than with
+man."<a name="FNanchor_86_86" id="FNanchor_86_86"></a><a href="#Footnote_86_86" class="fnanchor">[86]</a></p>
+
+<p>Here follow remarks upon the great variability of ephemeral insects and
+of animal plants, on the impossibility<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> of discovering the parent-stock
+of our wheat and of others of our domesticated plants,<a name="FNanchor_87_87" id="FNanchor_87_87"></a><a href="#Footnote_87_87" class="fnanchor">[87]</a> and on the
+tendency of both plants and animals to resume feral characteristics on
+becoming wild again after domestication.<a name="FNanchor_88_88" id="FNanchor_88_88"></a><a href="#Footnote_88_88" class="fnanchor">[88]</a></p>
+
+
+<p class="center padtop"><i>The Hare&mdash;Geometrical Ratio of Increase.</i></p>
+
+<p>We have already seen that it was Buffon's pleasure to consider the hare
+a rabbit for the time being, and to make it the text for a discourse
+upon fecundity. I have no doubt he enjoyed doing this, and would have
+found comparatively little pleasure in preaching the same discourse upon
+the rabbit. Speaking of the way in which even the races of mankind have
+struggled and crowded each other out, Buffon says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"These great events&mdash;these well-marked epochs in the history of the
+human race&mdash;are yet but ripples, as it were, on the current of life;
+which, as a general rule, flows onward evenly and in equal volume.</p>
+
+<p>"It may be said that the movement of Nature turns upon two immovable
+pivots&mdash;one, the illimitable fecundity which she has given to all
+species; the other, the innumerable difficulties which reduce the
+results of that fecundity, and leave throughout time nearly the same
+quantity of individuals in every species.<a name="FNanchor_89_89" id="FNanchor_89_89"></a><a href="#Footnote_89_89" class="fnanchor">[89]</a>...<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> Taking the earth as a
+whole, and the human race in its entirety, the numbers of mankind, like
+those of animals, should remain nearly constant throughout time; for
+they depend upon an equilibrium of physical causes which has long since
+been reached, and which neither man's moral nor his physical efforts can
+disturb, inasmuch as these moral efforts do but spring from physical
+causes, of which they are the special effects. No matter what care man
+may take of his own species, he can only make it more abundant in one
+place by destroying it or diminishing its numbers in another. When one
+part of the globe is overpeopled, men emigrate, spread themselves over
+other countries, destroy one another, and establish laws and customs
+which sometimes only too surely prevent excess of population. In those
+climates where fecundity is greatest, as in China, Egypt, and Guinea,
+they banish, mutilate, sell, or drown infants. Here, we condemn them to
+a perpetual celibacy. Those who are in being find it easy to assert
+rights over the unborn. Regarding themselves as the necessary, they
+annihilate the contingent, and suppress future generations for their own
+pleasure and advantage. Man does for his own race, without perceiving
+it, what he does also for the inferior animals: that is to say, he
+protects it and encourages it to increase, or neglects it according to
+his sense of need&mdash;according as advantage or inconvenience is expected
+as the consequence of either course. And since all these moral effects
+themselves depend upon physical causes, which have been in permanent
+equilibrium ever since the world was formed, it follows that the numbers
+of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> mankind, like those of animals, should remain constant.</p>
+
+<p>"Nevertheless, this fixed state, this constant number, is not absolute,
+all physical and moral causes, and all the results which spring from
+them, balance themselves, as though, upon a see-saw, which has a certain
+play, but never so much as that equilibrium should be altogether lost.
+As everything in the universe is in movement, and as all the forces
+which are contained in matter act one against the other and
+counterbalance one another, all is done by a kind of oscillation; of
+which the mean points are those to which we refer as being the ordinary
+course of nature, while the extremes are the periods which deviate from
+that course most widely. And, as a matter of fact, with animals as much
+as with plants, a time of unusual fecundity is commonly followed by one
+of sterility; abundance and dearth come alternately, and often at such
+short intervals that we may foretell the production of a coming year by
+our knowledge of the past one. Our apples, pears, oaks, beeches, and the
+greater number of our fruit and forest trees, bear freely but about one
+year in two. Caterpillars, cockchafers, woodlice, which in one year may
+multiply with great abundance, will appear but sparsely in the next.
+What indeed would become of all the good things of the earth, what would
+become of the useful animals, and indeed of man himself, if each
+individual in these years of excess was to leave its quotum of
+offspring? This, however, does not happen, for destruction and sterility
+follow closely upon excessive fecundity, and, independently of the
+contagion which follows inevitably upon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> overcrowding, each species has
+its own special sources of death and destruction, which are of
+themselves sufficient to compensate for excess in any past generation.</p>
+
+<p>"Nevertheless the foregoing should not be taken in an absolute sense,
+nor yet too strictly,&mdash;especially in the case of those races which are
+not left entirely to the care of Nature. Those which man takes care
+of&mdash;commencing with his own&mdash;are more abundant than they would be
+without his care, yet, as his power of taking this care is limited, the
+increase which has taken place is also fixed, and has long been
+restrained within impassable boundaries. Again, though in civilized
+countries man, and all the animals useful to him, are more numerous than
+in other places, yet their numbers never become excessive, for the same
+power which brings them into being destroys them as soon as they are
+found inconvenient."<a name="FNanchor_90_90" id="FNanchor_90_90"></a><a href="#Footnote_90_90" class="fnanchor">[90]</a></p>
+
+
+<p class="center padtop"><i>The Carnivora&mdash;Sensation.</i></p>
+
+<p>Buffon begins his seventh volume with some remarks on the <i>carnivora</i> in
+general, which I would gladly quote at fuller length than my space will
+allow. He dwells on the fact that the number, as well as the fecundity
+of the insect races is greater than that of the mammalia, and even than
+of plants; and he points out that "violent death is almost as necessary
+an usage as is the law that we must all, in one way or another, die."
+This leads him to the question whether animals can feel. "To speak
+seriously," (au r&eacute;el) he says (and why this, if he had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> always spoken
+seriously?<a name="FNanchor_91_91" id="FNanchor_91_91"></a><a href="#Footnote_91_91" class="fnanchor">[91]</a>), "can we doubt that those animals whose organization
+resembles our own, feel the same sensations as we do? They must feel,
+for they have senses, and they must feel more and more in proportion as
+their senses are more active and more perfect." Those whose organ of any
+sense is imperfect, have but imperfect perception in respect of that
+sense; and those that are entirely without the organ want also all
+corresponding sensation. "Movement is the necessary consequence of acts
+of perception. I have already shown that in whatever manner a living
+being is organized, if it has perceptions at all, it cannot fail to show
+that it has them by some kind of movement of its body. Hence plants,
+though highly organized, have no feeling, any more than have those
+animals which, like plants, manifest no power of motion. Among animals
+there are those which, like the sensitive plant, have but a certain
+power of movement about their own parts, and which have no power of
+locomotion; such animals have as yet but little perception. Those,
+again, which have power of locomotion, but which, like automata, do but
+a small number of things, and always after the same fashion, can have
+only small powers of perception, and these limited to a small number of
+objects. But in the case of man, what automata, indeed, have we not
+here! How much do not education and the intercommunication of ideas
+increase our powers and vivacity of perception. What difference can we
+not see in this respect between civilized and uncivilized races, between
+the peasant girl, and the woman of the world? And in like manner among<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>
+animals, those which live with us have their perceptions increased in
+range, while those that are wild have but their natural instinct, which
+is often more certain but always more limited in range than is the
+intelligence of domesticated animals."<a name="FNanchor_92_92" id="FNanchor_92_92"></a><a href="#Footnote_92_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a></p>
+
+<p class="subhead2a">. . . . . . . . . . .</p>
+
+<p>"For perception to exist in its fullest development in any animal body,
+that body must form a whole&mdash;an <i>ensemble</i>, which shall not only be
+capable of feeling in all its parts, but shall be so arranged that all
+these feeling parts shall have a close correspondence with one another,
+and that no one of them can be disturbed without communicating a portion
+of that disturbance to every other part. There must also be a single
+chief centre, with which all these different disturbances may be
+connected, and from which, as from a common <i>point d'appui</i>, the
+reactions against them may take their rise. Hence man, and those animals
+whose organization most resembles man's, will be the most capable of
+perceptions, while those whose unity is less complete, whose parts have
+a less close correspondence with each other&mdash;which have several centres
+of sensation, and which seem, in consequence, less to envelope a single
+existence in a single body than to contain many centres of existence
+separated and different from one another&mdash;these will have fewer and
+duller perceptions. The polypus, which can be reproduced by fission; the
+wasp, whose head even after separation from the body still moves, lives,
+acts, and even eats as heretofore; the lizard which we deprive neither
+of sensation nor movement by cutting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> off part of its body; the lobster
+which can restore its amputated limbs; the turtle whose heart beats long
+after it has been plucked out, in a word all the animals whose
+organization differs from our own, have but small powers of perception,
+and the smaller the more they differ from us."<a name="FNanchor_93_93" id="FNanchor_93_93"></a><a href="#Footnote_93_93" class="fnanchor">[93]</a></p>
+
+<p>This is Buffon's way of satirizing our inability to bear in mind that we
+are compelled to judge all things by our own standards. He also wishes
+to reassure those who might be alarmed at the tendency of some of his
+foregoing remarks, and who he knew would find comfort in being told that
+a thing which does not express itself as they do does not feel at all.</p>
+
+<p>The diaphragm according to Buffon appears to be the centre of the powers
+of sensation; the slightest injury "even to the attachments of the
+diaphragm is followed by strong convulsions, and even by death. The
+brain which has been called the seat of 'sensations' is yet not the
+centre of 'perception,' since we can wound it, and even take
+considerable parts of it away, without death's ensuing, and without
+preventing an animal from living, moving and feeling in all its parts."</p>
+
+<p>Buffon thus distinguishes between "sensation" and "perception."
+"Sensation," he says, "is simply the activity of a sense, but perception
+is the pleasantness or unpleasantness of this sensation," "perceived by
+its being propagated and becoming active throughout the entire system."
+I have therefore several times, when translating from Buffon, rendered
+the word "<i>sentiment</i>" by "perception," and shall continue to do so. "I
+say,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> writes Buffon, "the pleasantness or unpleasantness, because this
+is the very essence of perception; the one feature of perception
+consists in perceiving either pain or pleasure; and though movements
+which do not affect us in either one or the other of these two ways may
+indeed take place within us, yet we are indifferent to them, and do not
+perceive that we are affected by them. All external movement, and all
+exercise of the animal powers, spring from perception; its action is
+proportionate to the extent of its excitation, to the extent of the
+feeling which is being felt.<a name="FNanchor_94_94" id="FNanchor_94_94"></a><a href="#Footnote_94_94" class="fnanchor">[94]</a> And this same part, which we regard as
+the centre of sensation, will also be that of all the animal powers; or,
+if it is preferred to call it so, it will be the common <i>point d'appui</i>
+from which they all take rise. The diaphragm is to the animal what the
+'stock' is to the plant; both divide an organism transversely, both
+serve as the <i>point d'appui</i> of opposing forces; for the forces which
+push upward those parts of a tree which should form its trunk and
+branches, bear upon and are supported by the 'stock,' as do those
+opposing forces, which drive the roots downwards.</p>
+
+<p class="subhead2a">. . . . . . . . . . .</p>
+
+<p>"Even on a cursory examination we can see that all our innermost
+affections, our most lively emotions, our most expansive moments of
+delight, and, on the other hand, our sudden starts, pains, sicknesses,
+and swoons&mdash;in fact, all our strong impressions concerning the pleasure
+or pain of any sensation&mdash;make themselves felt within the body, and
+about the region of the diaphragm. The brain, on the contrary, shows no
+sign of being a seat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> of perception. In the head there are pure
+sensations and nothing else, or rather, there are but the
+representations of sensations stripped of the character of perception;
+that is to say, we can remember and call to mind whether such and such a
+sensation was pleasant to us or otherwise, and if this operation, which
+goes on in the head, is followed by a vivid perception, then the
+impression made is perceived in the interior of the body, and always in
+the region of the diaphragm. Hence, in the f&oelig;tus where this membrane
+is without use, there is no perception, or so little that nothing comes
+of it, the movements of the f&oelig;tus, such as they are, being rather
+mechanical than dependent on sensation and will.</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever the matter may be which serves as the vehicle of perception,
+and produces muscular movement, it is certain that it is propagated
+through the nerves, and that it communicates itself instantaneously from
+one extremity of the system to the other. In whatever manner this
+operation is conducted, whether by the vibrations, as it were, of
+elastic cords or by a subtle fire, or by a matter resembling
+electricity, which not only resides in animal as in all other bodies,
+but is being continually renewed in them by the movements of the heart
+and lungs, by the friction of the blood within the arteries, and also by
+the action of exterior causes upon our organs of sense&mdash;in whatever
+manner, I say, the operation is conducted, it is nevertheless certain
+that the nerves and membranes are the only parts in an animal body that
+can feel. The blood, lymphs, and all other fluids, the fats, bone,
+flesh, and all other solids, are of themselves void of sensation. And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>
+so also is the brain; it is a soft and inelastic substance, incapable
+therefore of producing or of propagating the movement, vibrations, or
+concussions which, result in perception. The meninges, on the other
+hand, are exceedingly sensitive, and are the envelopes of all the
+nerves; like the nerves, they take rise in the head; and, dividing
+themselves like the branches of the nerves, they extend even to their
+smallest ramifications: they are, so to speak, flattened nerves; they
+are of the same substance as the nerves, are nearly of the same degree
+of elasticity, and form a necessary part of the system of sensation. If,
+then, the seat of the sensations must be placed in the head, let it be
+placed in the meninges, and not in the medullary part of the brain,
+which is of an entirely different substance."<a name="FNanchor_95_95" id="FNanchor_95_95"></a><a href="#Footnote_95_95" class="fnanchor">[95]</a></p>
+
+<p>If this is so, it appears from what will follow as though the meninges
+must be the "stock" rather than the diaphragm.</p>
+
+<p>"What perhaps has given rise to the opinion that the seat of all
+sensations and the centre of all sensibility is in the brain, is the
+fact that the nerves, which are the organs of perception, all attach
+themselves to the brain, which has hence come to be regarded as the one
+common centre which can receive all their vibrations and impressions.
+This fact alone has sufficed to indicate the brain as the origin of
+perceptions&mdash;as the essential organ of sensations; in a word, as the
+common sensorium. This supposition has appeared so simple and natural
+that its physical impossibility has been overlooked, an impossibility,
+however, which should be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> sufficiently apparent. For how can a part
+which cannot feel&mdash;a soft inactive substance like the brain&mdash;be the very
+organ of perception and movement? How can this soft and perceptionless
+part not only receive impressions, but preserve them for a length of
+time, and transmit their undulatory movements (<i>en propage les
+&eacute;branlements</i>) throughout all the solid and feeling parts of the body?
+It may perhaps be maintained with Descartes and M. de Peyronie that the
+principle of sensation does not reside in the brain, but in the pineal
+gland or in the <i>corpus callosum</i>; but a glance at the conformation of
+the brain itself will suffice to show that these parts do not join on to
+the nerves, but that they are entirely surrounded by those parts of the
+brain which do not feel, and are so separated from the nerves that they
+cannot receive any movement from them; whence it follows that this
+second supposition is as groundless as the first."<a name="FNanchor_96_96" id="FNanchor_96_96"></a><a href="#Footnote_96_96" class="fnanchor">[96]</a></p>
+
+<p>What, then, asks Buffon, <i>is</i> the use of the brain? Man, the quadrupeds,
+and birds all have larger brains, and at the same time more extended
+perceptions, than fishes, insects, and those other living beings whose
+brains are smaller in proportion. "When the brain is compressed, there
+is suspension of all power of movement. If this part is not the source
+of our powers of motion, why is it so necessary and so essential? Why,
+again, does it seem so proportionate in each animal to the amount of
+perceiving power which that animal possesses?</p>
+
+<p>"I think I can answer this question in a satisfactory<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> manner, difficult
+though it seems; but in order that I may do so, I would ask the reader
+to lend me his attention for a few moments while we regard the brain
+simply <i>as brain</i>, and have no other idea concerning it than we can
+derive from inspection and reflection. The brain, as well as the
+<i>medulla oblongata</i> and the spinal marrow, which are but prolongations
+of the brain itself, is only a kind of hardly organized mucilage; we
+find in it nothing but the extremities of small arteries, which run into
+it in very great numbers, but which convey a white and nourishing lymph
+instead of blood. When the parts of the brain are disunited by
+maceration, these same small arteries, or lymphatic vessels, appear as
+very delicate threads throughout their whole length. The nerves, on the
+contrary, do not penetrate the substance of the brain; they abut upon
+its surface only; before reaching it they lose their elasticity and
+solidity, and the extremities of the nerves which are nearest to the
+brain are soft, and nearly mucilaginous. From this exposition, in which
+there is nothing hypothetical, it appears that the brain, which is
+nourished by the lymphatic arteries, does in its turn provide
+nourishment for the nerves, and that we must regard these as a kind of
+vegetation which rises as trunks and branches from the brain, and become
+subsequently subdivided into an infinite number, as it were, of twigs.
+The brain is to the nerves what the earth is to plants: the last
+extremities of the nerves are the roots, which with every vegetable are
+more soft and tender than the trunk or branches; they contain a ductile
+matter fit for the growth and nourishment of the nervous tree or fibre;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>
+they draw the ductile matter from the substance of the brain itself, to
+which the arteries are continually bringing the lymph that is necessary
+to supply it. The brain, then, instead of being the seat of the
+sensations, and the originator of perception, is an organ of secretion
+and nutrition only, though a very essential organ, without which the
+nerves could neither grow nor be maintained.</p>
+
+<p>"This organ is greater in man, in quadrupeds, and in birds, because the
+number or bulk of the nerves is greater in these animals than in fishes
+or insects, whose power of perception is more feeble, for this very
+reason, that they have but a small brain; one, in fact, that is
+proportioned to the small quantity of nerves which that brain must
+support. Nor can I omit to state here that man has not, as has been
+pretended by some, a larger brain than has any other animal; for there
+are apes and cetacea which have more brain than man in proportion to the
+volume of their bodies&mdash;another fact which proves that the brain is
+neither the seat of sensations nor the originator of perception, since
+in that case these animals would have more sensations and perception
+than man.</p>
+
+<p>"If we consider the manner in which plants derive their nourishment, we
+shall find that they do not draw up the grosser parts either of earth or
+water; these parts must be reduced by warmth into subtle vapours before
+the roots can suck them up into the plant. In like manner the nutrition
+of the nerves is only effected by means of the more subtle parts of the
+humidity of the brain, which are sucked up by the roots or extremities<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>
+of the nerves, and are carried thence through all the branches of the
+sensory system. This system forms, as we have said, a whole, all whose
+parts are interconnected by so close a union that we cannot wound one
+without communicating a violent shock to all the others; the wounding or
+simply pulling of the smallest nerve is sufficient to cause lively
+irritation to all the others, and to put the body in convulsion; nor can
+we ease this pain and convulsion except by cutting the nerve higher up
+than the injured part; but on this all the parts abutting on this nerve
+become thenceforward senseless and immovable for ever. The brain should
+not be considered as of the same character, nor as an organic portion of
+the nervous system, for it has not the same properties nor the same
+substance, being neither solid nor elastic, nor yet capable of feeling.
+I admit that on its compression perception ceases, but this very fact
+shows it to be a body foreign to the nervous system itself, which,
+acting by its weight, or pressure, against the extremities of the
+nerves, oppresses them and stupefies them in the same way as a weight
+placed upon the arm, leg, or any other part of the body, stupefies the
+nerves and deadens the perceptions of that part. And it is evident that
+this cessation of sensation on compression is but a suspension and
+temporary stupefaction, for the moment the compression of the brain
+ceases, perception and the power of movement returns. Again, I admit
+that on tearing the medullary substance, and on wounding the brain till
+the <i>corpus callosum</i> is reached, convulsion, loss of sensation, and
+death ensue; but this is because the nerves are so entirely deranged
+that they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> are, so to speak, torn up by the roots and wounded all
+together, and at their source.</p>
+
+<p>"In further proof that the brain is neither the centre of perception nor
+the seat of the sensations, I may remind the reader that animals and
+even children have been born without heads and brains, and have yet had
+feeling, movement, and life. There are also whole classes of animals,
+like insects and worms, with a brain that is by no means a distinct mass
+nor of sensible volume, but with only something which corresponds with
+the <i>medulla oblongata</i> and the spinal marrow. There would be more
+reason, then, in placing the seat of the feelings and perceptions in the
+spinal marrow, which no animal is without, than in the brain which is
+not an organ common to all creatures that can feel."</p>
+
+<p>If Buffon's ideas concerning the brain are as just as they appear to be,
+the resemblance between plants and animals is more close than is
+apparent, even to a superficial observer, on a first inspection of the
+phenomena. Such an observer, however, on looking but a little more
+intently, will see the higher <i>vertebrata</i> as perambulating vegetables
+planted upside down. So the man who had been born blind, on being made
+to see, and on looking at the objects before him with unsophisticated
+eyes, said without hesitation that he saw "men as trees walking," thus
+seeing with more prophetic insight than either he or the bystanders
+could interpret. For our skull is as a kind of flower-pot, and holds the
+soil from which we spring, that is to say the brain; our mouth and
+stomach are roots, in two stories or stages; our bones are the
+trellis-work to which we cling while going about in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> search of
+sustenance for our roots; or they are as the woody trunk of a tree; <i>we</i>
+are the nerves which are rooted in the brain, and which draw thence the
+sustenance which is supplied it by the stomach; our lungs are leaves
+which are folded up within us, as the blossom of a fig is hidden within
+the fruit itself.</p>
+
+<p>This is what should follow if Buffon's theory of the brain is allowed to
+stand, which I hope will prove to be the case, for it is the only
+comfortable thought concerning the brain that I have met with in any
+writer. I have given it here at some length on account of its
+importance, and for the illustration it affords of Buffon's hatred of
+mystery, rather than for its bearing upon evolution. The fact that our
+leading men of science have adopted other theories will weigh little
+with those who have watched scientific orthodoxy with any closeness.
+What Buffon thought of that orthodoxy may be gathered from the
+following:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The greatest obstacles to the advancement of human knowledge lie less
+in things themselves than in man's manner of considering them. However
+complicated a machine the human body may be, it is still less
+complicated than are our own ideas concerning it. It is less difficult
+to see Nature as she is, than as she is presented to us. She carries a
+veil only, while we would put a mask over her face; we load her with our
+own prejudices, and suppose her to act and to conduct her operations
+even after the same fashion as ourselves.<a name="FNanchor_97_97" id="FNanchor_97_97"></a><a href="#Footnote_97_97" class="fnanchor">[97]</a></p>
+
+<p class="subhead2a">. . . . . . . . . . .</p>
+
+<p>"I am by no means speaking of those purely arbitrary<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> systems which we
+are able at a glance to detect as chimeras that are being pretended to
+us as realities, but I refer to the methods whereby people have set
+themselves seriously to study nature. Even the experimental method
+itself has been more fertile of error than of truth, for though it is
+indeed the surest, yet is it no surer than the hand of him who uses it.
+No matter how little we incline out of the straight path, we soon find
+ourselves wandering in a sterile wilderness, where we can see but a few
+obscure objects scattered sparsely; nevertheless we do violence to these
+facts and to ourselves, and resemble them together on a conceit of
+analogies and common properties amongst them. Then, passing and
+repassing complaisantly over the tortuous path which we have ourselves
+beaten, we deem the road a worn one, and though it leads no whither, the
+world follows it, adopts it, and accepts its supposed consequences as
+first principles. I could show this by laying bare the origin of that
+which goes by the name of 'principle' in all the sciences, whether
+abstract or natural. In the case of the former, the basis of principle
+is abstraction&mdash;that is to say, one or more suppositions: in that of the
+second, principles are but the consequences, better or worse, of the
+methods which may have been followed. And to speak here of anatomy only,
+did not he who first surmounted his natural repugnance and set himself
+to work to open a human body&mdash;did he not believe that through going all
+over it, dissecting it, dividing it into all its parts, he would soon
+learn its structure, mechanism, and functions? But he found the task
+greater than he had expected, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> renouncing such pretensions, was fain
+to content himself with a method&mdash;not for seeing and judging, but for
+seeing after an orderly fashion. This method ... is still the sole
+business of our ablest anatomists, but it is not science. It is the road
+which should lead scienceward, and might perhaps have reached science
+itself, if instead of walking ever on a single narrow path men had set
+the anatomy of man and that of animals face to face with one another.
+For, what real knowledge can be drawn from an isolated pursuit? Is not
+the foundation of all science seen to consist in the comparison which
+the human mind can draw between different objects in the matter of their
+resemblances and differences&mdash;of their analogous or conflicting
+properties, and of all the relations in which they stand to one another?
+The absolute, if it exist at all, is but of the concurrence of man's own
+knowledge; we judge and can judge of things only by their bearings one
+upon another; hence whenever a method limits us to only a single
+subject, whenever we consider it in its solitude and without regard to
+its resemblances or to its differences from other objects, we can attain
+to no real knowledge, nor yet, much less, reach any general principle.
+We do but give names, and make descriptions of a thing, and of all its
+parts. Hence comes it that, after three thousand years of dissection,
+anatomy is still but a nomenclature, and has hardly advanced a step
+towards its true object, which is the science of animal economy.
+Furthermore, what defects are there not in the method itself, which
+should above all things else be simple and easy to be understood,
+depending as it does upon inspection and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> having denominations only for
+its end! For seeing that nomenclature has been mistaken for knowledge,
+men have made it their chief business to multiply names, instead of
+limiting things; they have crushed themselves under the burden of
+details, and been on the look out for differences where there was no
+distinction. When they had given a new name they conceived of it as a
+new thing, and described the smallest parts with the most minutious
+exactness, while the description of some still smaller part, forgotten
+or neglected by previous anatomists, has been straightway hailed as a
+discovery. The denominations themselves being often taken from things
+which had no relation to the object that it was desired to denominate,
+have served but to confound confusion. The part of the brain, for
+example, which is called testes and nates, wherein does it so differ
+from the rest of the brain that it should deserve a name? These names,
+taken at haphazard or springing from some preconceived opinion, have
+themselves become the parents of new prejudices and speculations; other
+names given to parts which have been ill observed, or which are even
+non-existent, have been sources of new errors. What functions and uses
+has it not been attempted to foist upon the pineal gland, and on the
+alleged empty space in the brain which is called the arch, the first of
+which is but a gland, while the very existence of the other is
+doubtful,&mdash;the empty space being perhaps produced by the hand of the
+anatomist and the method of dissection."<a name="FNanchor_98_98" id="FNanchor_98_98"></a><a href="#Footnote_98_98" class="fnanchor">[98]</a></p>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span></p>
+<p  class="center padtop"><i>The Genus felis.</i></p>
+
+<p>In his preliminary remarks upon the lion, Buffon while still professing
+to believe in some considerable mutability of species, seems very far
+from admitting that all living forms are capable of modification. But he
+has shown us long since how clearly he saw the impossibility of limiting
+mutability, if he once admitted so much of the thin end of the wedge as
+that a horse and an ass might be related. It is plain, therefore, that
+he is not speaking "<i>au r&eacute;el</i>" here, and we accordingly find him talking
+clap-trap about the nobleness of the lion in having no species
+immediately allied to it. A few lines lower on he reminds us in a casual
+way that the ass and horse are related.</p>
+
+<p>He writes:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Added to all these noble individual features the lion has also what may
+be called a <i>specific</i> nobility. For I call those species noble which
+are constant, invariable, and which are above suspicion of having
+degenerated. These species are commonly isolated, and the only ones of
+their genus. They are distinguished by such well-marked features that
+they cannot be mistaken, nor confounded with any other species. To begin
+for example with man, the noblest of created beings; he is but of a
+single species, inasmuch as men and women will breed freely <i>inter se</i>
+in spite of all existing differences of race, climate and colour; and
+also inasmuch as there is no other animal which can claim either a
+distant or near relationship with him. The horse, on the other hand, is
+more noble as an individual than as a species,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> for he has the ass as
+his near neighbour, <i>and seems himself to be nearly enough related to
+it</i>; ... the dog is perhaps of even less noble species, approaching as
+he does to the wolf, fox, and jackal, <i>which we can only consider to be
+the degenerated species of a single family</i>"<a name="FNanchor_99_99" id="FNanchor_99_99"></a><a href="#Footnote_99_99" class="fnanchor">[99]</a>&mdash;all which may seem
+very natural opinions for a French aristocrat in the days before the
+Revolution, but which cannot for a moment be believed to have been
+Buffon's own. I have not ascertained the date of Buffon's little quarrel
+with the Sorbonne, but I cannot doubt that if we knew the inner history
+of the work we are considering, we should find this passage and others
+like it explained by the necessity of quieting orthodox adversaries. He
+concludes the paragraph from which I have just been quoting by saying,
+"To class man and the ape together, or the lion with the cat, and to say
+that the lion is a <i>cat with a mane and a long tail</i>&mdash;this were to
+degrade and disfigure nature instead of describing her and denominating
+her species." Buffon very rarely uses italics, but those last given are
+his, not mine; could words be better chosen to make us see the lion and
+the cat as members of the same genus? No wonder the Sorbonne considered
+him an infelicitous writer; why could he not have said "cat," and have
+done with it, instead of giving a couple of sly but telling touches,
+which make the cat as like a lion as possible, and then telling us that
+we must not call her one? Sorbonnes never do like people who write in
+this way.</p>
+
+<p>"The lion, then, belongs to a most noble species, standing as he does
+alone, and incapable of being confounded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> with the tiger, leopard,
+ounce, &amp;c., while, on the contrary, those species, which appear to be
+least distant from the lion, are very sufficiently indistinguishable, so
+that travellers and nomenclators are continually confounding them."<a name="FNanchor_100_100" id="FNanchor_100_100"></a><a href="#Footnote_100_100" class="fnanchor">[100]</a></p>
+
+<p>If this is not pure malice, never was a writer more persistently
+unfortunate in little ways. Why remind us here that the species which
+come nearest to the lion are so hard to distinguish? Why not have said
+nothing about it? As it is, the case stands thus: we are required to
+admit close resemblance between the leopard and the tiger, while we are
+to deny it between the tiger and the lion, in spite of there being no
+greater outward difference between the first than between the second
+pair, and in spite of the hurried whisper "<i>cat with a mane and a long
+tail</i>" still haunting our ears. Isidore Geoffroy and his followers may
+consent to this arrangement, but I hope the majority of my readers will
+not do so.</p>
+
+<p>I went on to the account of the tiger with some interest to see the line
+which Buffon would take concerning it. I anticipated that we should find
+cats, pumas, lynxes, &amp;c., to be really very like tigers, and was
+surprised to learn that the "true" tiger, though certainly not unlike
+these animals, was still to be distinguished from "many others which had
+since been called tigers." He is on no account to be confounded with
+these, in spite of the obvious temptation to confound him. He is "a rare
+animal, little known to the ancients, and badly described by the
+moderns." He is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> a beast "of great ferocity, of terrible swiftness, and
+surpassing even the proportions of the lion." The effect of the
+description is that we no longer find the lion standing alone, but with
+the tiger on a par with him if not above him; but at the same time we
+fall easy victims to the temptation to confound the tiger with "the many
+other animals which are also called tigers." A surface stream has swept
+the members of the cat family in different directions, but a stealthy
+undercurrent has seized them from beneath, and they are now happily
+reunited.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center padtop"><i>Animals of the Old and New World&mdash;Changed Geographical Distribution.</i></p>
+
+<p>Writing upon the animals of the old world,<a name="FNanchor_101_101" id="FNanchor_101_101"></a><a href="#Footnote_101_101" class="fnanchor">[101]</a> and referring to the
+humps of the camel and the bison, Buffon shows that very considerable
+modification may be effected in some animals within even a few
+generations, but he attributes the effect produced to the direct
+influence of climate. Buffon concludes his sketch of the animals of the
+new world by pointing out that the larger animals of the African torrid
+zone have been hindered by sea and desert from finding their way to
+America, and by claiming to be the first "even to have suspected" that
+there was not a single denizen of the torrid zone of one continent which
+was common also to the other.<a name="FNanchor_102_102" id="FNanchor_102_102"></a><a href="#Footnote_102_102" class="fnanchor">[102]</a></p>
+
+<p>The animals common to both continents are those which can stand the cold
+and which are generally suited for a temperate climate. These, Buffon
+believes, to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> have travelled either over some land still unknown, or
+"more probably," over territory which has long since been submerged. The
+species of the old and new world are never without some well-marked
+difference, which however should not be held sufficient for us to refuse
+to admit their practical identity. But he maintains, I imagine wilfully,
+that there is a tendency in all the mammalia to become smaller on being
+transported to the new world, and refers the fact to the quality of the
+earth, the condition of the climate, the degrees of heat and humidity,
+to the height of mountains, amounts of running or stagnant waters,
+extent of forest, and above all to the brutal condition of nature in a
+new country, which he evidently regards with true aristocratic
+abhorrence.<a name="FNanchor_103_103" id="FNanchor_103_103"></a><a href="#Footnote_103_103" class="fnanchor">[103]</a></p>
+
+<p>Then follows a passage which I had better perhaps give in full:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The mammoth "was certainly the greatest and strongest of all quadrupeds;
+but it has disappeared; and if so, how many smaller, feebler, and less
+remarkable species must have also perished without leaving us any traces
+or even hints of their having existed? How many other species have
+changed their nature, that is to say, become perfected or degraded,
+through great changes in the distribution of land and ocean, through the
+cultivation or neglect of the country which they inhabit, through the
+long-continued effects of climatic changes, so that they are no longer
+the same animals that they once were? Yet of all living beings after<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>
+man, the quadrupeds are the ones whose nature is most fixed and form
+most constant: birds and fishes vary much more easily; insects still
+more again than these, and if we descend to plants, which certainly
+cannot be excluded from animated nature, we shall be surprised at the
+readiness with which species are seen to vary, and at the ease with
+which they change their forms and adopt new natures.</p>
+
+<p>"It is probable then that all the animals of the new world are derived
+from congeners in the old, without any deviation from the ordinary
+course of nature. We may believe that having become separated in the
+lapse of ages, by vast oceans and countries which they could not
+traverse, they have gradually been affected by, and derived impressions
+from, a climate which has itself been modified so as to become a new one
+through the operation of those same causes which dissociated the
+individuals of the old and new world from one another; thus in the
+course of time they have grown smaller and changed their characters.
+This, however, should not prevent our classifying them as different
+species now, for the difference is no less real whether it is caused by
+time, climate and soil, or whether it dates from the creation. <i>Nature I
+maintain is in a state of continual flux and movement. It is enough for
+man if he can grasp her as she is in his own time, and throw but a
+glance or two upon the past and future, so as to try and perceive what
+she may have been in former times and what one day she may attain
+to.</i>"<a name="FNanchor_104_104" id="FNanchor_104_104"></a><a href="#Footnote_104_104" class="fnanchor">[104]</a></p>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center padtop"><i>The Buffalo&mdash;Animals under Domestication.</i></p>
+
+<p>"The bison and the aurochs," says Buffon, "differ only in unessential
+characteristics, and are, by consequence, of the same species as our
+domestic cattle, so that I believe all the pretended species of the ox,
+whether ancient or modern, may be reduced to three&mdash;the bull, the
+buffalo, and the bubalus.</p>
+
+<p>"The case of animals under domestication is in many respects different
+from that of wild ones; they vary much more in disposition, size and
+shape, especially as regards the exterior parts of their bodies: the
+effects of climate, so powerful throughout nature, act with far greater
+effect upon captive animals than upon wild ones. Food prepared by man,
+and often ill chosen, combined with the inclemency of an uncongenial
+climate&mdash;these eventuate in modifications sufficiently profound to
+become constant and hereditary in successive generations. I do not
+pretend to say that this general cause of modification is so powerful as
+to change radically the nature of beings which have had their impress
+stamped upon them in that surest of moulds&mdash;heredity; but it
+nevertheless changes them in not a few respects; it masks and transforms
+their outward appearance; it suppresses some of their parts, and gives
+them new ones; it paints them with various colours, and <i>by its action
+on bodily habits influences also their natures, instincts, and most
+inward qualities</i>" (and what is this but "radically changing their
+nature"?). "The modification of but a single part, moreover, in a whole
+as perfect as an animal body, will necessitate a correlative<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>
+modification in every other part, and it is from this cause that our
+domestic animals differ almost as much in nature and instinct, as in
+form, from those from which they originally sprung."<a name="FNanchor_105_105" id="FNanchor_105_105"></a><a href="#Footnote_105_105" class="fnanchor">[105]</a></p>
+
+<p>Buffon confirms this last assertion by quoting the sheep as an
+example&mdash;an animal which can now no longer exist in a wild state. Then
+returning to cattle, he repeats that many varieties have been formed by
+the effects&mdash;"diverse in themselves, and diverse in their
+combinations&mdash;of climate, food, and treatment, whether under
+domestication or in their wild state." These are the main causes of
+variation ("causes g&eacute;n&eacute;rales de vari&eacute;t&eacute;"),<a name="FNanchor_106_106" id="FNanchor_106_106"></a><a href="#Footnote_106_106" class="fnanchor">[106]</a> among our domesticated
+animals, but by far the greatest is changed climate in consequence of
+their accompanying man in his migrations. The effects of the foregoing
+causes of modification, especially the last of them, are repeatedly
+insisted on in the course of the forty pages which complete the
+preliminary account of the buffalo.</p>
+
+<p>What holds good for the buffalo does so also for the mouflon or wild
+sheep. This, Buffon declares to be the source of all our domesticated
+breeds: of these there are in all some four or five, "all of them being
+but degenerations from a single stock, produced by man's agency, and
+propagated for his convenience."<a name="FNanchor_107_107" id="FNanchor_107_107"></a><a href="#Footnote_107_107" class="fnanchor">[107]</a> At the same time that man has
+protected them he has hunted out the original race which was "less
+useful to him,"<a name="FNanchor_108_108" id="FNanchor_108_108"></a><a href="#Footnote_108_108" class="fnanchor">[108]</a> so that it is now to be found only in a few
+secluded spots, such as the mountains of Greece, Cyprus, and Sardinia.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>
+Buffon does not consider even the differences between sheep and goats to
+be sufficiently characteristic to warrant their being classed as
+different species.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall never tire," he continues, "of repeating&mdash;seeing how important
+the matter is&mdash;that we must not form our opinions concerning nature, nor
+differentiate (diff&eacute;rencier) her species, by a reference to minor
+special characteristics. And, again, that systems, far from having
+illustrated the history of animals, have, on the contrary, served rather
+to obscure it ... leading, as they do, to the creation of arbitrary
+species which nature knows nothing about; perpetually confounding real
+and hypothetical existences; giving us false ideas as to the very
+essence of species; uniting them and separating them without foundation
+or knowledge, and often without our having seen the animal with which we
+are dealing."<a name="FNanchor_109_109" id="FNanchor_109_109"></a><a href="#Footnote_109_109" class="fnanchor">[109]</a></p>
+
+
+<p class="center padtop"><i>First and Second Views of Nature.</i></p>
+
+<p>The twelfth volume begins with a preface, entitled "A First View of
+Nature," from which I take the following:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"What cannot Nature effect with such means at her disposal? She can do
+all except either create matter or destroy it. These two extremes of
+power the deity has reserved for himself only; creation and destruction
+are the attributes of his omnipotence. To alter and undo, to develop and
+to renew&mdash;these are powers which he has handed over to the charge of
+Nature."<a name="FNanchor_110_110" id="FNanchor_110_110"></a><a href="#Footnote_110_110" class="fnanchor">[110]</a></p>
+
+<p>The thirteenth volume opens with a second view of nature. After
+describing what a man would have observed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> if he could have lived during
+many continuous ages, Buffon goes on to say:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"And as the number, sustenance, and balance of power among species is
+constant, Nature would present ever the same appearance, and would be in
+all times and under all climates absolutely and relatively the same, if
+it were not her fashion to vary her individual forms as much as
+possible. The type of each species is founded in a mould of which the
+principal features have been cut in characters that are ineffaceable and
+eternally permanent, but all the accessory touches vary; no one
+individual is the exact facsimile of any other, and no species exists
+without a large number of varieties. In the human race on which the
+divine seal has been set most firmly, there are yet varieties of black
+and white, large and small races, the Patagonian, Hottentot, European,
+American, Negro, which, though all descended from a common father,
+nevertheless exhibit no very brotherly resemblance to one another."<a name="FNanchor_111_111" id="FNanchor_111_111"></a><a href="#Footnote_111_111" class="fnanchor">[111]</a></p>
+
+<p>On an earlier page there is a passage which I may quote as showing
+Buffon to have not been without some&mdash;though very imperfect&mdash;perception
+of the fact which evidently made so deep an impression upon his
+successor, Dr. Erasmus Darwin. I refer to that continuity of life in
+successive generations, and that oneness of personality between parents
+and offspring, which is the only key that will make the phenomena of
+heredity intelligible.</p>
+
+<p>"Man," he says, "and especially educated man, is no longer a single
+individual, but represents no small<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> part of the human race in its
+entirety. He was the first to receive from his fathers the knowledge
+which their own ancestors had handed down to them. These, having
+discovered the divine art of fixing their thoughts so that they can
+transmit them to their posterity, become, as it were, one and the same
+people with their descendants (<i>se sont, pour ainsi dire, identifi&eacute;s
+avec leur neveux</i>); while our descendants will in their turn be one and
+the same people with ourselves (<i>s'identifieront avec nous</i>). This
+reunion in a single person of the experience of many ages, throws back
+the boundaries of man's existence to the utmost limits of the past; he
+is no longer a single individual, limited as other beings are to the
+sensations and experiences of to-day. In place of the individual we have
+to deal, as it were, with the whole species."<a name="FNanchor_112_112" id="FNanchor_112_112"></a><a href="#Footnote_112_112" class="fnanchor">[112]</a></p>
+
+<p>"Differences in exterior are nothing in comparison with those in
+interior parts. These last must be regarded as the causes, while the
+others are but the effects. The interior parts of living beings are the
+foundation of the plan of their design; this is their essential form,
+their real shape, their exterior is only the surface, or rather the
+drapery in which their true figure is enveloped. How often does not the
+study of comparative anatomy show us that two exteriors which differ
+widely conceal interiors absolutely like each other, and, on the
+contrary, that the smallest internal difference is accompanied by the
+most marked differences of outward appearance, changing as it does even
+the natural habits, faculties and attributes of the animal?"<a name="FNanchor_113_113" id="FNanchor_113_113"></a><a href="#Footnote_113_113" class="fnanchor">[113]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center padtop"><i>Apes and Monkeys.</i></p>
+
+<p>The fourteenth volume is devoted to apes and monkeys, and to the chapter
+with which the volumes on quadrupeds are brought to a conclusion&mdash;a
+chapter for which perhaps the most important position in the whole work
+is thus assigned. It is very long, and is headed "On Descent with
+Modification" ("De la D&eacute;g&eacute;n&eacute;ration des Animaux"). This is the chapter in
+which Buffon enters more fully into the "causes or means" of the
+transformation of species.</p>
+
+<p>At the opening of the chapter on the nomenclature of monkeys, the theory
+is broached that there is a certain fixed amount of life-substance as of
+matter in nature; and that neither can be either augmented or
+diminished. Buffon maintains this organic and living substance to be as
+real and durable as inanimate matter; as permanent in its state of life
+as the other in that of death; it is spread over the whole of nature,
+and passes from vegetables to animals by way of nutrition, and from
+animals back to vegetables through putrefaction, thus circulating
+incessantly to the animation of all that lives.</p>
+
+<p>As might be expected, Buffon is loud in his protest against any real
+similarity between man and the apes&mdash;man has had the spirit of the Deity
+breathed into his nostrils, and the lowest creature with this is higher
+than the highest without it. Having settled this point, he makes it his
+business to show how little difference in other respects there is
+between the apes and man.</p>
+
+<p>"One who could view," he writes, "Nature in her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> entirety, from first to
+last, and then reflect upon the manner in which these two
+substances&mdash;the living and the inanimate&mdash;act and react upon one
+another, would see that every living being is a mould which casts into
+its own shape those substances upon which it feeds; that it is this
+assimilation which constitutes the growth of the body, whose development
+is not simply an augmentation of volume, but an extension in all its
+dimensions, a penetration of new matter into all parts of its mass: he
+would see that these parts augment proportionately with the whole, and
+the whole proportionately with these parts, while general configuration
+remains the same until the full development is accomplished.... He would
+see that man, the quadruped, the cetacean, the bird, reptile, insect,
+tree, plant, herb, all are nourished, grow, and reproduce themselves on
+this same system, and that though their manner of feeding and of
+reproducing themselves may appear so different, this is only because the
+general and common cause upon which these operations depend can only
+operate in the individual agreeably with the form of each species.
+Travelling onward (for it has taken the human mind ages to arrive at
+these great truths, from which all others are derived), he would compare
+living forms, give them names to distinguish them, and other names to
+connect them with each other. Taking his own body as the model with
+which all living forms should be compared, and having measured them,
+explained them thoroughly, and compared them in all their parts, he
+would see that there is but small difference between the forms of living
+beings; that by dissecting the ape he could arrive at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> the anatomy of
+man, and that taking some other animal we find always the same ultimate
+plan of organization, the same senses, the same viscera, the same bones,
+the same flesh, the same movements of the fluids, the same play and
+action of the solids; he would find all of them with a heart, veins,
+arteries, in all the same organs of circulation, respiration, digestion,
+nutrition, secretion; in all of them a solid frame, composed of pieces
+put together in nearly the same manner; and he would find this system
+always the same, from man to the ape, from the ape to the quadrupeds,
+from the quadrupeds to the cetacea, birds, fishes, reptiles; this system
+or plan then, I say, if firmly laid hold of and comprehended by the
+human mind, is a true copy of nature; it is the simplest and most
+general point of view from which we can consider her, and if we extend
+our view, and go on from what lives to what vegetates, we may see this
+plan&mdash;which originally did but vary almost imperceptibly&mdash;change its
+scope and descend gradually from reptiles to insects, from insects to
+worms, from worms to zoophytes, from zoophytes to plants, and yet
+keeping ever the same fundamental unity in spite of differences of
+detail, insomuch that nutrition, development, and reproduction remain
+the common traits of all organic bodies; traits eternally essential and
+divinely implanted; which time, far from effacing or destroying, does
+but make plainer and plainer continually."</p>
+
+<p>This is the writer who can see nothing in common between the horse and
+the zebra except that each has a solid hoof.<a name="FNanchor_114_114" id="FNanchor_114_114"></a><a href="#Footnote_114_114" class="fnanchor">[114]</a> He continues:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"If from this grand tableau of resemblances, in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>which the living
+universe presents itself to our eyes as though it were a single family,
+we pass to a tableau rather of the differences between living forms, we
+shall see that, with the exception of some of the greater species, such
+as the elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, tiger, lion, which must each
+have their separate place, the other races seem all to blend with
+neighbouring forms, and to fall into groups of likenesses, greater or
+lesser, and of genera which our nomenclators represent to us by a
+network of shapes, of which some are held together by the feet, others
+by the teeth, horns, and skin, and others by points of still minor
+importance. And even those whose form strikes us as most perfect, as
+approaching most nearly to our own&mdash;even the apes&mdash;require some
+attention before they can be distinguished from one another, for the
+privilege of being an isolated species has been assigned less to form
+than to size; and man himself, though of a separate species and
+differing infinitely from all or any others, has but a medium size, and
+is less isolated and has nearer neighbours than have the greater
+animals. If we study the Orang-outang with regard only to his
+configuration, we might regard him, with equal justice, as either the
+highest of the apes or as the lowest of mankind, because, with the
+exception of the soul, he wants nothing of what we have ourselves, and
+because, as regards his body, he differs less from man than he does from
+other animals which are still called apes."<a name="FNanchor_115_115" id="FNanchor_115_115"></a><a href="#Footnote_115_115" class="fnanchor">[115]</a></p>
+
+<p>The want of a soul Buffon maintains to be the only essential difference
+between the Orang-outang and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> man&mdash;"his body, limbs, senses, brain and
+tongue are the same as ours. He can execute whatever movements man can
+execute; yet he can neither think nor speak, nor do any action of a
+distinctly human character. Is this merely through want of training? or
+may it not be through wrong comparison on our own parts? We compare the
+wild ape in the woods to the civilized citizen of our great towns. No
+wonder the ape shows to disadvantage. He should be compared with the
+hideous Hottentot rather, who is himself almost as much above the lowest
+man, as the lowest man is above the Orang-outang."<a name="FNanchor_116_116" id="FNanchor_116_116"></a><a href="#Footnote_116_116" class="fnanchor">[116]</a></p>
+
+<p>The passage is a much stronger one than I have thought it fit to quote.
+The reader can refer to it for himself. After reading it I entertain no
+further doubt that Buffon intended to convey the impression that men and
+apes are descended from common ancestors. He was not, however, going to
+avow this conclusion openly.</p>
+
+<p>"I admit," he continues, "that if we go by mere structure the ape might
+be taken for a variety of the human race; the Creator did not choose to
+model mankind upon an entirely distinct system from the other animals:
+He comprised their form and man's under a plan which is in the main
+uniform."<a name="FNanchor_117_117" id="FNanchor_117_117"></a><a href="#Footnote_117_117" class="fnanchor">[117]</a> Buffon then dwells upon the possession of a soul by man;
+"even the lowest creature," he avers, "which had this, would have become
+man's rival."</p>
+
+<p>"The ape then is purely an animal, far from being a variety of our own
+species, he does not even come first in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> the order of animals, since he
+is not the most intelligent: the high opinion which men have of the
+intelligence of apes is a prejudice based only upon the resemblance
+between their outward appearance and our own."<a name="FNanchor_118_118" id="FNanchor_118_118"></a><a href="#Footnote_118_118" class="fnanchor">[118]</a> But the undiscerning
+were not only to be kept quiet, they were to be made happy. With this
+end, if I am not much mistaken, Buffon brings his chapter on the
+nomenclature of apes to the following conclusion:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The ape, which the philosopher and the uneducated have alike regarded
+as difficult to define, and as being at best equivocal, and midway
+between man and the lower animals, proves in fact to be an animal and
+nothing more; he is masked externally in the shape of man, but
+internally he is found incapable of thought, and of all that constitutes
+man; apes are below several of the other animals in respect of qualities
+corresponding to their own, and differ essentially from man, in nature,
+temperament, the time which must be spent upon their gestation and
+education, in their period of growth, duration of life, and in fact in
+all those profounder habits which constitute what is called the 'nature'
+of any individual existence."<a name="FNanchor_119_119" id="FNanchor_119_119"></a><a href="#Footnote_119_119" class="fnanchor">[119]</a> This is handsome, and leaves the more
+timorous reader in full possession of the field.</p>
+
+<p>Buffon is accordingly at liberty in the following chapter to bring
+together every fact he can lay his hands on which may point the
+resemblance between man and the Orang-outang most strongly; but he is
+careful to use inverted commas here much more freely than is his wont.
+Having thus made out a strong case for the near affinity between man and
+the Orang-outang,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> and having thrown the responsibility on the original
+authors of the passages he quotes, he excuses himself for having quoted
+them on the ground that "everything may seem important in the history of
+a brute which resembles man so nearly," and then insists upon the points
+of difference between the Orang-outang and ourselves. They do not,
+however, in Buffon's hands come to much, until the end of the chapter,
+when, after a <i>r&eacute;sum&eacute;</i> dwelling on the points of resemblance, the
+differences are again emphatically declared to have the best of it.</p>
+
+<p>I need not follow Buffon through his description of the remaining
+monkeys. It comprises 250 pp., and is confined to details with which we
+have no concern; but the last chapter&mdash;"De la D&eacute;g&eacute;n&eacute;ration des
+Animaux"&mdash;deserves much fuller quotation than my space will allow me to
+make from it. The chapter is very long, comprising, as I have said, over
+sixty quarto pages. It is impossible, therefore, for me to give more
+than an outline of its contents.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center padtop"><i>Causes or Means of the Transformation of Species.</i></p>
+
+<p>The human race is declared to be the one most capable of modification,
+all its different varieties being descended from a common stock, and
+owing their more superficial differences to changes of climate, while
+their profounder ones, such as woolly hair, flat noses, and thick lips,
+are due to differences of diet, which again will vary with the nature of
+the country inhabited by any race. Changes will be exceedingly gradual;
+it will take centuries of unbroken habit to bring about modifications
+which can<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> be transmitted with certainty so as to eventuate in national
+characteristics.<a name="FNanchor_120_120" id="FNanchor_120_120"></a><a href="#Footnote_120_120" class="fnanchor">[120]</a> It is a pleasure to find that here, too, habit is
+assigned as the main cause which underlies heredity.</p>
+
+<p>Modification will be much prompter with animals. When compelled to
+abandon their native land, they undergo such rapid and profound
+modification, that at first sight they can hardly be recognized as the
+same race, and cannot be detected in their disguise till after the most
+careful inspection, and on grounds of analogy only. Domestication will
+produce still more surprising results; the stigmata of their captivity,
+the marks of their chains, can be seen upon all those animals which man
+has enslaved; the older and more confirmed the servitude, the deeper
+will be its scars, until at length it will be found impossible to
+rehabilitate the creature and restore to it its lost attributes.</p>
+
+<p>"Temperature of climate, quality of food, and the ills of slavery&mdash;here
+are the three main causes of the alteration and degeneration of animals.
+The consequences of each of these should be particularly considered, so
+that by examining Nature as she is to-day we may thus perceive what she
+was in her original condition."<a name="FNanchor_121_121" id="FNanchor_121_121"></a><a href="#Footnote_121_121" class="fnanchor">[121]</a></p>
+
+<p>I have more than once admitted that there is a wide difference between
+this opinion, which assigns modification to the direct influence of
+climate, food, and other changed conditions of life, and that of Dr.
+Erasmus Darwin, which assigns only an indirect effect to these, while
+the direct effect is given to changed actions in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> consequence of changed
+desires; but it is surprising how nearly Buffon has approached the later
+and truer theory, which may perhaps have been suggested to Dr. Darwin by
+the following pregnant passage&mdash;as pregnant, probably, to Buffon himself
+as to another:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The camel is the animal which seems to me to have felt the weight of
+slavery most profoundly. He is born with wens upon his back and
+callosities upon his knees and chest; these callosities are the
+unmistakable results of rubbing, for they are full of pus and of
+corrupted blood. The camel never walks without carrying a heavy burden,
+and the pressure of this has hindered, for generations, the free
+extension and uniform growth of the muscular parts of the back; whenever
+he reposes or sleeps his driver compels him to do so upon his folded
+legs, so that little by little this position becomes habitual with him.
+All the weight of his body bears, during several hours of the day
+continuously, upon his chest and knees, so that the skin of these parts,
+pressed and rubbed against the earth, loses its hair, becomes bruised,
+hardened, and disorganized.</p>
+
+<p>"The llama, which like the camel passes its life beneath burdens, and
+also reposes only by resting its weight upon its chest, has similar
+callosities, which again are perpetuated in successive generations.
+Baboons, and pouched monkeys, whose ordinary position is a sitting one,
+whether waking or sleeping, have callosities under the region of the
+haunches, and this hard skin has even become inseparable from the bone
+against which it is being continually pressed by the weight of the body;
+in the case, however, of these animals the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> callosities are dry and
+healthy, for they do not come from the constraint of trammels, nor from
+the burden of a foreign weight, but are the effects only of the natural
+habits of the animal, which cause it to continue longer seated than in
+any other position. There are callosities of these pouched monkeys which
+resemble the double sole of skin which we have ourselves under our feet;
+this sole is a natural hardness which our continued habit of walking or
+standing upright will make thicker or thinner according to the greater
+or less degree of friction to which we subject our feet."<a name="FNanchor_122_122" id="FNanchor_122_122"></a><a href="#Footnote_122_122" class="fnanchor">[122]</a></p>
+
+<p>This involves the whole theory of Dr. Darwin.</p>
+
+<p>Wild animals would not change either their food or climate if left to
+themselves, and in this case they would not vary, but either man or some
+other enemies have harassed most of them into migrations; "those whose
+nature was sufficiently flexible to lend itself to the new situation
+spread far and wide, while others have had no resource but the deserts
+in the neighbourhood of their own countries."<a name="FNanchor_123_123" id="FNanchor_123_123"></a><a href="#Footnote_123_123" class="fnanchor">[123]</a></p>
+
+<p>Since food and climate, and still less man's empire over them, can have
+but little effect upon wild animals, Buffon refers their principal
+varieties in great measure to their sexual habits, variations being much
+less frequent among animals that pair and breed slowly, than among those
+which do not mate and breed more freely. After running rapidly over
+several animals, and discussing the flexibility or inflexibility of
+their organizations, he declares the elephant to be the only one on
+which a state of domestication has produced<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> no effect, inasmuch as "it
+refuses to breed under confinement, and cannot therefore transmit the
+badges of its servitude to its descendants."<a name="FNanchor_124_124" id="FNanchor_124_124"></a><a href="#Footnote_124_124" class="fnanchor">[124]</a></p>
+
+<p>Here is an example of Buffon's covert manner, in the way he maintains
+that descent with modification may account not only for specific but for
+generic differences.</p>
+
+<p>"But after having taken a rapid survey of the varieties which indicate
+to us the alterations that each species has undergone, there arises a
+broader and more important question, how far, namely, species themselves
+can change&mdash;how far there has been an older degeneration, immemorial
+from all antiquity, which has taken place in every family, or, if the
+term is preferred, <i>in all the genera</i> under which those species are
+comprehended which neighbour one another without presenting points of
+any very profound dissimilarity? We have only a few isolated species,
+such as man, which form at once the species and the whole genus; the
+elephant, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, and the giraffe form genera,
+or simple species, which go down in a single line, with no collateral
+branches. All other races appear to form families, in which we may
+perceive a common source or stock from which the different branches seem
+to have sprung in greater or less numbers according as the individuals
+of each species are smaller and more fecund."<a name="FNanchor_125_125" id="FNanchor_125_125"></a><a href="#Footnote_125_125" class="fnanchor">[125]</a></p>
+
+<p>I can see no explanation of the introduction of this passage unless that
+it is intended to raise the question whether modification may be not
+only specific but generic, the point of the paragraph lying in the
+words<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> "dans chaque famille, <i>ou si l'on veut, dans chacun des genres</i>."
+We are told in the next paragraph, that if we choose to look at the
+matter in this light, well&mdash;in that case&mdash;we ought to see not only the
+ass and the horse, but <i>the zebra too</i>, as members of the same family;
+"the number of their points of resemblance being infinitely greater than
+those in respect of which they differ."<a name="FNanchor_126_126" id="FNanchor_126_126"></a><a href="#Footnote_126_126" class="fnanchor">[126]</a> Thus, at the close of his
+work on the quadrupeds, he thinks it well, as at the commencement
+seventeen years earlier, to emphasize&mdash;in his own quiet way&mdash;his
+perception that the principles on which he has been insisting should be
+carried much farther than he has chosen to carry them.</p>
+
+<p>His conclusion is, that "after comparing all the animals and bringing
+them each under their proper genus, we shall find the two hundred
+species we have already described to be reducible into a sufficiently
+small number of families or main stocks from which it is not impossible
+that all the others may be derived."<a name="FNanchor_127_127" id="FNanchor_127_127"></a><a href="#Footnote_127_127" class="fnanchor">[127]</a></p>
+
+<p>The chapter closes thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"To account for the origin of these animals" (certain of those peculiar
+to America), "we must go back to the time when the two continents were
+not yet separated, and call to mind the earliest geological changes. At
+the same time, we must consider the two hundred existing species of
+quadrupeds as reduced to thirty-eight families. And though this is not
+at all the state of Nature as she is in our time, and as she has been
+represented in this volume, and though, in fact, it is a condition which
+we can only arrive at by induction,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> and by analogies almost as
+difficult to lay hold of as is the time which has effaced the greater
+number of their traces, I shall, nevertheless, endeavour to ascend to
+these first ages of Nature by the aid of facts and monuments which yet
+remain to us, and to represent the epochs which these facts seem to
+indicate."<a name="FNanchor_128_128" id="FNanchor_128_128"></a><a href="#Footnote_128_128" class="fnanchor">[128]</a></p>
+
+<p>The fifteenth volume contains a description of a few more monkeys, as
+also of some animals which Buffon had never actually seen, a great part
+being devoted to indices.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center padtop"><i>Supplement.</i></p>
+
+<p>The first four volumes of the Supplement to Buffon's 'Natural History,'
+1774-1789, contain little which throws additional light upon his
+opinions concerning the mutability of species. At the beginning,
+however, of the fifth volume I find the following:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"On comparing these ancient records of the first ages of life [fossils]
+with the productions of to-day, we see with sufficient clearness that
+the essential form has been preserved without alteration in its
+principal parts: there has been no change whatever in the general type
+of each species; the plan of the inner parts has been preserved without
+variation. However long a time we may imagine for the succession of
+ages, whatever number of generations we may suppose, the individuals of
+to-day present to us in each genus the same forms as they did in the
+earliest ages; and this is more especially true of the greater species,
+whose characters are more invariable and nature more fixed; for the
+inferior species<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> have, as we have said, experienced in a perceptible
+manner all the effects of different causes of degeneration. Only it
+should be remarked in regard to these greater species, such as the
+elephant and hippopotamus, that in comparing their fossil remains with
+the existing forms we find the earlier ones to have been larger. Nature
+was then in the full vigour of her youth, and the interior heat of the
+earth gave to her productions all the force and all the extent of which
+they were capable ... if there have been lost species, that is to say
+animals which existed once, but no longer do so, these can only have
+been animals which required a heat greater than that of our present
+torrid zone."<a name="FNanchor_129_129" id="FNanchor_129_129"></a><a href="#Footnote_129_129" class="fnanchor">[129]</a></p>
+
+<p>The context proves Buffon to have been thinking of such huge creatures
+as the megatherium and mastodon, but his words seem to limit the
+extinction of species to the denizens of a hot climate which had turned
+colder. It is not at all likely that Buffon meant this, as the passage
+quoted at p. <a href="#Page_146">146</a> of this work will suffice to show.
+The whole paragraph is ironical.</p>
+
+<p>I can see nothing to justify the conclusion drawn from this passage by
+Isidore Geoffroy, that Buffon had modified his opinions, and was
+inclined to believe in a more limited mutability than he had done a few
+years earlier. His exoteric position is still identical with what it was
+in the outset, and his esoteric may be seen from the spirit which is
+hardly concealed under the following:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be told that analogy points towards the belief that our own
+race has followed the same path,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> and dates from the same period as
+other species; that it has spread itself even more widely than they; and
+that if man's creation has a later date than that of the other animals,
+nothing shows that he has not been subjected to the same laws of nature,
+the same alterations, and the same changes as they. We will grant that
+the human species does not differ essentially from others in the matter
+of bodily organs, and that, in respect of these, our lot has been much
+the same as that of other animals."<a name="FNanchor_130_130" id="FNanchor_130_130"></a><a href="#Footnote_130_130" class="fnanchor">[130]</a></p>
+
+
+<p class="center padtop"><i>Plants under Domestication.</i></p>
+
+<p>"If more modern and even recent examples are required in order to prove
+man's power over the vegetable kingdom, it is only necessary to compare
+our vegetables, flowers, and fruits with the same species such as they
+were a hundred and fifty years ago; this can be done with much ease and
+certainty by running the eye over the great collection of coloured
+drawings begun in the time of Gaston of Orleans, and continued to the
+present day at the Jardin du Roi. We find with surprise that the finest
+flowers of that date, as the ranunculuses, pinks, tulips, bear's ears,
+&amp;c., would be rejected now, I do not say by our florists, but by our
+village gardeners. These flowers, though then already cultivated, were
+still not far above their wild condition. They had a single row of
+petals only, long pistils, colours hard and false; they had little
+velvety texture, variety, or gradation of tints, and, in fact, presented
+all the characteristics of untamed nature. Of herbs there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> was a single
+kind of endive, and two of lettuce&mdash;both bad&mdash;while we can now reckon
+more than fifty lettuces and endives, all excellent. We can even name
+the very recent dates of our best pippins and kernel fruits&mdash;all of them
+differing from those of our forefathers, which they resemble in name
+only. In most cases things remain while names change; here, on the
+contrary, it is the names that have been constant while the things have
+varied.<a name="FNanchor_131_131" id="FNanchor_131_131"></a><a href="#Footnote_131_131" class="fnanchor">[131]</a></p>
+
+<p class="subhead2a">. . . . . . . . . . .</p>
+
+<p>"It is not that every one of these good varieties did not arise from the
+same wild stock; but how many attempts has not man made on Nature before
+he succeeded in getting them. How many millions of germs has he not
+committed to the earth, before she has rewarded him by producing them?
+It was only by sowing, tending, and bringing to maturity an almost
+infinite number of plants of the same kind that he was able to recognize
+some individuals with fruits sweeter and better than others; and this
+first discovery, which itself involves so much care, would have remained
+for ever fruitless if he had not made a second, which required as much
+genius as the first required patience&mdash;I mean the art of grafting those
+precious individuals, which, unfortunately, cannot continue a line as
+noble as their own, nor themselves propagate their rare and admirable
+qualities? And this alone proves that these qualities are purely
+individual, and not specific, for the pips or stones of these excellent
+fruits bring forth the original wild stock, so that they do not form
+species<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> essentially different from this. Man, however, by means of
+grafting, produces what may be called secondary species, which he can
+propagate at will; for the bud or small branch which he engrafts upon
+the stock contains within itself the individual quality which cannot be
+transmitted by seed, but which needs only to be developed in order to
+bring forth the same fruits as the individual from which it was taken in
+order to be grafted on to the wild stock. The wild stock imparts none of
+its bad qualities to the bud, for it did not contribute to the forming
+thereof, being, as it were, a wet nurse, and no true mother.</p>
+
+<p>"In the case of animals, the greater number of those features which
+appear individual, do not fail to be transmitted to offspring, in the
+same way as specific characters. It was easier then for man to produce
+an effect upon the natures of animals than of plants. The different
+breeds in each animal species are variations that have become constant
+and hereditary, while vegetable species on the other hand present no
+variations that can be depended on to be transmitted with certainty.</p>
+
+<p>"In the species of the fowl and the pigeon alone, a large number of
+breeds have been formed quite recently, which are all constant, and in
+other species we daily improve breeds by crossing them. From time to
+time we acclimatize and domesticate some foreign and wild species. All
+these examples of modern times prove that man has but tardily discovered
+the extent of his own power, and that he is not even yet sufficiently
+aware of it. It depends entirely upon the exercise of his intelligence;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>
+the more, therefore, he observes and cultivates nature the more means he
+will find of making her subservient to him, and of drawing new riches
+from her bosom without diminishing the treasures of her inexhaustible
+fecundity."<a name="FNanchor_132_132" id="FNanchor_132_132"></a><a href="#Footnote_132_132" class="fnanchor">[132]</a></p>
+
+
+<p class="center padtop"><i>Birds.</i></p>
+
+<p>In the preface to his volumes upon birds, Buffon says that these are not
+only much more numerous than quadrupeds, but that they also exhibit a
+far larger number of varieties, and individual variations.</p>
+
+<p>"The diversities," he declares, "which arise from the effects of climate
+and food, of domestication, captivity, transportation, voluntary and
+compulsory migration&mdash;all the causes in fact of alteration and
+degeneration&mdash;unite to throw difficulties in the way of the
+ornithologist."<a name="FNanchor_133_133" id="FNanchor_133_133"></a><a href="#Footnote_133_133" class="fnanchor">[133]</a></p>
+
+<p>He points out the infinitely keener vision of birds than that of man and
+quadrupeds, and connects it with their habits and requirements.<a name="FNanchor_134_134" id="FNanchor_134_134"></a><a href="#Footnote_134_134" class="fnanchor">[134]</a> He
+does not appear to consider it as caused by those requirements, though
+it is quite conceivable that he saw this, but thought he had already
+said enough. He repeatedly refers to the effects of changed climate and
+of domestication, but I find nothing in the first volume which modifies
+the position already taken by him in regard to descent with
+modification: it is needless, therefore, to repeat the few passages
+which are to be found bearing at all upon the subject. The chapter on
+the birds that cannot fly,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> contains a sentence which seems to be the
+germ that has been developed, in the hands of Lamarck, into the
+comparison between nature and a tree. Buffon says that the chain of
+nature is not a single long chain, but is comparable rather to something
+woven, "which at certain intervals throws out a branch sideways that
+unites it with the strands of some other weft."<a name="FNanchor_135_135" id="FNanchor_135_135"></a><a href="#Footnote_135_135" class="fnanchor">[135]</a> On the following
+page there is a passage which has been quoted as an example of Buffon's
+contempt for the men of science of his time. The writer maintains that
+the most lucid arrangement of birds, would have been to begin with those
+which most resembled quadrupeds. "The ostrich, which approaches the
+camel in the shape of its legs, and the porcupine in the quills with
+which its wings are armed, should have immediately followed the
+quadrupeds, but philosophy is often obliged to make a show of yielding
+to popular opinions, and <i>the tribe of naturalists</i> is both numerous and
+impatient of any disturbance of its methods. It would only, then, have
+regarded this arrangement as an unreasonable innovation caused by a
+desire to contradict and to be singular."<a name="FNanchor_136_136" id="FNanchor_136_136"></a><a href="#Footnote_136_136" class="fnanchor">[136]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is, I believe, held not only by "<i>le peuple des naturalistes</i>," but
+by most sensible persons, that the proposed arrangement would not have
+been an improvement. I find, however, in the preface to the third volume
+on birds that M. Gueneau de Montbeillard described all the birds from
+the ostrich to the quail, so the foregoing passage is perhaps his and
+not Buffon's. If so, the imitation is fair, but when we reflect upon it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>
+we feel uncertain whether it is or is not beneath Buffon's dignity.</p>
+
+<p>Here, as often with pictures and music, we cannot criticise justly
+without taking more into consideration than is actually before us. We
+feel almost inclined to say that if the passage is by Buffon it is
+probably right, and if by M. Gueneau de Montbeillard, probably wrong. It
+must also be remembered that, as we learn from the preface already
+referred to, Buffon was seized at this point in his work with a long and
+painful illness, which continued for two years; a single hasty passage
+in so great a writer may well be pardoned under such circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>Looking through the third and remaining volumes on birds, the greater
+part of which was by Gueneau de Montbeillard, and bearing in mind that
+in point of date they are synchronous with some of those upon quadrupeds
+from which I have already extracted as much as my space will allow, and
+not seeing anything on a rapid survey which promises to throw new light
+upon the author's opinions, I forbear to quote further. I therefore
+leave Buffon with the hope that I have seen him more justly than some
+others have done, but with the certainty that the points I have caught
+and understood are few in comparison with those that I have missed.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_65_65" id="Footnote_65_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a> 'Hist. Nat.,' tom. i. p. 13, 1749.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_66_66" id="Footnote_66_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a> Ibid.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_67_67" id="Footnote_67_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a> Ibid. p. 16.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_68_68" id="Footnote_68_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a> Tom. i. p. 21.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_69_69" id="Footnote_69_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_69_69"><span class="label">[69]</span></a> Ibid. p. 23.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_70_70" id="Footnote_70_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_70_70"><span class="label">[70]</span></a> Tom. ii. p. 9, 1749.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_71_71" id="Footnote_71_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71_71"><span class="label">[71]</span></a> Ibid. p. 10.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_72_72" id="Footnote_72_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_72_72"><span class="label">[72]</span></a> Tom. iv. p. 31, 1753.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_73_73" id="Footnote_73_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_73_73"><span class="label">[73]</span></a> Tom. iv. p. 55.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_74_74" id="Footnote_74_74"></a><a href="#FNanchor_74_74"><span class="label">[74]</span></a> Tom. iv. p. 98, 1753.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_75_75" id="Footnote_75_75"></a><a href="#FNanchor_75_75"><span class="label">[75]</span></a> Ibid.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_76_76" id="Footnote_76_76"></a><a href="#FNanchor_76_76"><span class="label">[76]</span></a> Tom. viii. p. 283, &amp;c., 1760.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_77_77" id="Footnote_77_77"></a><a href="#FNanchor_77_77"><span class="label">[77]</span></a> Tom. iv. p. 102, 1760.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_78_78" id="Footnote_78_78"></a><a href="#FNanchor_78_78"><span class="label">[78]</span></a> Tom. iv. p. 103, 1753.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_79_79" id="Footnote_79_79"></a><a href="#FNanchor_79_79"><span class="label">[79]</span></a> Dr. Darwin, 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 183, 1796.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_80_80" id="Footnote_80_80"></a><a href="#FNanchor_80_80"><span class="label">[80]</span></a> Ibid. p. 184.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_81_81" id="Footnote_81_81"></a><a href="#FNanchor_81_81"><span class="label">[81]</span></a> Dr. Darwin,'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 186.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_82_82" id="Footnote_82_82"></a><a href="#FNanchor_82_82"><span class="label">[82]</span></a> Tom. v. p. 63, 1755.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_83_83" id="Footnote_83_83"></a><a href="#FNanchor_83_83"><span class="label">[83]</span></a> Ibid. p. 64.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_84_84" id="Footnote_84_84"></a><a href="#FNanchor_84_84"><span class="label">[84]</span></a> Tom. v. p. 103, 1755.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_85_85" id="Footnote_85_85"></a><a href="#FNanchor_85_85"><span class="label">[85]</span></a> Tom. v. p. 104, 1755.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_86_86" id="Footnote_86_86"></a><a href="#FNanchor_86_86"><span class="label">[86]</span></a> Tom. v. pp. 192-195, 1755.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_87_87" id="Footnote_87_87"></a><a href="#FNanchor_87_87"><span class="label">[87]</span></a> Tom. v. p. 195.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_88_88" id="Footnote_88_88"></a><a href="#FNanchor_88_88"><span class="label">[88]</span></a> Tom. v. pp. 196, 197.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_89_89" id="Footnote_89_89"></a><a href="#FNanchor_89_89"><span class="label">[89]</span></a> This passage would seem to be the one which has suggested
+the following to the author of 'The Vestiges of Creation':&mdash;
+</p><p>
+"He [the Deity] has endowed the families which enjoy His bounty with an
+almost infinite fecundity, ... but the limitation of the results of this
+fecundity ... is accomplished in a befitting manner by His ordaining
+that certain other animals shall have endowments sure so to act as to
+bring the rest of animated beings to a proper balance" (p. 317, ed.
+1853).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_90_90" id="Footnote_90_90"></a><a href="#FNanchor_90_90"><span class="label">[90]</span></a> Tom. vi. p. 252, 1756.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_91_91" id="Footnote_91_91"></a><a href="#FNanchor_91_91"><span class="label">[91]</span></a> 'Discours sur la Nature des Animaux,' vol. iv.
+and p. <a href="#Page_113">113</a> of this vol.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_92_92" id="Footnote_92_92"></a><a href="#FNanchor_92_92"><span class="label">[92]</span></a> Tom. vii. p. 9, 1758.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_93_93" id="Footnote_93_93"></a><a href="#FNanchor_93_93"><span class="label">[93]</span></a> Tom. vii. p. 10, 1758.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_94_94" id="Footnote_94_94"></a><a href="#FNanchor_94_94"><span class="label">[94]</span></a> Tom. vii. p. 12, 1758.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_95_95" id="Footnote_95_95"></a><a href="#FNanchor_95_95"><span class="label">[95]</span></a> Tom. vii. p. 14, 1758</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_96_96" id="Footnote_96_96"></a><a href="#FNanchor_96_96"><span class="label">[96]</span></a> Tom. vii. p. 15, 1758.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_97_97" id="Footnote_97_97"></a><a href="#FNanchor_97_97"><span class="label">[97]</span></a> Tom. vii. p. 19, 1758.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_98_98" id="Footnote_98_98"></a><a href="#FNanchor_98_98"><span class="label">[98]</span></a> Tom. vii. p. 23, 1758. See St&eacute;non's Discourse upon this
+subject.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_99_99" id="Footnote_99_99"></a><a href="#FNanchor_99_99"><span class="label">[99]</span></a> Tom. ix. p. 10, 1761.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_100_100" id="Footnote_100_100"></a><a href="#FNanchor_100_100"><span class="label">[100]</span></a> Tom. ix. p. 11, 1761.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_101_101" id="Footnote_101_101"></a><a href="#FNanchor_101_101"><span class="label">[101]</span></a> Tom. ix. p. 68, 1761.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_102_102" id="Footnote_102_102"></a><a href="#FNanchor_102_102"><span class="label">[102]</span></a> Ibid. p. 96, 1761.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_103_103" id="Footnote_103_103"></a><a href="#FNanchor_103_103"><span class="label">[103]</span></a> Tom. ix. p. 107 and following pages (during which he
+rails at the new world generally), 1761.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_104_104" id="Footnote_104_104"></a><a href="#FNanchor_104_104"><span class="label">[104]</span></a> Tom. ix. p. 127, 1761.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_105_105" id="Footnote_105_105"></a><a href="#FNanchor_105_105"><span class="label">[105]</span></a> Tom. xi. p. 290, 1764 (misprinted on title-page 1754).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_106_106" id="Footnote_106_106"></a><a href="#FNanchor_106_106"><span class="label">[106]</span></a> Ibid. p. 296.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_107_107" id="Footnote_107_107"></a><a href="#FNanchor_107_107"><span class="label">[107]</span></a> Ibid. p. 363.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_108_108" id="Footnote_108_108"></a><a href="#FNanchor_108_108"><span class="label">[108]</span></a> Ibid. p. 363.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_109_109" id="Footnote_109_109"></a><a href="#FNanchor_109_109"><span class="label">[109]</span></a> Tom. xi. p. 370, 1764.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_110_110" id="Footnote_110_110"></a><a href="#FNanchor_110_110"><span class="label">[110]</span></a> Ibid. xii., preface, iv. 1764.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_111_111" id="Footnote_111_111"></a><a href="#FNanchor_111_111"><span class="label">[111]</span></a> Tom. xiii., preface, x. 1765.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_112_112" id="Footnote_112_112"></a><a href="#FNanchor_112_112"><span class="label">[112]</span></a> Tom. xiii., preface, iv. 1765.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_113_113" id="Footnote_113_113"></a><a href="#FNanchor_113_113"><span class="label">[113]</span></a> Ibid. xiii. p. 37.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_114_114" id="Footnote_114_114"></a><a href="#FNanchor_114_114"><span class="label">[114]</span></a> See p. <a href="#Page_80">80</a> of this volume.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_115_115" id="Footnote_115_115"></a><a href="#FNanchor_115_115"><span class="label">[115]</span></a> Tom. xiv. p. 30, 1766.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_116_116" id="Footnote_116_116"></a><a href="#FNanchor_116_116"><span class="label">[116]</span></a> Tom. xiv. p. 31, 1766.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_117_117" id="Footnote_117_117"></a><a href="#FNanchor_117_117"><span class="label">[117]</span></a> Ibid. p. 32, 1766.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_118_118" id="Footnote_118_118"></a><a href="#FNanchor_118_118"><span class="label">[118]</span></a> Tom. xiv. p. 38, 1766.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_119_119" id="Footnote_119_119"></a><a href="#FNanchor_119_119"><span class="label">[119]</span></a> Ibid. p. 42, 1766.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_120_120" id="Footnote_120_120"></a><a href="#FNanchor_120_120"><span class="label">[120]</span></a> Tom. xiv. p. 316, 1766.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_121_121" id="Footnote_121_121"></a><a href="#FNanchor_121_121"><span class="label">[121]</span></a> Ibid. p. 317.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_122_122" id="Footnote_122_122"></a><a href="#FNanchor_122_122"><span class="label">[122]</span></a> Tom. xiv. p. 326, 1766.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_123_123" id="Footnote_123_123"></a><a href="#FNanchor_123_123"><span class="label">[123]</span></a> Ibid. p. 327.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_124_124" id="Footnote_124_124"></a><a href="#FNanchor_124_124"><span class="label">[124]</span></a> Tom. xiv. p. 333.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_125_125" id="Footnote_125_125"></a><a href="#FNanchor_125_125"><span class="label">[125]</span></a> Ibid. p. 335, 1766.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_126_126" id="Footnote_126_126"></a><a href="#FNanchor_126_126"><span class="label">[126]</span></a> See p. <a href="#Page_80">80</a> of this volume.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_127_127" id="Footnote_127_127"></a><a href="#FNanchor_127_127"><span class="label">[127]</span></a> Tom. xiv. p. 358, 1766.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_128_128" id="Footnote_128_128"></a><a href="#FNanchor_128_128"><span class="label">[128]</span></a> Tom. xiv. p. 374, 1766.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_129_129" id="Footnote_129_129"></a><a href="#FNanchor_129_129"><span class="label">[129]</span></a> 'Hist. Nat.,' Sup. tom. v. p. 27, 1778.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_130_130" id="Footnote_130_130"></a><a href="#FNanchor_130_130"><span class="label">[130]</span></a> Sup. tom. v. p. 187, 1778.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_131_131" id="Footnote_131_131"></a><a href="#FNanchor_131_131"><span class="label">[131]</span></a> Sup. tom. v. p. 250, 1778.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_132_132" id="Footnote_132_132"></a><a href="#FNanchor_132_132"><span class="label">[132]</span></a> Sup. tom. v. p. 253, 1778.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_133_133" id="Footnote_133_133"></a><a href="#FNanchor_133_133"><span class="label">[133]</span></a> 'Oiseaux,' tom. i., preface, v. 1770.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_134_134" id="Footnote_134_134"></a><a href="#FNanchor_134_134"><span class="label">[134]</span></a> Ibid. pp. 9-11.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_135_135" id="Footnote_135_135"></a><a href="#FNanchor_135_135"><span class="label">[135]</span></a> 'Oiseaux,' tom. i. pp. 394, 395.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_136_136" id="Footnote_136_136"></a><a href="#FNanchor_136_136"><span class="label">[136]</span></a> Ibid. p. 396, 1771.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span></p>
+<p class="subhead1"><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII.</p>
+
+<p class="subhead3">SKETCH OF DR. ERASMUS DARWIN'S LIFE.</p>
+
+
+<p>Proceeding now to the second of the three founders of the theory of
+evolution, I find, from a memoir by Dr. Dowson, that Dr. Erasmus Darwin
+was born at Elston, near Newark, in Nottinghamshire, on the 12th of
+December, 1731, being the seventh child and fourth son of Robert Darwin,
+"a private gentleman, who had a taste for literature and science, which
+he endeavoured to impart to his sons. Erasmus received his early
+education at Chesterfield School, and later on was entered at St. John's
+College, Cambridge, where he obtained a scholarship of about 16<i>l.</i> a
+year, and distinguished himself by his poetical exercises, which he
+composed with uncommon facility. He took the degree of M.B. there in
+1755, and afterwards prepared himself for the practice of medicine by
+attendance on the lectures of Dr. Hunter in London, and a course of
+studies in Edinburgh.</p>
+
+<p>"He first settled as a physician at Nottingham; but meeting with no
+success there, he removed in the autumn of 1756, his twenty-fifth year,
+to Lichfield, where he was more fortunate; for a few weeks after his
+arrival, to use the words of Miss Seward, 'he brilliantly opened his
+career of fame.' A young gentleman of family and fortune lay sick of a
+dangerous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> fever. A physician who had for many years possessed the
+confidence of Lichfield and the neighbourhood attended, but at length
+pronounced the case hopeless, and took his leave. Dr. Darwin was then
+called in, and by 'a reverse and entirely novel kind of treatment' the
+patient recovered."<a name="FNanchor_137_137" id="FNanchor_137_137"></a><a href="#Footnote_137_137" class="fnanchor">[137]</a></p>
+
+<p>Of Dr. Darwin's personal appearance Miss Seward says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"He was somewhat above the middle size; his form athletic, and inclined
+to corpulence; his limbs were too heavy for exact proportion; the traces
+of a severe smallpox disfigured features and a countenance which, when
+they were not animated by social pleasure, were rather saturnine than
+sprightly; a stoop in the shoulders, and the then professional
+appendage&mdash;a large full-bottomed wig&mdash;gave at that early period of life
+an appearance of nearly twice the years he bore. Florid health and the
+earnest of good humour, a funny smile on entering a room and on first
+accosting his friends, rendered in his youth that exterior agreeable, to
+which beauty and symmetry had not been propitious.</p>
+
+<p>"He stammered extremely, but whatever he said, whether gravely or in
+jest, was always well worth waiting for, though the inevitable
+impression it made might not be always pleasant to individual self-love.
+Conscious of great native elevation above the general standard of
+intellect, he became early in life sore upon opposition, whether in
+argument or conduct, and always resented it by sarcasm of very keen
+edge. Nor was he less impatient of the sallies of egotism and vanity,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>
+even when they were in so slight a degree that strict politeness would
+rather tolerate than ridicule them. Dr. Darwin seldom failed to present
+their caricature in jocose but wounding irony. If these ingredients of
+colloquial despotism were discernible in <i>unworn</i> existence, they
+increased as it advanced, fed by an ever growing reputation within and
+without the pale of medicine."<a name="FNanchor_138_138" id="FNanchor_138_138"></a><a href="#Footnote_138_138" class="fnanchor">[138]</a></p>
+
+<p>I imagine that this portrait is somewhat too harshly drawn. Dr. Darwin's
+taste for English wines is the worst trait which I have been able to
+discover in his character. On this head Miss Seward tells us that "he
+despised the prejudice which deems foreign wines more wholesome than the
+wines of the country. 'If you must drink wine,' said he, 'let it be
+home-made.'" "It is well known," she continues, "that Dr. Darwin's
+influence and example have sobered the county of Derby; that
+intemperance in fermented fluid of every species is almost unknown among
+its gentlemen,"<a name="FNanchor_139_139" id="FNanchor_139_139"></a><a href="#Footnote_139_139" class="fnanchor">[139]</a> which, if he limited them to cowslip wine, is
+hardly to be wondered at.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Dowson, quoting Miss Edgeworth, says that Dr. Darwin attributed
+almost all the diseases of the upper classes to the too great use of
+fermented liquors. "This opinion he supported in his writings with the
+force of his eloquence and reason; and still more in conversation by all
+those powers of wit, satire, and peculiar humour, which never appeared
+fully to the public in his works, but which gained him strong<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>
+ascendancy in private society.... When he heard that my father was
+bilious, he suspected that this must be the consequence of his having,
+since his residence in Ireland, and in compliance with the fashion of
+the country, indulged too freely in drinking. His letter, I remember,
+concluded with, 'Farewell, my dear friend; God keep you from whisky&mdash;if
+He can.'"<a name="FNanchor_140_140" id="FNanchor_140_140"></a><a href="#Footnote_140_140" class="fnanchor">[140]</a></p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, Dr. Darwin seems to have been a very large eater.
+"Acid fruits with sugar, and all sorts of creams and butter were his
+luxuries; but he always ate plentifully of animal food. This liberal
+alimentary regimen he prescribed to people of every age where unvitiated
+appetite rendered them capable of following it; even to infants."</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Dowson writes:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I have mentioned already that he had in his carriage a receptacle for
+paper and pencils, with which he wrote as he travelled, and in one
+corner a pile of books; but he had also a receptacle for a knife, fork,
+and spoon, and in the other corner a hamper, containing fruit and
+sweetmeats, cream and sugar. He provided also for his horses by having a
+large pail lashed to his carriage for watering them, as well as hay and
+oats to be eaten on the road. Mrs. Schimmelpenninck says that when he
+came on a professional visit to her father's house they had, as was the
+custom whenever he came, 'a luncheon-table set out with hothouse fruits
+and West India sweetmeats, clotted cream, stilton cheese, &amp;c. While the
+conversation went on, the dishes in his vicinity were rapidly emptied,
+and what,' she adds,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> 'was my astonishment when, at the end of the three
+hours during which the meal had lasted, he expressed his joy at hearing
+the dressing bell, and hoped dinner would soon be announced.' This was
+not mere gluttony; he thought an abundance, or what most people would
+consider a superabundance of food, conducive to health. '<i>Eat or be
+eaten</i>' is said to have been often his medical advice. He had especially
+a very high opinion of the nutritive value of sugar, and said 'that if
+ever our improved chemistry should discover the art of making sugar from
+fossil or aerial matter without the assistance of vegetation, food for
+animals would then become as plentiful as water, and mankind might live
+upon the earth as thick as blades of grass, with no restraint to their
+numbers but want of room.'&mdash;Botanic Garden, vol. i. p. 470."<a name="FNanchor_141_141" id="FNanchor_141_141"></a><a href="#Footnote_141_141" class="fnanchor">[141]</a></p>
+
+<p>"Professional generosity," says Miss Seward, "distinguished Dr. Darwin's
+practice. Whilst resident in Lichfield he always cheerfully gave to the
+priest and lay vicars of its cathedral and their families <i>his advice</i>,
+but never took fees from any of them. Diligently also did he attend the
+health of the poor in that city, and afterwards at Derby, and supplied
+their necessities by food, and all sort of charitable assistance. In
+each of those towns <i>his</i> was the cheerful board of almost open-housed
+hospitality, without extravagance or parade; generosity, wit, and
+science were his household gods."<a name="FNanchor_142_142" id="FNanchor_142_142"></a><a href="#Footnote_142_142" class="fnanchor">[142]</a></p>
+
+<p>Of his first marriage the following account is given:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"In 1757 he married Miss Howard, of the Close of Lichfield, a blooming
+and lovely young lady of eighteen.... Mrs. Darwin's own mind, by nature
+so well endowed, strengthened and expanded in the friendship,
+conversation, and confidence of so beloved a preceptor. But alas! upon
+her too early youth, and too delicate constitution, the frequency of her
+maternal situation, during the first five years of her marriage, had
+probably a baneful effect. The potent skill and assiduous cares of <i>him</i>
+before whom disease daily vanished from the frame of <i>others</i>, could not
+expel it radically from that of her he loved. It was, however, kept at
+bay during thirteen years.</p>
+
+<p>"Upon the distinguished happiness of those years she spoke with fervour
+to two intimate female friends in the last week of her existence, which
+closed at the latter end of the summer 1770. 'Do not weep for my
+impending fate,' said the dying angel with a smile of unaffected
+cheerfulness. 'In the short term of my life a great deal of happiness
+has been comprised. The maladies of my frame were peculiar; those of my
+head and stomach which no medicine could eradicate, were spasmodic and
+violent; and required stronger measures to render them supportable while
+they lasted than my constitution could sustain without injury. The
+periods of exemption from those pains were frequently of several days'
+duration, and in my intermissions I felt no indications of malady. Pain
+taught me the value of ease, and I enjoyed it with a glow of spirit,
+seldom, perhaps, felt by the habitually healthy. While Dr. Darwin
+combated and assuaged my disease from time<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> to time, his indulgence to
+all my wishes, his active desire to see me amused and happy, proved
+incessant. His house, as you know, has ever been the resort of people of
+science and merit. If, from my husband's great and extensive practice, I
+had much less of his society than I wished, yet the conversation of his
+friends, and of my own, was ever ready to enliven the hours of his
+absence. As occasional malady made me doubly enjoy health, so did those
+frequent absences give a zest even to delight, when I could be indulged
+with his company. My three boys have ever been docile and affectionate.
+Children as they are, I could trust them with important secrets, so
+sacred do they hold every promise they make. They scorn deceit and
+falsehood of every kind, and have less selfishness than generally
+belongs to childhood. Married to any other man, I do not suppose I could
+have lived a third part of the years which I have passed with Dr.
+Darwin; he has prolonged my days, and he has blessed them.'</p>
+
+<p>"Thus died this superior woman, in the bloom of life, sincerely
+regretted by all who knew how to value her excellence, and
+<i>passionately</i> regretted by the selected few whom she honoured with her
+personal and confidential friendship."<a name="FNanchor_143_143" id="FNanchor_143_143"></a><a href="#Footnote_143_143" class="fnanchor">[143]</a></p>
+
+<p>I find Miss Seward's pages so fascinating, that I am in danger of
+following her even in those parts of her work which have no bearing on
+Dr. Darwin. I must, however, pass over her account of Mr. Edgeworth and
+of his friend Mr. Day, the author of 'Sandford and Merton,' "which, by
+wise parents, is put into every<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> youthful hand," but the description of
+Mr. Day's portrait cannot be omitted.</p>
+
+<p>"In the course of the year 1770, Mr. Day stood for a full-length picture
+to Mr. Wright, of Derby. A strong likeness and a dignified portrait were
+the result. Drawn in the open air, the surrounding sky is tempestuous,
+lurid, dark. He stands leaning his left arm against a column inscribed
+to Hambden (<i>sic</i>). Mr. Day looks upwards, as enthusiastically
+meditating on the contents of a book held in his dropped right hand. The
+open leaf is the oration of that virtuous patriot in the senate, against
+the grant of ship money, demanded by King Charles I. A flash of
+lightning plays in Mr. Day's hair, and illuminates the contents of the
+volume. The poetic fancy and what were <i>then</i> the politics of the
+original, appear in the choice of subject and attitude. Dr. Darwin sat
+to Mr. Wright about the same period. <i>That</i> was a simply contemplative
+portrait, of the most perfect resemblance."<a name="FNanchor_144_144" id="FNanchor_144_144"></a><a href="#Footnote_144_144" class="fnanchor">[144]</a></p>
+
+<p class="subhead2a">. . . . . . . . . . .</p>
+
+<p>"In the year 1768, Dr. Darwin met with an accident of irretrievable
+injury to the human frame. His propensity to mechanics had unfortunately
+led him to construct a very singular carriage. It was a platform with a
+seat fixed upon a very high pair of wheels, and supported in the front
+upon the back of the horse, by means of a kind of proboscis which,
+forming an arch, reached over the hind-quarters of the horse, and passed
+through a ring, placed on an upright piece of iron, which worked in a
+socket fixed in the saddle. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> horse could thus move from one side of
+the road to the other, quartering, as it is called, at the will of the
+driver, whose constant attention was necessarily employed to regulate a
+piece of machinery contrived, but <i>not well</i> contrived, for that
+purpose."</p>
+
+<p>I cannot help the reader to understand the foregoing description. "From
+this whimsical carriage, however, the doctor was several times thrown,
+and the last time he used it had the misfortune, from a similar
+accident, to break the patella of his right knee, which caused, as it
+must always cause, an incurable weakness in the fractured part, and a
+lameness not very discernible, indeed, when walking on even
+ground."<a name="FNanchor_145_145" id="FNanchor_145_145"></a><a href="#Footnote_145_145" class="fnanchor">[145]</a></p>
+
+<p>Miss Seward presently tells a story which reads as though it might have
+been told by Plutarch of some Greek or Roman sage. Much as we must
+approve of Dr. Darwin's habitual sobriety, we shall most of us be agreed
+that a few more such stories would have been cheaply purchased by a
+corresponding number of lapses on the doctor's part.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Seward writes:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Since these memoirs commenced, an odd anecdote of Dr. Darwin's early
+residence at Lichfield, was narrated to a friend of the author by a
+gentleman, who was of the party in which it happened. Mr. Sneyd, then of
+Bishton, and a few more gentlemen of Staffordshire, prevailed upon the
+doctor to join them in an expedition by water from Burton to Nottingham,
+and on to Newark. They had cold provisions on board, and plenty of wine.
+It was midsummer; the day ardent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> and sultry. The noon-tide meal had
+been made, and the glass had gone gaily round. It was one of those <i>few</i>
+instances in which the medical votary of the Naiads transgressed his
+general and strict sobriety," in which, in fact, he may be said to
+have&mdash;remembered himself.</p>
+
+<p>"If not absolutely intoxicated, his spirits were in a high state of
+vinous exhilaration. On the boat approaching Nottingham, within the
+distance of a few fields, he surprised his companions by stepping,
+without any previous notice, from the boat into the middle of the river,
+and swimming to shore. They saw him get upon the bank, and walk coolly
+over the meadows towards the town: they called to him in vain, but he
+did not once turn his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Anxious lest he should take a dangerous cold by remaining in his wet
+clothes, and uncertain whether or not he intended to desert the party,
+they rowed instantly to the town at which they had not designed to have
+touched, and went in search of their river-god.</p>
+
+<p>"In passing through the market-place they saw him standing upon a tub,
+encircled by a crowd of people, and resisting the entreaties of an
+apothecary of the place, one of his old acquaintances, who was
+importuning him to his house, and to accept other raiments till his own
+could be dried.</p>
+
+<p>"The party on pressing through the crowd were surprised to hear him
+speaking without any degree of his usual stammer:&mdash;'Have I not told you,
+my friend, that I had drank a considerable quantity of wine before I
+committed myself to the river. You know my general sobriety, and as a
+professional man you <i>ought</i> to know<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> that the <i>unusual</i> existence of
+internal stimulus would, in its effects upon the system, counteract the
+<i>external</i> cold and moisture.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Then perceiving his companions near him, he nodded, smiled, and waived
+his hand, as enjoining them silence, thus, without hesitation,
+addressing the populace:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Ye men of Nottingham, listen to me. You are ingenious and industrious
+mechanics. By your industry life's comforts are procured for yourselves
+and families. If you lose your health the power of being industrious
+will forsake you. <i>That</i> you know, but you may <i>not</i> know that to
+breathe fresh and changed air constantly, is not less necessary to
+preserve health than sobriety itself. Air becomes unwholesome in a few
+hours if the windows are shut. Open those of your sleeping rooms
+whenever you quit them to go to your workshops. Keep the windows of your
+workshops open whenever the weather is not insupportably cold. I have no
+<i>interest</i> in giving you this advice; remember what I, your countryman
+and a physician, tell you. If you would not bring infection and disease
+upon yourselves, and to your wives and little ones, change the air you
+breathe, change it many times a day, by opening your windows.'</p>
+
+<p>"So saying, he stepped down from the tub, and, returning with his party
+to their boat, they pursued their voyage."<a name="FNanchor_146_146" id="FNanchor_146_146"></a><a href="#Footnote_146_146" class="fnanchor">[146]</a></p>
+
+<p>Could any missionary be more perfectly sober and sensible, or more alive
+to the immorality of trying to effect too sudden a modification in the
+organisms<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> he was endeavouring to influence? If the men of Nottingham
+want a statue in their market-place, I would respectfully suggest that a
+subject is here afforded them.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"Dr. Johnson was several times at Lichfield on visits to Mrs. Lucy
+Porter, his daughter-in-law, while Dr. Darwin was one of the
+inhabitants. They had one or two interviews, but never afterwards sought
+each other. Mutual and strong dislike subsisted between them. It is
+curious that in Johnson's various letters to Mrs. Thrale, now Mrs.
+Piozzi, published by that lady after his death, many of them dated from
+Lichfield, the name of Darwin cannot be found, nor, indeed, that of any
+of the ingenious and lettered people who lived there; while of its mere
+common-life characters there is frequent mention, with many hints of
+Lichfield's intellectual barrenness, while it could boast a Darwin and
+other men of classical learning, poetic talents, and liberal
+information."<a name="FNanchor_147_147" id="FNanchor_147_147"></a><a href="#Footnote_147_147" class="fnanchor">[147]</a></p>
+
+<p>Here there follows a pleasant sketch of the principal Lichfield
+notabilities, which I am compelled to omit.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>These</i> were the men," exclaims Miss Seward, "whose intellectual
+existence passed unnoticed by Dr. Johnson in his depreciating estimate
+of Lichfield talents. But Johnson liked only <i>worshippers</i>. Archdeacon
+Vyse, Mr. Seward, and Mr. Robinson paid all the respect and attention to
+Dr. Johnson, on these his visits to their town, due to his great
+abilities, his high reputation, and to whatever was estimable in his
+<i>mixed</i> character; but they were not in the herd that 'paged his heels,'
+and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> sunk in servile silence under the force of his dogmas, when their
+hearts and their judgments bore <i>contrary</i> testimony.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, however, it was an arduous hazard to the feelings of the
+company to oppose in the slightest degree Dr. Johnson's opinions. His
+stentor lungs; that combination of wit, humour, and eloquence, which
+'could make the <i>worse</i> appear the <i>better</i> reason,' that sarcastic
+contempt of his antagonist, never suppressed or even softened by the due
+restraints of good breeding, were sufficient to close the lips in his
+presence, of men who could have met him in fair argument, on <i>any</i>
+ground, literary or political, moral or characteristic.</p>
+
+<p>"Where Dr. Johnson was, Dr. Darwin had no chance of being heard, though
+at least his equal in genius, his superior in science; nor, indeed, from
+his impeded utterance, in the company of any overbearing declaimer; and
+he was too intellectually great to be an humble listener to Johnson.
+Therefore he shunned him on having experienced what manner of man he
+was. The surly dictator felt the mortification, and revenged it by
+<i>affecting</i> to avow his disdain of powers too distinguished to be
+objects of <i>genuine</i> scorn.</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Darwin, in his turn, was not much more just to Dr. Johnson's
+genius. He uniformly spoke of him in terms which, had they been
+deserved, would have justified Churchill's 'immane Pomposo' as an
+appellation of <i>scorn</i>; since if his person was huge, and his manners
+pompous and violent, so were his talents vast and powerful, in a degree
+from which only prejudice and resentment could withhold respect.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Though Dr. Darwin's hesitation in speaking precluded his flow of
+colloquial eloquence, it did not impede, or at all lessen, the force of
+that conciser quality, <i>wit</i>. Of satiric wit he possessed a very
+peculiar species. It was neither the dead-doing broadside of Dr.
+Johnson's satire, nor the aurora borealis of Gray ... whose arch yet coy
+and quiet fastidiousness of taste and feeling, as recorded by Mason,
+glanced bright and cold through his conversation, while it seemed
+difficult to define its nature; and while its effects were rather
+<i>perceived</i> than <i>felt</i>, exciting surprise more than mirth, and never
+awakening the pained sense of being the object of its ridicule. That
+unique in humorous verse, the Long Story, is a complete and beautiful
+specimen of Gray's singular vein.</p>
+
+<p>"Darwinian wit is not more easy to be defined; instances will best
+convey an idea of its character to those who never conversed with its
+possessor.</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Darwin was conversing with a brother botanist concerning the plant
+kalmia, then a just imported stranger in our greenhouses and gardens. A
+lady who was present, concluding he had seen it, which in fact he had
+not, asked the doctor what were the colours of the plant. He replied,
+'Madam, the kalmia has precisely the colours of a seraph's wing.' So
+fancifully did he express his want of consciousness concerning the
+appearance of a flower, whose name and rareness were all he knew of the
+matter.</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Darwin had a large company at tea. His servant announced a
+stranger, lady and gentleman. The female was a conspicuous figure,
+ruddy, corpulent,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> and tall. She held by the arm a little, meek-looking,
+pale, effeminate man, who, from his close adherence to the side of the
+lady, seemed to consider himself as under her protection.</p>
+
+<p>"'Dr. Darwin, I seek you not as a physician, but as a <i>Belle Esprit</i>. I
+make this husband of mine,' and she looked down with a side glance upon
+the animal, 'treat me every summer with a tour through one of the
+British counties, to explore whatever it contains worth the attention of
+ingenious people. On arriving at the several inns in our route I always
+search out the man of the vicinity most distinguished for his genius and
+taste, and introduce myself, that he may direct as the objects of our
+examination, whatever is curious in nature, art, or science. Lichfield
+will be our headquarters during several days. Come, doctor, whither must
+we go; what must we investigate to-morrow, and the next day, and the
+next? Here are my tablets and pencil.'</p>
+
+<p>"'You arrive, madam, at a fortunate juncture. To-morrow you will have an
+opportunity of surveying an annual exhibition perfectly worthy your
+attention. To-morrow, madam, you will go to Tutbury bull-running.'</p>
+
+<p>"The satiric laugh with which he stammered out the last word more keenly
+pointed this sly, yet broad rebuke to the vanity and arrogance of her
+speech. She had been up amongst the boughs, and little expected they
+would break under her so suddenly, and with so little mercy. Her large
+features swelled, and her eyes flashed with anger&mdash;'I was recommended to
+a man of genius, and I find him insolent and ill-bred.' Then,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> gathering
+up her meek and alarmed husband, whom she had loosed when she first
+spoke, under the shadow of her broad arm and shoulder, she strutted out
+of the room.</p>
+
+<p>"After the departure of this curious couple, his guests told their host
+he had been very unmerciful. 'I chose,' replied he, 'to avenge the cause
+of the little man, whose nothingness was so ostentatiously displayed by
+his lady-wife. Her vanity has had a smart emetic. If it abates the
+symptoms, she will have reason to thank her physician who administered
+without hope of a fee.'"<a name="FNanchor_148_148" id="FNanchor_148_148"></a><a href="#Footnote_148_148" class="fnanchor">[148]</a></p>
+
+<p>"In the spring of 1778 the children of Colonel and Mrs. Pole of Radburn,
+in Derbyshire, had been injured by a dangerous quantity of the cicuta,
+injudiciously administered to them in the hooping-cough by a physician
+of the neighbourhood. Mrs. Pole brought them to the house of Dr. Darwin
+in Lichfield, remaining with them there a few weeks, till by his art the
+poison was expelled from their constitutions and their health restored.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Pole was then in the full bloom of her youth and beauty. Agreeable
+features; the glow of health; a fine form, tall and graceful; playful
+sprightliness of manner; a benevolent heart, and maternal affection, in
+all its unwearied cares and touching tenderness, contributed to inspire
+Dr. Darwin's admiration, and to secure his esteem."<a name="FNanchor_149_149" id="FNanchor_149_149"></a><a href="#Footnote_149_149" class="fnanchor">[149]</a></p>
+
+<p>"In the autumn of this year" (1778) "Mrs. Pole of Radburn was taken ill;
+her disorder a violent fever.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> Dr. Darwin was called in, and never
+perhaps since the death of Mrs. Darwin, prescribed with such deep
+anxiety. Not being requested to continue in the house during the ensuing
+night, which he apprehended might prove critical, he passed the
+remaining hours till day-dawn beneath a tree opposite her apartment,
+watching the passing and repassing lights in the chamber. During the
+period in which a life so passionately valued was in danger, he
+paraphrased Petrarch's celebrated sonnet, narrating a dream whose
+prophecy was accomplished by the death of Laura. It took place the night
+on which the vision arose amid his slumber. Dr. Darwin extended the
+thought of that sonnet into the following elegy:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Dread dream, that, hovering in the midnight air,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Clasp'd with thy dusky wing my aching head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While to imagination's startled ear<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Toll'd the slow bell, for bright Eliza dead.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Stretched on her sable bier, the grave beside,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A snow-white shroud her breathless bosom bound,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O'er her wan brow the mimic lace was tied,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And loves and virtues hung their garlands round.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"From those cold lips did softest accents flow?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Round that pale mouth did sweetest dimples play?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On this dull cheek the rose of beauty blow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And those dim eyes diffuse celestial day?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Did this cold hand, unasking Want relieve,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or wake the lyre to every rapturous sound?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How sad for other's woe this breast would heave!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">How light this heart for other's transport bound!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Beats not the bell again?&mdash;Heavens, do I wake?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Why heave my sighs, why gush my tears anew?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unreal forms my trembling doubts mistake,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And frantic sorrow fears the vision true.<br /></span>
+</div><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Dreams to Eliza bend thy airy flight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Go, tell my charmer all my tender fears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How love's fond woes alarm the silent night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And steep my pillow in unpitied tears."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Unwilling as I am to extend this memoir, I must give Miss Seward's
+criticism on the foregoing.</p>
+
+<p>"The second verse of this charming elegy affords an instance of Dr.
+Darwin's too exclusive devotion to distinct picture in poetry; that it
+sometimes betrayed him into bringing objects so precisely to the eye as
+to lose in such precision their power of striking forcibly on the heart.
+The pathos in the second verse is much injured by the words 'mimic
+lace,' which allude to the perforated borders on the shroud. The
+expression is too minute for the solemnity of the subject. Certainly it
+cannot be natural for a shocked and agitated mind to observe, or to
+describe with such petty accuracy. Besides, the allusion is not
+sufficiently obvious. The reader pauses to consider what the poet means
+by 'mimic lace.' Such pauses deaden sensation and break the course of
+attention. A friend of the doctor's pleaded greatly that the line might
+run thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"On her wan brow the <i>shadowy crape</i> was tied;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>but the alteration was rejected. Inattention to the rules of grammar in
+the first verse was also pointed out to him at the same time. The dream
+is addressed:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Dread dream, that clasped my aching head,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>but nothing is said to it, and therefore the sense is left unfinished,
+while the elegy proceeds to give a picture of the lifeless beauty. The
+same friend suggested<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> a change which would have remedied the defect.
+Thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Dread <i>was the dream</i> that in the midnight air<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Clasped with its dusky wing my aching head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While to" &amp;c., &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"Hence not only the grammatic error would have been done away, but the
+grating sound produced by the near alliteration of the harsh <i>dr</i> in
+'<i>dr</i>ead <i>dr</i>eam' removed, by placing those words at a greater distance
+from each other.</p>
+
+<p>"This alteration was, for the same reason, rejected. The doctor would
+not spare the word <i>hovering</i>, which he said strengthened the picture;
+but surely the image ought not to be elaborately precise, by which a
+dream is transformed into an animal with black wings."<a name="FNanchor_150_150" id="FNanchor_150_150"></a><a href="#Footnote_150_150" class="fnanchor">[150]</a></p>
+
+<p>Then Mrs. Pole got well, and the doctor wrote more verses and Miss
+Seward more criticism. It was not for nothing that Dr. Johnson came down
+to Lichfield.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>In 1780 Colonel Pole died, and his widow, still young, handsome, witty,
+and&mdash;for those days&mdash;rich, was in no want of suitors.</p>
+
+<p>"Colonel Pole," says Miss Seward, "had numbered twice the years of his
+fair wife. His temper was said to have been peevish and suspicious; yet
+not beneath those circumstances had her kind and cheerful attentions to
+him grown cold or remiss. He left her a jointure of 600<i>l.</i> per annum, a
+son to inherit his estate, and two female children amply portioned.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Pole, it has already been remarked, had much vivacity and sportive
+humour, with very engaging frankness of temper and manners. Early in her
+widowhood she was rallied in a large company upon Dr. Darwin's passion
+for her, and was asked what she would do with her captive philosopher.
+'He is not very fond of churches, I believe,' said she, 'and even if he
+would go there for my sake, I shall scarcely follow him. He is too old
+for me.' 'Nay, Madam,' was the answer, 'what are fifteen years on the
+right side?' She replied, with an arch smile, 'I have had so <i>much</i> of
+that right side.'</p>
+
+<p>"This confession was thought inauspicious for the doctor's hopes, but it
+did not prove so. The triumph of intellect was complete."<a name="FNanchor_151_151" id="FNanchor_151_151"></a><a href="#Footnote_151_151" class="fnanchor">[151]</a></p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pole had taken a strong dislike to Lichfield, and had made it a
+condition of her marriage that Dr. Darwin should not reside there after
+he had married her. In 1781, therefore, immediately after his marriage,
+he removed to Derby, and continued to live there till a fortnight before
+his death.</p>
+
+<p>Here he wrote 'The Botanic Garden' and a great part of the 'Zoonomia.'
+Those who wish for a detailed analysis of 'The Botanic Garden' can
+hardly do better than turn to Miss Seward's pages. Opening them at
+random, I find the following:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The mention of Brindley, the father of commercial canals, has propriety
+as well as happiness. Similitude for their course to the sinuous track
+of a serpent, produces a fine picture of a gliding animal of that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>
+species, and it is succeeded by these supremely happy lines:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'So with strong arms immortal Brindley leads<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His long canals, and parts the velvet meads;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Winding in lucid lines, the watery mass<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mines the firm rock, or loads the deep morass;'<a name="FNanchor_152_152" id="FNanchor_152_152"></a><a href="#Footnote_152_152" class="fnanchor">[152]</a><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&amp;c. &amp;c. &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="subhead2a">. . . . . . . . . . .</p>
+
+<p>"The mechanism of the pump is next described with curious ingenuity.
+Common as is the machine, it is not unworthy a place in this splendid
+composition, as being, after the sinking of wells, the earliest of those
+inventions, which in situations of exterior aridness gave ready
+accession to water. This familiar object is illustrated by a picture of
+Maternal Beauty administering sustenance to her infant."<a name="FNanchor_153_153" id="FNanchor_153_153"></a><a href="#Footnote_153_153" class="fnanchor">[153]</a></p>
+
+<p>Here we will leave the poetical part of the 'Botanic Garden.' The notes,
+however, to which are "still," as Dr. Dowson says, "instructive and
+amusing," and contain matter which, at the time they were written, was
+for the most part new.</p>
+
+<p>Of the 'Zoonomia' there is no occasion to speak here, as a sufficient
+number of extracts from those parts that concern us as bearing upon
+evolution will be given presently.</p>
+
+<p>On the 18th of April, 1802, Dr. Darwin had written "one page of a very
+sprightly letter to Mr. Edgeworth, describing the Priory and his
+purposed alterations there, when the fatal signal was given. He rang the
+bell and ordered the servant to send Mrs. Darwin to him. She came
+immediately, with his daughter, Miss Emma Darwin. They saw him shivering
+and pale.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> He desired them to send to Derby for his surgeon, Mr. Hadley.
+They did so, but all was over before he could arrive.</p>
+
+<p>"It was reported at Lichfield that, perceiving himself growing rapidly
+worse, he said to Mrs. Darwin, 'My dear, you must bleed me instantly.'
+'Alas! I dare not, lest&mdash;' 'Emma, will you? There is no time to be
+lost.' 'Yes, my dear father, if you will direct me.' At that moment he
+sank into his chair and expired."<a name="FNanchor_154_154" id="FNanchor_154_154"></a><a href="#Footnote_154_154" class="fnanchor">[154]</a></p>
+
+<p>Dr. Dowson gives the letter to Mr. Edgeworth, which is as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<span class="smcap">Dear Edgeworth</span>,</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad to find that you still amuse yourself with mechanism, in
+spite of the troubles of Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>"The <i>use</i> of turning aside or downwards the claw of a table, I
+don't see; as it must then be reared against a wall, for it will
+not stand alone. If the use be for carriage, the feet may shut up,
+like the usual brass feet of a reflecting telescope.</p>
+
+<p>"We have all been now removed from Derby about a fortnight, to the
+Priory, and all of us like our change of situation. We have a
+pleasant house, a good garden, ponds full of fish, and a pleasing
+valley, somewhat like Shenstone's&mdash;deep, umbrageous, and with a
+talkative stream running down it. Our house is near the top of the
+valley, well screened by hills from the east and north, and open to
+the south, where at four miles distance we see Derby tower.</p>
+
+<p>"Four or more strong springs rise near the house, and have formed
+the valley which, like that of Petrarch, may be called Val Chiusa,
+as it begins, or is shut at the situation of the house. I hope you
+like the description, and hope farther that yourself and any part
+of your family will sometimes do us the pleasure of a visit.</p>
+
+<p>"Pray tell the authoress" (Miss Maria Edgeworth) "that the
+water-nymphs of our valley will be happy to assist her next novel.</p>
+
+<p>"My bookseller, Mr. Johnson, will not begin to print the 'Temple of
+Nature' till the price of paper is fixed by Parliament. I suppose
+the present duty is paid...."</p></div>
+
+<p>At these words Dr. Darwin's pen stopped. What followed was written on
+the opposite side of the paper by another hand.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_137_137" id="Footnote_137_137"></a><a href="#FNanchor_137_137"><span class="label">[137]</span></a> 'Sketch, &amp;c., of Erasmus Darwin,' pp. 3, 4.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_138_138" id="Footnote_138_138"></a><a href="#FNanchor_138_138"><span class="label">[138]</span></a> Miss Seward's 'Memoirs of Dr. Darwin,' p. 3.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_139_139" id="Footnote_139_139"></a><a href="#FNanchor_139_139"><span class="label">[139]</span></a> Ibid.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_140_140" id="Footnote_140_140"></a><a href="#FNanchor_140_140"><span class="label">[140]</span></a> Dr. Dowson's 'Sketch of Dr. Erasmus Darwin,' p. 50.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_141_141" id="Footnote_141_141"></a><a href="#FNanchor_141_141"><span class="label">[141]</span></a> Dr. Dowson's 'Sketch of Dr. Darwin,' p. 53.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_142_142" id="Footnote_142_142"></a><a href="#FNanchor_142_142"><span class="label">[142]</span></a> Miss Seward's 'Memoirs,' &amp;c., p. 6.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_143_143" id="Footnote_143_143"></a><a href="#FNanchor_143_143"><span class="label">[143]</span></a> 'Memoirs,' &amp;c., p. 14.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_144_144" id="Footnote_144_144"></a><a href="#FNanchor_144_144"><span class="label">[144]</span></a> 'Memoirs,' &amp;c., p. 21.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_145_145" id="Footnote_145_145"></a><a href="#FNanchor_145_145"><span class="label">[145]</span></a> 'Memoirs,' &amp;c., p. 62.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_146_146" id="Footnote_146_146"></a><a href="#FNanchor_146_146"><span class="label">[146]</span></a> 'Memoirs,' &amp;c., p. 68.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_147_147" id="Footnote_147_147"></a><a href="#FNanchor_147_147"><span class="label">[147]</span></a> Miss Seward's 'Memoirs,' p. 69.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_148_148" id="Footnote_148_148"></a><a href="#FNanchor_148_148"><span class="label">[148]</span></a> 'Memoirs,' &amp;c., p. 84.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_149_149" id="Footnote_149_149"></a><a href="#FNanchor_149_149"><span class="label">[149]</span></a> Ibid., p. 105.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_150_150" id="Footnote_150_150"></a><a href="#FNanchor_150_150"><span class="label">[150]</span></a> 'Memoirs,' &amp;c., p. 120.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_151_151" id="Footnote_151_151"></a><a href="#FNanchor_151_151"><span class="label">[151]</span></a> 'Memoirs,' &amp;c., p. 149.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_152_152" id="Footnote_152_152"></a><a href="#FNanchor_152_152"><span class="label">[152]</span></a> 'Memoirs,' &amp;c., p. 249.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_153_153" id="Footnote_153_153"></a><a href="#FNanchor_153_153"><span class="label">[153]</span></a> 'Memoirs,' &amp;c., p. 250.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_154_154" id="Footnote_154_154"></a><a href="#FNanchor_154_154"><span class="label">[154]</span></a> 'Memoirs,' &amp;c., p. 426.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span></p>
+<p class="subhead1"><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII.</p>
+
+<p class="subhead3">PHILOSOPHY OF DR. ERASMUS DARWIN.</p>
+
+
+<p>Considering the wide reputation enjoyed by Dr. Darwin at the beginning
+of this century, it is surprising how completely he has been lost sight
+of. The 'Botanic Garden' was translated into Portuguese in 1803; the
+'Loves of the Plants' into French and Italian in 1800 and 1805; while,
+as I have already said, the 'Zoonomia' had appeared some years earlier
+in Germany. Paley's 'Natural Theology' is written throughout at the
+'Zoonomia,' though he is careful, <i>more suo</i>, never to mention this work
+by name. Paley's success was probably one of the chief causes of the
+neglect into which the Buffonian and Darwinian systems fell in this
+country. Dr. Darwin is as reticent about teleology as Buffon, and
+presumably for the same reason, but the evidence in favour of design was
+too obvious; Paley, therefore, with his usual keen-sightedness seized
+upon this weak point, and had the battle all his own way, for Dr. Darwin
+died the same year as that in which the 'Natural Theology' appeared. The
+unfortunate failure to see that evolution involves design and purpose as
+necessarily and far more intelligibly than the theological view of
+creation, has retarded our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> perception of many important facts for
+three-quarters of a century.</p>
+
+<p>However this may be, Dr. Darwin's name has been but little before the
+public during the controversies of the last thirty years. Mr. Charles
+Darwin, indeed, in the "historical sketch" which he has prefixed to the
+later editions of his 'Origin of Species,' says, "It is curious how
+largely my grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, anticipated the views and
+erroneous grounds of opinion of Lamarck in his 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. pp.
+500-510, published in 1794."<a name="FNanchor_155_155" id="FNanchor_155_155"></a><a href="#Footnote_155_155" class="fnanchor">[155]</a> And a few lines lower Mr. Darwin adds,
+"It is rather a singular instance of the manner in which similar views
+arise at about the same time, that Goethe in Germany, and Geoffroy St.
+Hilaire (as we shall immediately see) in France, came to the same
+conclusion on the 'Origin of Species' in the years 1794-1796."
+Acquaintance with Buffon's work will explain much of the singularity,
+while those who have any knowledge of the writings of Dr. Darwin and
+&Eacute;tienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire will be aware that neither would admit the
+other as "coming to the same conclusion," or even nearly so, as himself.
+Dr. Darwin goes beyond his successor, Lamarck, while &Eacute;tienne Geoffroy
+does not even go so far as Dr. Darwin's predecessor, Buffon, had thought
+fit to let himself be known as going. I have found no other reference to
+Dr. Darwin in the 'Origin of Species,' except the two just given from
+the same note. In the first edition I find no mention of him.</p>
+
+<p>The chief fault to be found with Dr. Darwin's treatise<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> on evolution is
+that there is not enough of it; what there is, so far from being
+"erroneous," is admirable. But so great a subject should have had a book
+to itself, and not a mere fraction of a book. If his opponents, not
+venturing to dispute with him, passed over one book in silence, he
+should have followed it up with another, and another, and another, year
+by year, as Buffon and Lamarck did; it is only thus that men can expect
+to succeed against vested interests. Dr. Darwin could speak with a
+freedom that was denied to Buffon. He took Buffon at his word as well as
+he could, and carried out his principles to what he conceived to be
+their logical conclusion. This was doubtless what Buffon had desired and
+reckoned on, but, as I have said already, I question how far Dr. Darwin
+understood Buffon's humour; he does not present any of the phenomena of
+having done so, and therefore I am afraid he must be said to have missed
+it.</p>
+
+<p>Like Buffon, Dr. Darwin had no wish to see far beyond the obvious; he
+missed good things sometimes, but he gained more than he lost; he knew
+that it is always on the margin, as it were, of the self-evident that
+the greatest purchase against the nearest difficulty is obtainable. His
+life was not one of Herculean effort, but, like the lives of all those
+organisms that are most likely to develop and transmit a useful
+modification, it was one of well-sustained activity; it was a
+long-continued keeping open of the windows of his own mind, much after
+the advice he gave to the Nottingham weavers. Dr. Darwin knew, and, I
+imagine, quite instinctively, that nothing tends to oversight like
+overseeing.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> He does not trouble himself about the origin of life; as
+for the perceptions and reasoning faculties of animals and plants, it is
+enough for him that animals and plants do things which we say involve
+sensation and consciousness when we do them ourselves or see others do
+them. If, then, plants and animals appear as if they felt and
+understood, let the matter rest there, and let us say they feel and
+understand&mdash;being guided by the common use of language, rather than by
+any theories concerning brain and nervous system. If any young writer
+happens to be in want of a subject, I beg to suggest that he may find
+his opportunity in a 'Philosophy of the Superficial.'</p>
+
+<p>Though Dr. Darwin was more deeply impressed than Buffon with the oneness
+of personality between parents and offspring, so that these latter are
+not "new" creatures, but "elongations of the parents," and hence "may
+retain some of the habits of the parent system," he did not go on to
+infer definitely all that he might easily have inferred from such a
+pregnant premiss. He did not refer the repetition by offspring, of
+actions which their parents have done for many generations, but which
+they can never have seen those parents do, to the memory (in the strict
+sense of the word) of their having done those actions when they were in
+the persons of their parents; which memory, though dormant until
+awakened by the presence of associated ideas, becomes promptly kindled
+into activity when a sufficient number of these ideas are reproduced.</p>
+
+<p>This, I gather, is the theory put forward by Professor Hering, of whose
+work, however, I know no more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> than is told us by Professor Ray
+Lankester in an article which, appeared in 'Nature,' July 13th, 1876.
+This theory seems to be adopted by Professor Haeckel, and to receive
+support from Professor Ray Lankester himself. Knowing no German, I have
+been unable to make myself acquainted with Professor Hering's position
+in detail, but its similarity to, if not identity with, that taken by
+myself subsequently, but independently, in 'Life and Habit,' seems
+sufficiently established by the following extracts; it is to be wished,
+however, that a full account of this lecture were accessible to English
+readers. The extracts are as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Professor Hering has the merit of introducing some striking phraseology
+into his treatment of the subject which serves to emphasize the leading
+idea. He points out that since all transmission of 'qualities' from cell
+to cell in the growth and repair of one and the same organ, or from
+parent to offspring, is a transmission of vibrations or affections of
+material particles, whether these qualities manifest themselves as form,
+or as a facility for entering on a given series of vibrations, we may
+speak of all such phenomena as 'memory,' whether it be the conscious
+memory exhibited by the nerve cells of the brain or the unconscious
+memory we call habit, or the inherited memory we call instinct; or
+whether, again, it be the reproduction of parental form and minute
+structure. All equally may be called the 'memory of living matter.' From
+the earliest existence of protoplasm to the present day the memory of
+living matter is continuous. Though individuals die, the universal
+memory of living matter is carried on.</p>
+
+<p>"Professor Hering, in short, helps us to a comprehensive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> conception of
+the nature of heredity and adaptation, by giving us the term 'memory'
+conscious or unconscious, for the continuity of Mr. Herbert Spencer's
+polar forces, or polarities of physiological units.</p>
+
+<p class="subhead2a">. . . . . . . . . . .</p>
+
+<p>"The undulatory movement of the plastidules is the key to the mechanical
+explanation of all the essential phenomena of life. The plastidules are
+liable to have their undulations affected by every external force, and,
+once modified, the movement does not return to its pristine condition.
+By assimilation they continually increase to a certain point in size,
+and then divide, and thus perpetuate in the undulatory movement of
+successive generations, the impressions or resultants due to the action
+of external agencies on individual plastidules. This is Memory. All
+plastidules possess memory; and Memory which we see in its ultimate
+analysis is identical with reproduction, is the distinguishing feature
+of the plastidule; is that which it alone of all molecules possesses, in
+addition to the ordinary properties of the physicist's molecule; is, in
+fact, that which distinguishes it as vital. To the sensitiveness of the
+movement of plastidules is due Variability&mdash;to their unconscious Memory
+the power of Hereditary Transmission. As we know them to-day they may
+'have learnt little, and forgotten nothing' in one organism, and 'have
+learnt much, and forgotten much' in another; but in all, their memory if
+sometimes fragmentary, yet reaches back to the dawn of life upon the
+earth.&mdash;<span class="smcap">E. Ray Lankester.</span>"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Nothing can well be plainer and more uncompromising than the above.
+Professor Hering would, I gather, no less than myself, refer the
+building of its nest by a bird to the intense&mdash;but unconscious, owing to
+its very perfection and intensity&mdash;recollection by the bird of the nests
+it built when it was in the persons of its ancestors; this memory would
+begin to stimulate action when the surrounding associations, such as
+temperature, state of vegetation, &amp;c., reminded it of the time when it
+had been in the habit of beginning to build in countless past
+generations. Dr. Darwin does not go so far as this. He says that wild
+birds choose spring as their building time "from their <i>acquired</i>
+knowledge that the mild temperature of the air is more convenient for
+hatching their eggs," and a little lower down he speaks of the fact that
+graminivorous animals generally produce their young in spring, as "part
+of the traditional knowledge which they learn <i>from the example</i> of
+their parents."<a name="FNanchor_156_156" id="FNanchor_156_156"></a><a href="#Footnote_156_156" class="fnanchor">[156]</a></p>
+
+<p>Again he says, that birds "seem to be instructed how to build their
+nests <i>from their observation</i> of that in which they were educated, and
+from their knowledge of those things that are most agreeable to their
+touch in respect to warmth, cleanliness, and stability."</p>
+
+<p>Had Dr. Darwin laid firmly hold of two superficial facts concerning
+memory which we can all of us test for ourselves&mdash;I mean its dormancy
+until kindled by the return of a sufficient number of associated ideas,
+and its unselfconsciousness upon becoming intense and perfect&mdash;and had
+he connected these two facts with the unity of life through successive
+generations&mdash;an idea<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> which plainly haunted him&mdash;he would have been
+saved from having to refer instinct to imitation, in the face of the
+fact that in a thousand instances the creature imitating can never have
+seen its model, save when it was a part of its parents,&mdash;seeing what
+they saw, doing what they did, feeling as they felt, and remembering
+what they remembered.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Seward tells us that Dr. Darwin read his chapter on instinct "to a
+lady who was in the habit of rearing canary birds. She observed that the
+pair which he then saw building their nest in her cage, were a male and
+female, who had been hatched and reared in that very <i>cage</i>, and were
+not in existence when the mossy cradle was fabricated in which <i>they</i>
+first saw light." She asked him, and quite reasonably, "how, upon his
+principle of imitation, he could account for the nest he then saw
+building, being constructed even to the precise disposal of every hair
+and shred of wool upon the model of <i>that</i> in which the pair were born,
+and on which every other canary bird's nest is constructed, when the
+proper materials are furnished. That of the pyefinch," she added, "is of
+much compacter form, warmer, and more comfortable. Pull one of these
+nests to pieces for its materials; and place another nest before these
+canary birds as a pattern, and see if they will make the slightest
+attempt to imitate their model! No, the result of their labour will,
+upon instinctive hereditary impulse, be exactly the slovenly little
+mansion of their race, the same with that which their parents built
+before themselves were hatched. The Doctor could not do away the force
+of that single<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> fact, with which his system was incompatible, yet he
+maintained that system with philosophic sturdiness, though experience
+brought confutation from a thousand sources."<a name="FNanchor_157_157" id="FNanchor_157_157"></a><a href="#Footnote_157_157" class="fnanchor">[157]</a></p>
+
+<p>As commonly happens in such disputes, both were right and both were
+wrong. The lady was right in refusing to refer instinct to imitation,
+and the Doctor was right in maintaining reason and instinct to be but
+different degrees of perfection of the same mental processes. Had he
+substituted "memory" for "imitation," and asked the lady to define
+"sameness" or "personal identity," he would have soon secured his
+victory.</p>
+
+<p>The main fact, compared with which all else is a matter of detail, is
+the admission that instinct is only reason become habitual. This
+admission involves, consciously or unconsciously, the admission of all
+the principles contended for in 'Life and Habit'; principles which, if
+admitted, make the facts of heredity intelligible by showing that they
+are of the same character as other facts which we call intelligible, but
+denial of which makes nonsense of half the terms in common use
+concerning it. For the view that instinct is habitual reason involves
+sameness of personality and memory as common to parents and offspring;
+it involves also the latency of that memory till rekindled by the return
+of a sufficient number of its associated ideas, and points the
+unconsciousness with which habitual actions are performed. These
+principles being grasped, the infertility <i>inter se</i> of widely distant
+species, the commonly observed sterility of hybrids, the sterility of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>
+certain animals and plants under confinement, the phenomena of old age
+as well as those of growth, and the principle which underlies longevity
+and alternate generations, follow logically and coherently, as I showed
+in 'Life and Habit.' Moreover, we find that the terms in common use show
+an unconscious sense that some such view as I have insisted on was
+wanted and would come, for we find them made and to hand already; few if
+any will require altering; all that is necessary is to take common words
+according to their common meanings.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Darwin is very good on this head. Here, as everywhere throughout his
+work, if things or qualities appear to resemble one another sufficiently
+and without such traits of unlikeness, on closer inspection, as shall
+destroy the likeness which was apparent at first, he connects them, all
+theories notwithstanding. I have given two instances of his manner of
+looking at instinct and reason.<a name="FNanchor_158_158" id="FNanchor_158_158"></a><a href="#Footnote_158_158" class="fnanchor">[158]</a> "If these are not," he concludes,
+"deductions <i>from their own previous experience, or observation</i>, all
+the actions of mankind must be resolved into instincts."<a name="FNanchor_159_159" id="FNanchor_159_159"></a><a href="#Footnote_159_159" class="fnanchor">[159]</a></p>
+
+<p>If by "previous experience" we could be sure that Dr. Darwin
+persistently meant "previous experience in the persons of their
+ancestors," he would be in an impregnable position. As it is, we feel
+that though he had caught sight of the truth, and had even held it in
+his hands, yet somehow or other it just managed to slip through his
+fingers.</p>
+
+<p>Again he writes:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"So flies burn themselves in candles, deceived like mankind by the
+misapplication of their knowledge."</p>
+
+<p>Again:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"An ingenious philosopher has lately denied that animals can enter into
+contracts, and thinks this an essential difference between them and the
+human creature: but does not daily observation convince us that they
+form contracts of friendship with each other and with mankind? When
+puppies and kittens play together is there not a tacit contract that
+they will not hurt each other? And does not your favourite dog expect
+you should give him his daily food for his services and attention to
+you? And thus barters his love for your protection? In the same manner
+that all contracts are made among men that do not understand each
+other's arbitrary language."<a name="FNanchor_160_160" id="FNanchor_160_160"></a><a href="#Footnote_160_160" class="fnanchor">[160]</a></p>
+
+<p>One more extract from a chapter full of excellent passages must suffice.</p>
+
+<p>"One circumstance I shall relate which fell under my own eye, and showed
+the power of reason in a wasp, as it is exercised among men. A wasp on a
+gravel walk had caught a fly nearly as large as himself; kneeling on the
+ground, I observed him separate the tail and the head from the body
+part, to which the wings were attached. He then took the body part in
+his paws, and rose about two feet from the ground with it; but a gentle
+breeze wafting the wings of the fly turned him round in the air, and he
+settled again with his prey upon the gravel. I then distinctly observed
+him cut off with his mouth first one of the wings and then the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> other,
+after which he flew away with it, unmolested by the wind.</p>
+
+<p>"Go, proud reasoner, and call the worm thy sister!"<a name="FNanchor_161_161" id="FNanchor_161_161"></a><a href="#Footnote_161_161" class="fnanchor">[161]</a></p>
+
+<p>Dr. Darwin's views on the essential unity of animal and vegetable life
+are put forward in the following admirable chapter on "Vegetable
+Animation," which I will give in full, and which is confirmed in all
+important respects by the latest conclusions of our best modern
+scientists, so, at least, I gather from Mr. Francis Darwin's interesting
+lecture.<a name="FNanchor_162_162" id="FNanchor_162_162"></a><a href="#Footnote_162_162" class="fnanchor">[162]</a></p>
+
+<p>"I. 1. The fibres of the vegetable world, as well as those of the
+animal, are excitable into a variety of motion by irritations of
+external objects. This appears particularly in the mimosa or sensitive
+plant, whose leaves contract on the slightest injury: the <i>Dion&aelig;a
+muscipula</i>, which was lately brought over from the marshes of America,
+presents us with another curious instance of vegetable irritability; its
+leaves are armed with spines on their upper edge, and are spread on the
+ground around the stem; when an insect creeps on any of them in its
+passage to the flower or seed, the leaf shuts up like a steel rat-trap,
+and destroys its enemy.<a name="FNanchor_163_163" id="FNanchor_163_163"></a><a href="#Footnote_163_163" class="fnanchor">[163]</a></p>
+
+<p>"The various secretions of vegetables as of odour, fruit, gum, resin,
+wax, honey, seem brought about in the same manner as in the glands of
+animals; the tasteless moisture of the earth is converted by the hop
+plant into a bitter juice; as by the caterpillar in the nutshell, the
+sweet powder is converted into a bitter powder.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> While the power of
+absorption in the roots and barks of vegetables is excited into action
+by the fluids applied to their mouths like the lacteals and lymphatics
+of animals.</p>
+
+<p>"2. The individuals of the vegetable world may be considered as inferior
+or less perfect animals; a tree is a congeries of many living buds, and
+in this respect resembles the branches of the coralline, which are a
+congeries of a multitude of animals. Each of these buds of a tree has
+its proper leaves or petals for lungs, produces its viviparous or its
+oviparous offspring in buds or seeds; has its own roots, which,
+extending down the stem of the tree, are interwoven with the roots of
+the other buds, and form the bark, which is the only living part of the
+stem, is annually renewed and is superinduced upon the former bark,
+which then dies, and, with its stagnated juices gradually hardening into
+wood, forms the concentric circles which we see in blocks of timber.</p>
+
+<p>"The following circumstances evince the individuality of the buds of
+trees. First, there are many trees whose whole internal wood is
+perished, and yet the branches are vegete and healthy. Secondly, the
+fibres of the bark of trees are chiefly longitudinal, resembling roots,
+as is beautifully seen in those prepared barks that were lately brought
+from Otaheita. Thirdly, in horizontal wounds of the bark of trees, the
+fibres of the upper lip are always elongated downwards like roots, but
+those of the lower lip do not approach to meet them. Fourthly, if you
+wrap wet moss round any joint of a vine, or cover it with moist earth,
+roots will shoot<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> out from it. Fifthly, by the inoculation or engrafting
+of trees many fruits are produced from one stem. Sixthly, a new tree is
+produced from a branch plucked from an old one and set in the ground.
+Whence it appears that the buds of deciduous trees are so many annual
+plants, that the bark is a contexture of the roots of each individual
+bud, and that the internal wood is of no other use but to support them
+in the air, and that thus they resemble the animal world in their
+individuality.</p>
+
+<p>"The irritability of plants, like that of animals, appears liable to be
+increased or decreased by habit; for those trees or shrubs which are
+brought from a colder climate to a warmer, put out their leaves and
+blossoms a fortnight sooner than the indigenous ones.</p>
+
+<p>"Professor Kalm, in his travels in New York, observes that the apple
+trees brought from England blossom a fortnight sooner than the native
+ones. In our country, the shrubs that are brought a degree or two from
+the north are observed to flourish better than those which come from the
+south. The Siberian barley and cabbage are said to grow larger in this
+climate than the similar more southern vegetables; and our hoards of
+roots, as of potatoes and onions, germinate with less heat in spring,
+after they have been accustomed to the winter's cold, than in autumn,
+after the summer's heat.</p>
+
+<p>"II. The stamens and pistils of flowers show evident marks of
+sensibility, not only from many of the stamens and some pistils
+approaching towards each other at the season of impregnation, but from
+many of them closing their petals and calyxes during the cold part of
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> day. For this cannot be ascribed to irritation, because cold means
+a defect of the stimulus of heat; but as the want of accustomed stimuli
+produces pain, as in coldness, hunger, and thirst of animals, these
+motions of vegetables in closing up their flowers must be ascribed to
+the disagreeable sensation, and not to the irritation of cold. Others
+close up their leaves during darkness, which, like the former, cannot be
+owing to irritation, as the irritating material is withdrawn.</p>
+
+<p>"The approach of the anthers in many flowers to the stigmas, and of the
+pistils of some flowers to the anthers, must be ascribed to the passion
+of love, and hence belongs to sensation, not to irritation.</p>
+
+<p>"III. That the vegetable world possesses some degree of voluntary powers
+appears from their necessity to sleep, which we have shown in Section
+XVIII. to consist in the temporary abolition of voluntary power. This
+voluntary power seems to be exerted in the circular movement of the
+tendrils of the vines, and other climbing vegetables; or in the efforts
+to turn the upper surfaces of their leaves, or their flowers, to the
+light.</p>
+
+<p>"IV. The associations of fibrous motions are observable in the vegetable
+world as well as in the animal. The divisions of the leaves of the
+sensitive plant have been accustomed to contract at the same time from
+the absence of light; hence, if by any other circumstance, as a slight
+stroke or injury, one division is irritated into contraction, the
+neighbouring ones contract also from their motions being associated with
+those of the irritated part. So the various stamina of the class of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>
+syngenesia have been accustomed to contract together in the evening, and
+thence if you stimulate any one of them with a pin, according to the
+experiment of M. Colvolo, they all contract from their acquired
+associations.</p>
+
+<p>"To evince that the collapsing of the sensitive plant is not owing to
+any mechanical vibrations propagated along the whole branch when a
+single leaf is struck with the finger, a leaf of it was slit with sharp
+scissors, with as little disturbance as possible, and some seconds of
+time passed before the plant seemed sensible of the injury, and then the
+whole branch collapsed as far as the principal stem. This experiment was
+repeated several times with the least possible impulse to the plant.</p>
+
+<p>"V. 1. For the numerous circumstances in which vegetable buds are
+analogous to animals, the reader is referred to the additional notes at
+the end of 'Botanic Garden,' Part I. It is there shown that the roots of
+vegetables resemble the lacteal system of animals; the sap vessels in
+the early spring, before their leaves expand, are analogous to the
+placental vessels of the f&oelig;tus; that the leaves of land plants
+resemble lungs, and those of aquatic plants the gills of fish; that
+there are other systems of vessels resembling the vena portarum of
+quadrupeds, or the aorta of fish; that the digestive power of vegetables
+is similar to that of animals converting the fluids which they absorb
+into sugar;<a name="FNanchor_164_164" id="FNanchor_164_164"></a><a href="#Footnote_164_164" class="fnanchor">[164]</a> that their seeds resemble the eggs of animals,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> and
+their buds and bulbs their viviparous offspring; and lastly, that the
+anthers and stigmas are real animals attached to their parent tree like
+polypi or coral insects, but capable of spontaneous motion; that they
+are affected with the passion of love, and furnished with powers of
+reproducing their species, and are fed with honey like the moths and
+butterflies which plunder their nectaries.<a name="FNanchor_165_165" id="FNanchor_165_165"></a><a href="#Footnote_165_165" class="fnanchor">[165]</a></p>
+
+<p>"The male flowers of Vallisneria approach still nearer to apparent
+animality, as they detach themselves from the parent plant, and float on
+the surface of the water to the female ones.<a name="FNanchor_166_166" id="FNanchor_166_166"></a><a href="#Footnote_166_166" class="fnanchor">[166]</a> Other flowers of the
+classes of mon&oelig;cia and di&oelig;cia, and polygamia discharge the
+fecundating farina, which, floating in the air, is carried to the stigma
+of the female flowers, and that at considerable distances. Can this be
+effected by any specific attraction? Or, like the diffusion of the
+odorous particles of flowers, is it left to the currents of the winds,
+and the accidental miscarriages of it counteracted by the quantity of
+its production?</p>
+
+<p>"2. This leads us to a curious inquiry, whether vegetables have ideas of
+external things? As all our ideas are originally received by our senses,
+the question may be changed to whether vegetables possess any organs of
+sense? Certain it is that they possess a sense of heat and cold, another
+of moisture and dryness, and another of light and darkness, for they
+close their petals occasionally from the presence of cold, moisture, or
+darkness. And it has been already shown that these actions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> cannot be
+performed simply from irritation, because cold and darkness are negative
+quantities, and on that account sensation, or volition are implied, and
+in consequence a sensorium or union of their nerves. So when we go into
+the light we contract the iris; not from any stimulus of the light on
+the fine muscles of the iris, but from its motions being associated with
+the sensation of too much light upon the retina, which could not take
+place without a sensorium or centre of union of the nerves of the iris,
+with those of vision.<a name="FNanchor_167_167" id="FNanchor_167_167"></a><a href="#Footnote_167_167" class="fnanchor">[167]</a></p>
+
+<p>"Besides these organs of sense, which distinguish cold, moisture, and
+darkness, the leaves of mimosa, and of dion&aelig;a, and of drosera, and the
+stamens of many flowers, as of the berbery, and the numerous class of
+syngenesia, are sensible to mechanic impact, that is, they possess a
+sense of touch, as well as a common sensorium, by the medium of which
+their muscles are excited into action. Lastly, in many flowers the
+anthers, when mature, approach the stigma, in others the female organ
+approaches to the male. In a plant of collinsonia, a branch of which is
+now before me, the two yellow stamens are about three-eighths of an inch
+high, and diverge from each other at an angle of about fifteen degrees,
+the purple style is half an inch high, and in some flowers is now
+applied to the stamen on the right hand, and in others to that of the
+left; and will, I suppose, change place to-morrow in those, where the
+anthers have not yet effused their powder.</p>
+
+<p>"I ask by what means are the anthers in many flowers and stigmas in
+other flowers directed to find<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> their paramours? How do either of them
+know that the other exists in their vicinity? Is this curious kind of
+storge produced by mechanic attraction, or by the sensation of love? The
+latter opinion is supported by the strongest analogy, because a
+reproduction of the species is the consequence; and then another organ
+of sense must be wanted to direct these vegetable amourettes to find
+each other, one probably analogous to our sense of smell, which in the
+animal world directs the new-born infant to its source of nourishment,
+and they may thus possess a faculty of perceiving as well as of
+producing odours.</p>
+
+<p>"Thus, besides a kind of taste at the extremity of their roots, similar
+to that of the extremities of our lacteal vessels, for the purpose of
+selecting their proper food, and besides different kinds of irritability
+residing in the various glands, which separate honey, wax, resin, and
+other juices from their blood; vegetable life seems to possess an organ
+of sense to distinguish the variations of heat, another to distinguish
+the varying degrees of moisture, another of light, another of touch, and
+probably another analogous to our sense of smell. To these must be added
+the indubitable evidence of their passion of love, and I think we may
+truly conclude that they are furnished with a common sensorium for each
+bud, and that they must occasionally repeat those perceptions, either in
+their dreams or waking hours, and consequently possess ideas of so many
+of the properties of the external world, and of their own
+existence."<a name="FNanchor_168_168" id="FNanchor_168_168"></a><a href="#Footnote_168_168" class="fnanchor">[168]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_155_155" id="Footnote_155_155"></a><a href="#FNanchor_155_155"><span class="label">[155]</span></a> 'Origin of Species,' note on p. xiv.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_156_156" id="Footnote_156_156"></a><a href="#FNanchor_156_156"><span class="label">[156]</span></a> 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 170.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_157_157" id="Footnote_157_157"></a><a href="#FNanchor_157_157"><span class="label">[157]</span></a> Miss Seward's 'Memoirs,' &amp;c., p. 491.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_158_158" id="Footnote_158_158"></a><a href="#FNanchor_158_158"><span class="label">[158]</span></a> See p. <a href="#Page_116">116</a> of this volume.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_159_159" id="Footnote_159_159"></a><a href="#FNanchor_159_159"><span class="label">[159]</span></a> 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 184.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_160_160" id="Footnote_160_160"></a><a href="#FNanchor_160_160"><span class="label">[160]</span></a> 'Zoonomia,' p. 171.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_161_161" id="Footnote_161_161"></a><a href="#FNanchor_161_161"><span class="label">[161]</span></a> 'Zoonomia,' p. 187.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_162_162" id="Footnote_162_162"></a><a href="#FNanchor_162_162"><span class="label">[162]</span></a> 'Nature,' March 14 and 21, 1878.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_163_163" id="Footnote_163_163"></a><a href="#FNanchor_163_163"><span class="label">[163]</span></a> See 'Botanic Garden,' part ii., note on Silene.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_164_164" id="Footnote_164_164"></a><a href="#FNanchor_164_164"><span class="label">[164]</span></a> 'On the Digestive Powers of Plants.' See Mr. Francis
+Darwin's lecture, already referred to.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_165_165" id="Footnote_165_165"></a><a href="#FNanchor_165_165"><span class="label">[165]</span></a> See 'Botanic Garden, part i., add. note, p. xxxix.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_166_166" id="Footnote_166_166"></a><a href="#FNanchor_166_166"><span class="label">[166]</span></a> Ibid., part ii., art. "Vallisneria."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_167_167" id="Footnote_167_167"></a><a href="#FNanchor_167_167"><span class="label">[167]</span></a> See 'Botanic Garden,' part i. cant 3, l. 440.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_168_168" id="Footnote_168_168"></a><a href="#FNanchor_168_168"><span class="label">[168]</span></a> 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 107.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span></p>
+<p class="subhead1"><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV.</p>
+
+<p class="subhead3">FULLER QUOTATIONS FROM THE 'ZOONOMIA.'</p>
+
+
+<p>The following are the passages in the 'Zoonomia' which have the most
+important bearing on evolution:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The ingenious Dr. Hartley, in his work on man, and some other
+philosophers have been of opinion, that our immortal part acquires
+during this life certain habits of action or of sentiment which become
+for ever indissoluble, continuing after death in a future state of
+existence; and add that if these habits are of the malevolent kind, they
+must render their possessor miserable even in Heaven. I would apply this
+ingenious idea to the generation or production of the embryon or new
+animal, which partakes so much of the form and propensities of its
+parent.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Owing to the imperfection of language the offspring is termed a new
+animal, but is in truth a branch or elongation of the parent, since a
+part of the embryon-animal is, or was, a part of the parent, and
+therefore in strict language, cannot be said to be entirely new at the
+time of its production; and, therefore, it may retain some of the habits
+of the parent system.</i></p>
+
+<p>"At the earliest period of its existence the embryon would seem to
+consist of a living filament with certain capabilities of irritation,
+sensation, volition, and association,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> and also with some acquired
+habits or propensities peculiar to the parents; the former of these are
+in common with other animals; the latter seem to distinguish or produce
+the kind of animal, whether man or quadruped, with the similarity of
+feature or form to the parent."<a name="FNanchor_169_169" id="FNanchor_169_169"></a><a href="#Footnote_169_169" class="fnanchor">[169]</a></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Going on to describe the gradual development of the embryo, Dr. Darwin
+continues:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"As the want of this oxygenation of the blood is perpetual (as appears
+from the incessant necessity of breathing by lungs or gills), the
+vessels become extended by the efforts of pain or desire to seek this
+necessary object of oxygenation, and to remove the disagreeable
+sensations which this want occasions."<a name="FNanchor_170_170" id="FNanchor_170_170"></a><a href="#Footnote_170_170" class="fnanchor">[170]</a></p>
+
+<p class="subhead2a">. . . . . . . . . . .</p>
+
+<p>"The lateral production of plants by wires, while each new plant is thus
+chained to its parent, and continues to put forth another and another as
+the wire creeps onward on the ground, is exactly resembled by the
+tape-worm or t&aelig;nia, so often found in the bowels, stretching itself in a
+chain quite from the stomach to the rectum. Linn&aelig;us asserts 'that it
+grows old at one extremity, while it continues to generate younger ones
+at the other, proceeding <i>ad infinitum</i> like a sort of grass; the
+separate joints are called gourd worms, and propagate new joints like
+the parent without end, each joint being furnished with its proper mouth
+and organs of digestion.'"<a name="FNanchor_171_171" id="FNanchor_171_171"></a><a href="#Footnote_171_171" class="fnanchor">[171]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="subhead2a">. . . . . . . . . . .</p>
+
+<p>"Many ingenious philosophers have found so great difficulty in
+conceiving the manner of the reproduction of animals, that they have
+supposed all the numerous progeny to have existed in miniature in the
+animal originally created; and that these infinitely minute forms are
+only evolved or distended, as the embryon increases in the womb. This
+idea, besides its being unsupported by any analogy we are acquainted
+with, ascribes a greater tenuity to organized matter than we can readily
+admit; as these included embryons are supposed each of them to consist
+of the various and complicate parts of animal bodies, they must possess
+a much greater degree of minuteness than that which was ascribed to the
+devils which tempted St. Anthony, of whom 20,000 were said to have been
+able to dance a saraband on the point of the finest needle without
+incommoding one another."<a name="FNanchor_172_172" id="FNanchor_172_172"></a><a href="#Footnote_172_172" class="fnanchor">[172]</a></p>
+
+<p class="subhead2a">. . . . . . . . . . .</p>
+
+<p>"I conceive the primordium or rudiment of the embryon as secreted from
+the blood of the parent to consist of a simple living filament as a
+muscular fibre; which I suppose to be an extremity of a nerve of
+locomotion, as a fibre of the retina is an extremity of a nerve of
+sensation; as, for instance, one of the fibrils which compose the mouth
+of an absorbent vessel. I suppose this living filament of whatever form
+it may be, whether sphere, cube, or cylinder, to be endued with the
+capability of being excited into action by certain kinds of stimulus. By
+the stimulus of the surrounding fluid in which it is received from the
+male<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> it may bend into a ring, and thus form the beginning of a tube.
+Such moving filaments and such rings are described by those who have
+attended to microscopic animalcul&aelig;. This living ring may now embrace or
+absorb a nutritive particle of the fluid in which it swims; and by
+drawing it into its pores, or joining it by compression to its
+extremities, may increase its own length or crassitude, and by degrees
+the living ring may become a living tube.</p>
+
+<p>"With this new organization, or accretion of parts, new kinds of
+irritability may commence; for so long as there was but one living organ
+it could only be supposed to possess irritability; since sensibility may
+be conceived to be an extension of the effect of irritability over the
+rest of the system. These new kinds of irritability and of sensibility
+in consequence of new organization appear from variety of facts in the
+more mature animals; thus ... the lungs must be previously formed before
+their exertions to obtain fresh air can exist; the throat, or
+&oelig;sophagus, must be formed previous to the sensation or appetites of
+hunger and thirst, one of which seems to reside at the upper end and the
+other at the lower end of that canal."<a name="FNanchor_173_173" id="FNanchor_173_173"></a><a href="#Footnote_173_173" class="fnanchor">[173]</a></p>
+
+<p>It seems to me Dr. Darwin is wrong in supposing that the organ must have
+preceded the power to use it. The organ and its use&mdash;the desire to do
+and the power to do&mdash;have always gone hand in hand, the organism finding
+itself able to do more according as it advanced its desires, and
+desiring to do more simultaneously with any increase in power, so that
+neither<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> appetency nor organism can claim precedence, but power and
+desire must be considered as Siamese twins begotten together, conceived
+together, born together, and inseparable always from each other. At the
+same time they are torn by mutual jealousy; each claims, with some vain
+show of reason, to have been the elder brother; each intrigues
+incessantly from the beginning to the end of time to prevent the other
+from outstripping him; each is in turn successful, but each is doomed to
+death with the extinction of the other.</p>
+
+<p>"So inflamed tendons and membranes, and even bones, acquire new
+sensations; and the parts of mutilated animals, as of wounded snails and
+polypi and crabs, are reproduced; and at the same time acquire
+sensations adapted to their situation. Thus when the head of a snail is
+reproduced after decollation with a sharp razor, those curious
+telescopic eyes are also reproduced, and acquire their sensibility to
+light, as well as their adapted muscles for retraction on the approach
+of injury.</p>
+
+<p>"With every change, therefore, of organic form or addition of organic
+parts, I suppose a new kind of irritability or of sensibility to be
+produced; such varieties of irritability or of sensibility exist in our
+adult state in the glands; every one of which is furnished with an
+irritability or a taste or appetency, and a consequent mode of action
+peculiar to itself.</p>
+
+<p>"In this manner I conceive the vessels of the jaws to produce those of
+the teeth; those of the fingers to produce the nails; those of the skin
+to produce the hair; in the same manner as afterwards, about the age<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> of
+puberty, the beard and other great changes in the form of the body and
+disposition of the mind are produced in consequence of new developments;
+for, if the animal is deprived of these developments, those changes do
+not take place. These changes I believe to be formed not by elongation
+or distension of primeval stamina, but by apposition of parts; as the
+mature crab fish when deprived of a limb, in a certain space of time,
+has power to regenerate it; and the tadpole puts forth its feet after
+its long exclusion from the spawn, and the caterpillar in changing into
+a butterfly acquires a new form with new powers, new sensations, and new
+desires."<a name="FNanchor_174_174" id="FNanchor_174_174"></a><a href="#Footnote_174_174" class="fnanchor">[174]</a></p>
+
+<p class="subhead2a">. . . . . . . . . . .</p>
+
+<p>"From hence I conclude that with the acquisition of new parts, new
+sensations and new desires, as well as new powers are produced; and this
+by accretion to the old ones and not by distension of them. And finally,
+that the most essential parts of the system, as the brain for the
+purpose of distributing the powers of life, and the placenta for the
+purpose of oxygenating the blood, and the additional absorbent vessels,
+for the purpose of acquiring aliment, are first formed by the
+irritations above mentioned, and by the pleasurable sensations attending
+those irritations, and by the exertions in consequence of painful
+sensations similar to those of hunger and suffocation. After these an
+apparatus of limbs for future uses, or for the purpose of moving the
+body in its present natant state, and of lungs for future respiration,
+and of <i>testes</i> for future reproduction, are formed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> by the irritations
+and sensations and consequent exertions of the parts previously
+existing, and to which the new parts are to be attached.<a name="FNanchor_175_175" id="FNanchor_175_175"></a><a href="#Footnote_175_175" class="fnanchor">[175]</a></p>
+
+<p class="subhead2a">. . . . . . . . . . .</p>
+
+<p>"The embryon" must "be supposed to be a living filament, which acquires
+or makes new parts, with new irritabilities as it advances in its
+growth."<a name="FNanchor_176_176" id="FNanchor_176_176"></a><a href="#Footnote_176_176" class="fnanchor">[176]</a></p>
+
+<p class="subhead2a">. . . . . . . . . . .</p>
+
+<p>"From this account of reproduction it appears that all animals have a
+similar origin, viz. a single living filament; and that the difference
+of their forms and qualities has arisen only from the different
+irritabilities and sensibilities, or voluntarities, or associabilities,
+of this original living filament, and perhaps in some degree from the
+different forms of the particles of the fluids by which it has at first
+been stimulated into activity."<a name="FNanchor_177_177" id="FNanchor_177_177"></a><a href="#Footnote_177_177" class="fnanchor">[177]</a></p>
+
+<p class="subhead2a">. . . . . . . . . . .</p>
+
+<p>"All animals, therefore, I contend, have a similar cause of their
+organization, originating from a single living filament, endued with
+different kinds of irritabilities and sensibilities, or of animal
+appetencies, which exist in every gland, and in every moving organ of
+the body, and are as essential to living organism as chemical affinities
+are to certain combinations of inanimate matter.</p>
+
+<p>"If I might be indulged to make a simile in a philosophical work, I
+should say that the animal appetencies are not only perhaps less
+numerous originally than the chemical affinities, but that, like these
+latter, they change with every fresh combination; thus vital air and
+azote,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> when combined, produce nitrous acid, which now acquires the
+property of dissolving silver; so that with every new additional part to
+the embryon, as of the throat or lungs, I suppose a new animal appetency
+to be produced."<a name="FNanchor_178_178" id="FNanchor_178_178"></a><a href="#Footnote_178_178" class="fnanchor">[178]</a></p>
+
+<p class="subhead2a">. . . . . . . . . . .</p>
+
+<p>Here, again, it should be insisted on that neither can the "additional
+part" precede "the appetency," nor the appetency precede the additional
+part for long together&mdash;the two advance nearly <i>pari passu</i>; sometimes
+the power a little ahead of the desire, stimulates the desire to an
+activity it would not otherwise have known; as those who have more money
+than they once had, feel new wants which they would not have known if
+they had not obtained the power to gratify them; sometimes, on the other
+hand, the desire is a little more active than the power, and pulls the
+power up to itself by means of the effort made to gratify the desire&mdash;as
+those who want a little more of this or that than they have money to pay
+for, will try all manner of shifts to earn the additional money they
+want, unless it is so much in excess of their present means that they
+give up the endeavour as hopeless; but whichever gets ahead, immediately
+sets to work to pull the other level with it, the getting ahead either
+of power or desire being exclusively the work of external agencies,
+while the coming up level of the other is due to agencies that are
+incorporate with the organism itself. Thus an unusually abundant supply
+of food, due to causes entirely beyond the control of the individual, is
+an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> external agency; it will immediately set power a little ahead of
+desire. On this the individual will eat as much as it can&mdash;thus learning
+<i>pro tanto</i> to be able to eat more, and to want more under ordinary
+circumstances&mdash;and will also breed rapidly up to the balance of the
+abundance. This is the work of the agencies incorporate in the organism,
+and will bring desire level with power again. Famine, on the other hand,
+puts desire ahead of power, and the incorporate agencies must either
+bring power up by resource and invention, or must pull desire back by
+eating less, both as individuals, and as the race, that is to say, by
+breeding less freely; for breeding is an assimilation of outside matter
+so closely akin to feeding, that it is only the feeding of the race, as
+against that of the individual.</p>
+
+<p>I do not think the reader will find any clearer manner of picturing to
+himself the development of organism than by keeping the normal growth of
+wealth continually in his mind. He will find few of the phenomena of
+organic development which have not their counterpart in the acquisition
+of wealth. Thus a too sudden acquisition, owing to accidental and
+external circumstances and due to no internal source of energy, will be
+commonly lost in the next few generations. So a sudden sport due to a
+lucky accident of soil will not generally be perpetuated if the
+offspring plant be restored to its normal soil. Again, if the advance in
+power carry power suddenly far beyond any past desire, or be far greater
+than any past-remembered advance of power beyond desire&mdash;then desire
+will not come up level easily, but only with difficulty and all manner
+of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> extravagance, such as is likely to destroy the power itself. Demand
+and Supply are also good illustrations.</p>
+
+<p>But to return to Dr. Darwin.</p>
+
+<p>"When we revolve in our minds," he writes, "first the great changes
+which we see naturally produced in animals after their nativity, as in
+the production of the butterfly with painted wings from the crawling
+caterpillar; or of the respiring frog from the subnatant tadpole; from
+the boy to the bearded man, from the infant girl to the woman,&mdash;in both
+which cases mutilation will prevent due development.</p>
+
+<p>"Secondly, when we think over the great changes introduced into various
+animals by artificial or accidental cultivation, as in horses, which we
+have exercised for the different purposes of strength or swiftness, in
+carrying burthens or in running races, or in dogs which have been
+cultivated for strength and courage, as the bull-dog; or for acuteness
+of his sense of smell, as the hound or spaniel; or for the swiftness of
+his foot, as the greyhound; or for his swimming in the water or for
+drawing snow sledges, as the rough-haired dogs of the north; or, lastly,
+as a play dog for children, as the lapdog; with the changes of the forms
+of the cattle which have been domesticated from the greatest antiquity,
+as camels and sheep, which have undergone so total a transformation that
+we are now ignorant from what species of wild animal they had their
+origin. Add to these the great changes of shape and colour which we
+daily see produced in smaller animals from our domestication of them, as
+rabbits or pigeons, or from the difference of climates and even of
+seasons; thus the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> sheep of warm climates are covered with hair instead
+of wool; and the hares and partridges of the latitudes which are long
+buried in snow become white during the winter months; add to these the
+various changes produced in the forms of mankind by their early modes of
+exertion, or by the diseases occasioned by their habits of life, both of
+which become hereditary, and that through many generations. Those who
+labour at the anvil, the oar, or the loom, as well as those who carry
+sedan chairs or who have been educated to dance upon the rope, are
+distinguishable by the shape of their limbs; and the diseases occasioned
+by intoxication deform the countenance with leprous eruptions, or the
+body with tumid viscera, or the joints with knots and distortions.</p>
+
+<p>"Thirdly, when we enumerate the great changes produced in the species of
+animals before their nativity, as, for example, when the offspring
+reproduces the effects produced upon the parent by accident or
+cultivation; or the changes produced by the mixture of species, as in
+mules; or the changes produced probably by the exuberance of nourishment
+supplied to the fetus, as in monstrous births with additional limbs;
+many of these enormities of shape are propagated and continued as a
+variety at least, if not as a new species of animal. I have seen a breed
+of cats with an additional claw on every foot; of poultry also with an
+additional claw, and with wings to their feet; and of others without
+rumps. Mr. Buffon mentions a breed of dogs without tails which are
+common at Rome and Naples&mdash;which he supposes to have been produced by a
+custom long established of cutting their tails close off. There are many
+kinds of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> pigeons admired for their peculiarities which are more or less
+thus produced and propagated.<a name="FNanchor_179_179" id="FNanchor_179_179"></a><a href="#Footnote_179_179" class="fnanchor">[179]</a></p>
+
+<p class="subhead2a">. . . . . . . . . . .</p>
+
+<p>"When we consider all these changes of animal form and innumerable
+others which may be collected from the books of natural history, we
+cannot but be convinced that the fetus or embryon is formed by
+apposition of new parts, and not by the distention of a primordial nest
+of germs included one within another like the cups of a conjurer.</p>
+
+<p>"Fourthly, when we revolve in our minds the great similarity of
+structure which obtains in all the warm-blooded animals, as well
+quadrupeds, birds, and amphibious animals, as in mankind; from the mouse
+and bat to the elephant and whale; one is led to conclude that they have
+alike been produced from a similar living filament. In some this
+filament in its advance to maturity has acquired hands and fingers with
+a fine sense of touch, as in mankind. In others it has acquired claws or
+talons, as in tigers and eagles. In others, toes with an intervening web
+or membrane, as in seals and geese. In others it has acquired cloven
+hoofs, as in cows and swine; and whole hoofs in others, as in the horse:
+while in the bird kind this original living filament has put forth wings
+instead of arms or legs, and feathers instead of hair. In some it has
+protruded horns on the forehead instead of teeth in the fore part of the
+upper jaw; in others, tusks instead of horns; and in the others, beaks
+instead of either. And all this exactly as is seen daily in the
+transmutation of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> the tadpole, which acquires legs and lungs when he
+wants them, and loses his tail when it is no longer of service to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Fifthly, from their first rudiment or primordium to the termination of
+their lives, all animals undergo perpetual transformations; <i>which are
+in part produced by their own exertions in consequence of their desires
+and aversions, of their pleasures and their pains, or of irritations or
+of associations; and many of these acquired forms or propensities are
+transmitted to their posterity</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"As air and water are supplied to animals in sufficient profusion, the
+three great objects of desire which have changed the forms of many
+animals by their desires to gratify them are those of lust, hunger, and
+security. A great want of one part of the animal world has consisted in
+the desire of the exclusive possession of the females; and these have
+acquired weapons to combat each other for this purpose, as the very
+thick, shield-like, horny skin on the shoulder of the boar is a defence
+only against animals of his own species who strike obliquely upwards,
+nor are his tusks for other purposes except to defend himself, as he is
+not naturally a carnivorous animal. So the horns of the stag are sharp
+to offend his adversary, but are branched for the purpose of parrying or
+receiving the thrust of horns similar to his own, and have therefore
+been formed for the purpose of combating other stags, for the exclusive
+possession of the females; who are observed like the ladies in the times
+of chivalry to attend the car of the victor.</p>
+
+<p>"The birds which do not carry food to their young,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> and do not therefore
+marry, are armed with spurs for the purpose of fighting for the
+exclusive possession of the females, as cocks and quails. It is certain
+that these weapons are not provided for their defence against other
+adversaries, because the females of these species are without this
+armour. The final cause of this contest among the males seems to be
+<i>that the strongest and most active animal should propagate the species,
+which should thence become improved</i>."<a name="FNanchor_180_180" id="FNanchor_180_180"></a><a href="#Footnote_180_180" class="fnanchor">[180]</a></p>
+
+<p>Dr. Darwin would have been on stronger ground if he had said that the
+<i>effect</i> of the contest among the males was that the fittest should
+survive, and hence transmit any fit modifications which had occurred to
+them as vitally true, rather than that the desire to attain this end had
+caused the contest; but either way the sentence just given is sufficient
+to show that he was not blind to the fact that the fittest commonly
+survive, and to the consequences of this fact. The use, however, of the
+word "thence," as well as of the expression "final cause," is loose, as
+Dr. Darwin would no doubt readily have admitted. Improvement in the
+species is due quite as much, by Dr. Darwin's own showing, to the causes
+which have led to such and such an animal's making itself the fittest,
+as to the fact that if fittest it will be more likely to survive and
+transmit its improvement. There have been two factors in modification;
+the one provides variations, the other accumulates them; neither can
+claim exclusive right to the word "thence," as though the modification
+was due to it and to it only. Dr. Darwin's use of the word "thence"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>
+here is clearly a slip, and nothing else; but it is one which brings him
+for the moment into the very error into which his grandson has fallen
+more disastrously.</p>
+
+<p>"Another great want," he continues, "consists in the means of procuring
+food, which has diversified the forms of all species of animals. Thus
+the nose of the swine has become hard for the purpose of turning up the
+soil in search of insects and of roots. The trunk of the elephant is an
+elongation of the nose for the purpose of pulling down the branches of
+trees for his food, and for taking up water without bending his knees.
+Beasts of prey have acquired strong jaws or talons. Cattle have acquired
+a rough tongue and a rough palate to pull off the blades of grass, as
+cows and sheep. Some birds have acquired harder beaks to crack nuts, as
+the parrot. Others have acquired beaks to break the harder seeds, as
+sparrows. Others for the softer kinds of flowers, or the buds of trees,
+as the finches. Other birds have acquired long beaks to penetrate the
+moister soils in search of insects or roots, as woodcocks, and others
+broad ones to filtrate the water of lakes and to retain aquatic insects.
+All which seem to have been gradually produced during many generations
+<i>by the perpetual endeavour of the creature to supply the want of food,
+and to have been delivered to their posterity with constant improvement
+of them for the purposes required</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"The third great want among animals is that of security, which seems to
+have diversified the forms of their bodies and the colour of them; these
+consist in the means of escaping other animals more powerful than
+themselves. Hence some animals have acquired<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> wings instead of legs, as
+the smaller birds, for purposes of escape. Others, great length of fin
+or of membrane, as the flying fish and the bat. Others have acquired
+hard or armed shells, as the tortoise and the <i>Echinus marinus</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Osbeck, a pupil of Linn&aelig;us, mentions the American frog-fish,
+<i>Lophius Histrio</i>, which inhabits the large floating islands of sea-weed
+about the Cape of Good Hope, and has fulcra resembling leaves, that the
+fishes of prey may mistake it for the sea-weed, which it inhabits.<a name="FNanchor_181_181" id="FNanchor_181_181"></a><a href="#Footnote_181_181" class="fnanchor">[181]</a></p>
+
+<p>"The contrivances for the purposes of security extend even to
+vegetables, as is seen in the wonderful and various means of their
+concealing or defending their honey from insects and their seeds from
+birds. On the other hand, swiftness of wing has been acquired by hawks
+and swallows to pursue their prey; and a proboscis of admirable
+structure has been acquired by the bee, the moth, and the humming bird
+for the purpose of plundering the nectaries of flowers. <i>All which seem
+to have been formed by the original living filament, excited into action
+by the necessities of the creatures which possess them</i>, and on which
+their existence depends.</p>
+
+<p>"From thus meditating on the great similarity of the structure of the
+warm-blooded animals, and at the same time of the great changes they
+undergo both before and after their nativity; and by considering in how
+minute a portion of time many of the changes of animals above described
+have been produced; would it be too bold to imagine that in the great
+length of time<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> since the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of ages
+before the commencement of the history of mankind&mdash;would it be too bold
+to imagine that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living
+filament, which the Great First Cause endued with animality, with the
+power of attaining new parts, attended with new propensities, directed
+by irritations, sensations, volitions, and associations; and thus
+possessing the faculty of continuing to improve, by its own inherent
+activity, and of delivering down those improvements by generation to its
+posterity world without end!</p>
+
+<p>"Sixthly, the cold-blooded animals, as the fish tribes, which are
+furnished with but one ventricle of the heart, and with gills instead of
+lungs, and with fins instead of feet or wings, bear a great similarity
+to each other; but they differ nevertheless so much in their general
+structure from the warm-blooded animals, that it may not seem probable
+at first view that the same living filament could have given origin to
+this kingdom of animals, as to the former. Yet are there some creatures
+which unite or partake of both these orders of animation, as the whales
+and seals; and more particularly the frog, who changes from an aquatic
+animal furnished with gills to an aerial one furnished with lungs.</p>
+
+<p>"The numerous tribes of insects without wings, from the spider to the
+scorpion, from the flea to the lobster; or with wings, from the gnat or
+the ant to the wasp and the dragon-fly, differ so totally from each
+other, and from the red-blooded classes above described, both in the
+forms of their bodies and in their modes of life; besides the organ of
+sense, which they seem to possess<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> in their antenn&aelig; or horns, to which
+it has been thought by some naturalists that other creatures have
+nothing similar; that it can scarcely be supposed that this nature of
+animals could have been produced by the same kind of living filament as
+the red-blooded classes above mentioned. And yet the changes which many
+of them undergo in their early state to that of their maturity, are as
+different as one animal can be from another. As those of the gnat, which
+passes his early state in water, and then stretching out his new wings
+and expanding his new lungs, rises in the air; as of the caterpillar and
+bee-nymph, which feed on vegetable leaves or farina, and at length
+bursting from their self-formed graves, become beautiful winged
+inhabitants of the skies, journeying from flower to flower, and
+nourished by the ambrosial food of honey.</p>
+
+<p>"There is still another class of animals which are termed vermes by
+Linn&aelig;us, which are without feet or brain, and are hermaphrodites, as
+worms, leeches, snails, shell-fish, coralline insects, and sponges,
+which possess the simplest structure of all animals, and appear totally
+different from those already described. The simplicity of their
+structure, however, can afford no argument against their having been
+produced from a single living filament, as above contended.</p>
+
+<p>"Last of all, the various tribes of vegetables are to be enumerated
+amongst the inferior orders of animals. Of these the anthers and stigmas
+have already been shown to possess some organs of sense, to be nourished
+by honey, and to have the power of generation like insects, and have
+thence been announced amongst the animal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> kingdom in Section XIII.; and
+to these must be added the buds and bulbs, which constitute the
+viviparous offspring of vegetation. The former I suppose to be beholden
+to a single living filament for their seminal or amatorial procreation;
+and the latter to the same cause for their lateral or branching
+generation, which they possess in common with the polypus, t&aelig;nia, and
+volvox, and the simplicity of which is an argument in favour of the
+similarity of its cause.</p>
+
+<p>"Linn&aelig;us supposes, in the introduction to his natural orders, that very
+few vegetables were at first created, and that their numbers were
+increased by their intermarriages, and adds, 'Suaderet h&aelig;c Creatoris
+leges a simplicibus ad composita.' Many other changes appear to have
+arisen in them by their perpetual contest for light and air above
+ground, and for food or moisture beneath the soil. As noted in the
+'Botanic Garden,' Part II., note on Cuscuta. Other changes of vegetables
+from climate or other causes are remarked in the note on Curcuma in the
+same work. From these one might be led to imagine that each plant at
+first consisted of a single bulb or flower to each root, as the
+gentianella and daisy, and that in the contest for air and light, new
+buds grew on the old decaying flower-stem, shooting down their elongated
+roots to the ground, and that in process of ages tall trees were thus
+formed, and an individual bulb became a swarm of vegetables. Other
+plants which in this contest for light and air were too slender to rise
+by their own strength, learned by degrees to adhere to their neighbours,
+either by putting forth roots like the ivy, or by tendrils like the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>
+vine, or by spiral contortions like the honeysuckle, or by growing upon
+them like the mistleto, and taking nourishment from their barks, or by
+only lodging or adhering on them and deriving nourishment from the air
+as tillandsia.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we then say that the vegetable living filament was originally
+different from that of each tribe of animals above described? And that
+the productive living filament of each of those tribes was different
+from the other? Or as the earth and ocean were probably peopled with
+vegetable productions long before the existence of animals; and many
+families of these animals, long before other families of them, shall we
+conjecture <i>that one and the same kind of living filament is and has
+been the cause of all organic life</i>?<a name="FNanchor_182_182" id="FNanchor_182_182"></a><a href="#Footnote_182_182" class="fnanchor">[182]</a></p>
+
+<p class="subhead2a">. . . . . . . . . . .</p>
+
+<p>"The late Mr. David Hume in his posthumous works places the powers of
+generation much above those of our boasted reason, and adds, that reason
+can only make a machine, as a clock or a ship, but the power of
+generation makes the maker of the machine; and probably from having
+observed that the greatest part of the earth has been formed out of
+organic recrements, as the immense beds of limestone, chalk, marble,
+from the shells of fish; and the extensive provinces of clay, sandstone,
+ironstone, coals, from decomposed vegetables; all of which have been
+first produced by generation, or by the secretion of organic life; he
+concludes that the world itself might have been generated rather than
+created; that it might have been gradually produced<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> from very small
+beginnings, increasing by the activity of its inherent principles,
+rather than by a sudden evolution of the whole by the Almighty fire.
+What a magnificent idea of the infinite power of the great Architect!
+<span class="smcap">The Cause of causes!</span> <span class="smcap">Parent of parents!</span> <span class="smcap">Ens entium!</span>"<a name="FNanchor_183_183" id="FNanchor_183_183"></a><a href="#Footnote_183_183" class="fnanchor">[183]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_169_169" id="Footnote_169_169"></a><a href="#FNanchor_169_169"><span class="label">[169]</span></a> 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 484.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_170_170" id="Footnote_170_170"></a><a href="#FNanchor_170_170"><span class="label">[170]</span></a> Ibid. p. 485.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_171_171" id="Footnote_171_171"></a><a href="#FNanchor_171_171"><span class="label">[171]</span></a> Ibid. p. 493.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_172_172" id="Footnote_172_172"></a><a href="#FNanchor_172_172"><span class="label">[172]</span></a> 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 494.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_173_173" id="Footnote_173_173"></a><a href="#FNanchor_173_173"><span class="label">[173]</span></a> 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 497.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_174_174" id="Footnote_174_174"></a><a href="#FNanchor_174_174"><span class="label">[174]</span></a> 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 498.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_175_175" id="Footnote_175_175"></a><a href="#FNanchor_175_175"><span class="label">[175]</span></a> 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 500.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_176_176" id="Footnote_176_176"></a><a href="#FNanchor_176_176"><span class="label">[176]</span></a> Ibid. p. 501.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_177_177" id="Footnote_177_177"></a><a href="#FNanchor_177_177"><span class="label">[177]</span></a> Ibid. p. 502.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_178_178" id="Footnote_178_178"></a><a href="#FNanchor_178_178"><span class="label">[178]</span></a> 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 503.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_179_179" id="Footnote_179_179"></a><a href="#FNanchor_179_179"><span class="label">[179]</span></a> 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 505.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_180_180" id="Footnote_180_180"></a><a href="#FNanchor_180_180"><span class="label">[180]</span></a> 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 507.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_181_181" id="Footnote_181_181"></a><a href="#FNanchor_181_181"><span class="label">[181]</span></a> 'Voyage to China,' p. 113.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_182_182" id="Footnote_182_182"></a><a href="#FNanchor_182_182"><span class="label">[182]</span></a> 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 511.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_183_183" id="Footnote_183_183"></a><a href="#FNanchor_183_183"><span class="label">[183]</span></a> 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 513.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span></p>
+<p class="subhead1"><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV.</p>
+
+<p class="subhead3">MEMOIR OF LAMARCK.</p>
+
+
+<p>I take the following memoir of Lamarck entirely from the biographical
+sketch prefixed by M. Martins to his excellent edition of the
+'Philosophie Zoologique.'<a name="FNanchor_184_184" id="FNanchor_184_184"></a><a href="#Footnote_184_184" class="fnanchor">[184]</a> From this sketch I find that "Lamarck was
+born August 1, 1744, at Barenton, in Picardy, being the eleventh child
+of Pierre de Monet, squire of the place, a man of old family, but poor.
+His father intended him for the Church, the ordinary resource of younger
+sons at that time, and accordingly placed him under the care of the
+Jesuits at Amiens. But this was not his vocation: the annals of his
+family spoke all to him of military glory; his eldest brother had died
+in the breaches at the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom; two others were still
+serving in the army, and France was exhausting her energies in an
+unequal struggle. His father would not yield to his wishes, but on his
+death, in 1760, Lamarck was left free to take his own line, and made his
+way at once&mdash;upon a very bad horse&mdash;to the army of Germany, then
+encamped at Lippstadt in Westphalia.</p>
+
+<p>"He was the bearer of a letter written by Madame de Lameth, one of his
+neighbours in the country, and recommending him to M. de Lastic, colonel
+of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> regiment of Beaujolais. This gentleman, on seeing before him a
+lad of seventeen, whose somewhat stunted growth made him look still
+younger than he really was, sent the youth immediately to his own
+quarters. The next day a battle was immediately impending, and M. de
+Lastic, on passing his regiment in review, saw his prot&eacute;g&eacute; in the first
+rank of a company of grenadiers. The French army was under the orders of
+the Marshal de Broglie and of the Prince de Soubise; the allied troops
+were commanded by Ferdinand of Brunswick. The two French generals were
+beaten owing to their divided counsels, and Lamarck's company, almost
+annihilated by the enemy's fire, was forgotten in the confusion of the
+retreat. All the officers, commissioned and non-commissioned, were
+killed, and only fourteen men out of the whole company remained alive:
+the eldest proposed to retreat, but Lamarck, improvising himself as
+commander, declared that they ought not to retire without orders.
+Presently the colonel seeing that this company did not rally sent an
+orderly officer who made his way up to it by protected paths. Next day
+Lamarck was made an officer, and shortly afterwards lieutenant.</p>
+
+<p>"Fortunately for science," continues M. Martins, "this brilliant <i>d&eacute;but</i>
+was not to decide his career. After peace had been signed he was sent
+into garrison at Toulon and Monaco, where an inflammation of the
+lymphatic ganglions of the neck necessitated an operation which left him
+deeply scarred for life.</p>
+
+<p>"The vegetation in the neighbourhood of Toulon and Monaco now arrested
+the young officer's attention. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> had already derived some little
+knowledge of botany from the '<i>Trait&eacute; des Plantes usuelles</i>' of Chomel.
+Having retired from the service, and having nothing beyond his modest
+pension of four hundred francs a year, he took a situation at Paris with
+a banker; but drawn irresistibly to the study of nature, he used to
+study from his attic window the forms and movements of clouds, and made
+himself familiar with the plants in the Jardin du Roi or in the public
+gardens. He began to feel that he was on his right path, and understood,
+as Voltaire said of Condorcet, that discoveries of permanent value could
+make him no less illustrious than military glory.</p>
+
+<p>"Dissatisfied with the botanical systems of his time, in six months he
+wrote his '<i>Flore fran&ccedil;aise</i>,' preceded by the '<i>Cl&eacute; dichotomique</i>,'
+with the help of which it is easy even for a beginner to arrive with
+certainty at the name of the plant before him." Of this work, M. Martins
+tells us in a note, that the second edition, published by Candolle in
+1815, is still the standard work on French plants.</p>
+
+<p>"In 1778 Rousseau had brought botany into vogue. Women and men of
+fashion took to it. Buffon had the three volumes of '<i>Flore fran&ccedil;aise</i>'
+printed at the royal press, and in the following year Lamarck entered
+the Academy of Sciences. Buffon being anxious that his son should
+travel, gave him Lamarck for his companion and tutor. He thus made a
+trip through Holland, Germany, and Hungary, and became acquainted with
+Gleditsch at Berlin, with Jacquin at Vienna, and with Murray at
+Gottingen.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The '<i>Encyclop&eacute;die m&eacute;thodique</i>,' begun by Diderot and D'Alembert, was
+not yet completed. For this work Lamarck wrote four volumes, describing
+all the then known plants whose names began with the letters from A to
+P. This great work was completed by Poiret, and comprises twelve
+volumes, which appeared between the years 1783 and 1817. A still more
+important work, also part of the Encyclopedia, and continually quoted by
+botanists, is the '<i>Illustration des Genres</i>.' In this work Lamarck
+describes two thousand <i>genera</i>, and illustrates them, according to the
+title-page, with nine hundred engravings. Only a botanist can form any
+idea of the research in collections, gardens, and books, which such a
+work must have involved. But Lamarck's activity was inexhaustible.
+Sonnerat returned from India in 1781 with a very large number of dried
+plants; no one except Lamarck thought it worth while to inspect them,
+and Sonnerat, charmed with his enthusiasm, gave him the whole
+magnificent collection.</p>
+
+<p>"In spite, however, of his incessant toil, Lamarck's position continued
+to be most precarious. He lived by his pen, as a publisher's hack, and
+it was with difficulty that he obtained even the poorly paid post of
+keeper of the king's cabinet of dried plants. Like most other
+naturalists he had thus to contend with incessant difficulties during a
+period of fifteen years.</p>
+
+<p>"At length fortune bettered his condition while changing the direction
+of his labours. France was now under the Convention; what Carnot had
+done for the army Lakanal undertook to do for the natural sciences. At
+his suggestion a museum of natural history was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> established. Professors
+had been found for all the chairs save that of Zoology; but in that time
+of enthusiasm, so different from the present, France could find men of
+war and men of science wherever and whenever she had need of them.
+&Eacute;tienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire was twenty-one years old, and was engaged
+in the study of mineralogy under Ha&uuml;y. Daubenton said to him, 'I will
+undertake the responsibility for your inexperience. I have a father's
+authority over you. Take this professorship, and let us one day say that
+you have made zoology a French science.' Geoffroy accepted, and
+undertook the higher animals. Lakanal knew that a single professor could
+not suffice for the task of arranging the collections of the entire
+animal kingdom, and as Geoffroy was to class the vertebrate animals
+only, there remained the invertebrata&mdash;that is to say, insects,
+molluscs, worms, zoophytes&mdash;in a word, what was then the chaos of the
+unknown. 'Lamarck,' says M. Michelet, 'accepted the unknown.' He had
+devoted some attention to the study of shells with Brugui&egrave;res, but he
+had still everything to learn, or I should perhaps say rather,
+everything to create in that unexplored territory into which Linn&aelig;us had
+declined to enter, and into which he had thus introduced none of the
+order he had so well known how to establish among the higher animals.</p>
+
+<p>"Lamarck began his course of lectures at the museum in 1794, after a
+year's preparation, and at once established that great division of
+animals into vertebrate and invertebrate, which science has ever since
+recognized.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Dividing the vertebrate animals&mdash;as Linn&aelig;us had already divided
+them&mdash;into mammals, birds, reptiles, and fishes, he divided the
+invertebrates into molluscs, insects, worms, echinoderms, and polyps. In
+1799 he separated the crustacea from the insects, with which they had
+been classed hitherto; in 1800 he established the arachnids as a class
+distinct from the insects; in 1802 that of the annelids, a subdivision
+of the worms, and that of the radiata as distinct from the polyps. Time
+has approved the wisdom of these divisions, founded all of them upon the
+organic type of the creatures themselves&mdash;that is to say, upon the
+rational method introduced into zoology by Cuvier, Lamarck, and Geoffroy
+St. Hilaire.</p>
+
+<p>"This introduction being devoted only to Lamarck's labours as a
+naturalist, we will pass over certain works in which he treats of
+physics and chemistry. These attempts&mdash;errors of a powerful mind which
+thought itself able by the help of pure reason to establish truths which
+rest only upon experience&mdash;attempts, moreover, which were some of them
+but resuscitations of exploded theories, such as that of
+'phlogistic'&mdash;had not even the honour of being refuted: they did not
+deserve to be so, and should be a warning to all those who would write
+upon a subject without the necessary practical knowledge.</p>
+
+<p class="subhead2a">. . . . . . . . . . .</p>
+
+<p>"At the beginning of this century there was not yet any such science as
+geology. People observed but little, and in lieu of observation made
+theories to embrace the entire globe. Lamarck made his in 1802,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> and
+twenty-three years later the judicious Cuvier still yielded to the
+prevailing custom in publishing his 'Discoveries on the Earth's
+Revolutions.'</p>
+
+<p>"Lamarck's merit was to have discovered that there had been no
+catastrophes, but that the gradual action of forces during thousands of
+ages accounted for the changes observable upon the face of the earth,
+better than any sudden and violent perturbations. 'Nature,' he writes,
+'has no difficulty on the score of time; she has it always at command;
+it is with her a boundless space in which she has room for the greatest
+as for the smallest operations.'"</p>
+
+<p>Here we must not forget Buffon's fine passage, "Nature's great workman
+is Time," &amp;c. See page 103.</p>
+
+<p>"Lamarck," continues M. Martins, "was the first to distinguish littoral
+from ocean fossils, but no one accepts his theory that oceans make their
+beds deeper owing to the action of the tides, and distribute themselves
+differently over the earth's surface without any change of level of the
+different parts of that surface.</p>
+
+<p class="subhead2a">. . . . . . . . . . .</p>
+
+<p>"Settling down to a single branch of science, in consequence of his
+professorship, Lamarck now devoted himself to the twofold labour of
+lecturing and classifying the collections at the museum. In 1802 he
+published his 'Considerations on the Organization of Living Bodies'; in
+1809 his '<i>Philosophie Zoologique</i>,' a development of the
+'Considerations'; and from 1816 to 1822 his Natural History of the
+invertebrate animals, in seven volumes. This is his great work, and,
+being entirely a work of description and classification,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> was received
+with the unanimous approbation of the scientific world. His 'Fossil
+Shells of the Neighbourhood of Paris'&mdash;a work in which his profound
+knowledge of existing shells enabled him to class with certainty the
+remains of forms that had disappeared thousands of ages ago&mdash;met also
+with a favourable reception.</p>
+
+<p>"Lamarck was fifty years old before he began to study zoology; and
+prolonged microscopic examinations first fatigued and at length
+enfeebled his eyesight. The clouds which obscured it gradually
+thickened, and he became quite blind. Married four times, the father of
+seven children, he saw his small patrimony and even his earlier savings
+swallowed up by one of those hazardous investments with which promoters
+impose on the credulity of the public. His small endowment as professor
+alone protected him from destitution. Men of science whom his reputation
+as a botanist and zoologist had attracted near him, wondered at the
+manner in which he was neglected.</p>
+
+<p class="subhead2a">. . . . . . . . . . .</p>
+
+<p>"He passed the last ten years of his laborious life in darkness, tended
+only by the affectionate care of his two daughters. The eldest wrote
+from his dictation part of the sixth and seventh volumes of his work on
+the invertebrate animals. From the time her father became confined to
+his room his daughter never left the house; and when first she did so
+after his death, she was distressed by the fresh air to which she had
+been so long a stranger.</p>
+
+<p>"Lamarck died December 18, 1829, at the age of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> eighty-five. Latreille
+and Blainville were his successors at the museum. The incredible
+activity of the first professor had so greatly increased the number of
+the known invertebrata that it was found necessary to endow two
+professors, where one had originally been sufficient.</p>
+
+<p>"His two daughters were left penniless. In the year 1832 I myself saw
+Mlle. Corn&eacute;lie de Lamarck earning a scanty pittance by fastening dried
+plants on to paper, in the museum of which her father had been a
+professor. Many a species named and described by him must have passed
+under her eyes and increased the bitterness of her regret."<a name="FNanchor_185_185" id="FNanchor_185_185"></a><a href="#Footnote_185_185" class="fnanchor">[185]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_184_184" id="Footnote_184_184"></a><a href="#FNanchor_184_184"><span class="label">[184]</span></a> Paris, 1873.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_185_185" id="Footnote_185_185"></a><a href="#FNanchor_185_185"><span class="label">[185]</span></a> Introduction Biographique to M. Martins' edition of the
+'Phil. Zool.,' pp. ix-xx.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span></p>
+<p class="subhead1"><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI.</p>
+
+<p class="subhead3">GENERAL MISCONCEPTION CONCERNING LAMARCK&mdash;HIS PHILOSOPHICAL POSITION.</p>
+
+
+<p>"If Cuvier," says M. Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire,<a name="FNanchor_186_186" id="FNanchor_186_186"></a><a href="#Footnote_186_186" class="fnanchor">[186]</a> "is the modern
+successor of Linn&aelig;us, so is Lamarck of Buffon. But Cuvier does not go so
+far as Linn&aelig;us, and Lamarck goes much farther than Buffon. Lamarck,
+moreover, took his own line, and his conjectures are not only much
+bolder, or rather more hazardous, but they are profoundly different from
+Buffon's.</p>
+
+<p>"It is well known that the vast labours of Lamarck were divided between
+botany and physical science in the eighteenth century, and between
+zoology and natural philosophy in the nineteenth; it is, however, less
+generally known that Lamarck was long a partisan of the immutability of
+species. It was not till 1801, when he was already old, that he freed
+himself from the ideas then generally prevailing. But Lamarck, having
+once made up his mind, never changed it; in his ripe age he exhibits all
+the ardour of youth in propagating and defending his new convictions.</p>
+
+<p>"In the three years, 1801, 1802, 1803, he enounced them twice in his
+lectures, and three times in his writings.<a name="FNanchor_187_187" id="FNanchor_187_187"></a><a href="#Footnote_187_187" class="fnanchor">[187]</a> He returns to the
+subject and states his views<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> precisely in 1806,<a name="FNanchor_188_188" id="FNanchor_188_188"></a><a href="#Footnote_188_188" class="fnanchor">[188]</a> and in 1809 he
+devotes a great part of his principal work, the 'Philosophie
+Zoologique,' to their demonstration.<a name="FNanchor_189_189" id="FNanchor_189_189"></a><a href="#Footnote_189_189" class="fnanchor">[189]</a> Here he might have rested and
+have quietly awaited the judgment of his peers; but he is too much
+convinced; he believes the future of science to depend so much upon his
+doctrine that to his dying day he feels compelled to explain it further
+and insist upon it. When already over seventy years of age he enounces
+it again, and maintains it as firmly as ever in 1815, in his 'Histoire
+des Animaux sans Vert&egrave;bres,' and in 1820 in his 'Syst&egrave;me des
+Connaissances Positives.'<a name="FNanchor_190_190" id="FNanchor_190_190"></a><a href="#Footnote_190_190" class="fnanchor">[190]</a></p>
+
+<p>"This doctrine, so dearly cherished by its author, and the conception,
+exposition, and defence of which so laboriously occupied the second half
+of his scientific career, has been assuredly too much admired by some,
+who have forgotten that Lamarck had a precursor, and that that precursor
+was Buffon. It has, on the other hand, been too severely condemned by
+others who have involved it in its entirety in broad and sweeping
+condemnation. As if it were possible that so great labour on the part of
+so great a naturalist should have led him to 'a fantastic conclusion'
+only&mdash;to a 'flighty error,' and, as has been often said, though not
+written, to 'one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> absurdity the more.' Such was the language which
+Lamarck heard during his protracted old age, saddened alike by the
+weight of years and blindness; this was what people did not hesitate to
+utter over his grave yet barely closed, and what, indeed, they are still
+saying&mdash;commonly, too, without any knowledge of what Lamarck maintained,
+but merely repeating at second hand bad caricatures of his teaching.</p>
+
+<p>"When will the time come when we may see Lamarck's theory
+discussed&mdash;and, I may as well at once say, refuted in some important
+points&mdash;with at any rate the respect due to one of the most illustrious
+masters of our science? And when will this theory, the hardihood of
+which has been greatly exaggerated, become freed from the
+interpretations and commentaries by the false light of which so many
+naturalists have formed their opinion concerning it? If its author is to
+be condemned, let it be, at any rate, not before he has been
+heard."<a name="FNanchor_191_191" id="FNanchor_191_191"></a><a href="#Footnote_191_191" class="fnanchor">[191]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is not necessary for me to give the extracts from Lamarck which M.
+Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire quotes in order to show what he really
+maintained, inasmuch as they will be given at greater length in the
+following chapter; but I may perhaps say that I have not found M.
+Geoffroy refuting Lamarck in any essential point.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Haeckel says that to Lamarck "will always belong the immortal
+glory of having for the first time worked out the theory of descent as
+an independent scientific theory of the first order, and as the
+philosophical foundation of the whole science of Biology."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="subhead2a">. . . . . . . . . . .</p>
+
+<p>"The 'Philosophie Zoologique,'" continues Professor Haeckel, "is the
+first connected exposition of the theory of descent carried out strictly
+into all its consequences; ... and with the exception of Darwin's work,
+which appeared exactly half a century later, we know of none which we
+could in this respect place by the side of the 'Philosophie Zoologique.'
+How far it was in advance of its time is perhaps best seen from the
+circumstance that it was not understood by most men, and for fifty years
+was not spoken of at all."<a name="FNanchor_192_192" id="FNanchor_192_192"></a><a href="#Footnote_192_192" class="fnanchor">[192]</a></p>
+
+<p>This is an exaggeration, both as regards the originality of Lamarck's
+work and the reception it has met with. It is probably more accurate to
+say with M. Martins that Lamarck's theory has "never yet had the honour
+of being discussed seriously,"<a name="FNanchor_193_193" id="FNanchor_193_193"></a><a href="#Footnote_193_193" class="fnanchor">[193]</a> not, at least, in connection with
+the name of its originators.</p>
+
+<p>So completely has this been so that the author of the 'Vestiges of
+Creation,' even in the edition of 1860, in which he unreservedly
+acknowledges the adoption of Lamarck's views, not unfrequently speaks
+disparagingly of Lamarck himself, and never gives him his due meed of
+recognition. I am not, therefore, wholly displeased to find this author
+conceiving himself to have been treated by Mr. Charles Darwin with some
+of the injustice which he has himself inflicted on Lamarck.</p>
+
+<p>In the 1859 edition of the 'Origin of Species,' and in a very prominent
+place, Mr. Darwin says:&mdash;"The author of the 'Vestiges of Creation' would
+I presume<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> say, that after a certain number of unknown generations, some
+bird had given birth to a woodpecker, and some plant to a misseltoe, and
+that these had been produced perfect as we now see them."<a name="FNanchor_194_194" id="FNanchor_194_194"></a><a href="#Footnote_194_194" class="fnanchor">[194]</a> This is
+the only allusion to the 'Vestiges' which I have found in the first
+edition of the 'Origin of Species.'</p>
+
+<p>Those who have read the 1853 edition of the 'Vestiges' will not be
+surprised to find the author rejoining, in his edition of 1860, that it
+was to be regretted Mr. Darwin should have read the 'Vestiges' "nearly
+as much amiss as though, like its declared opponents, he had an interest
+in misunderstanding it." And a little lower he adds that Mr. Darwin's
+book in no essential respect contradicts the 'Vestiges'; "on the
+contrary, while adding to its explanations of nature, it expresses
+substantially the same general ideas."<a name="FNanchor_195_195" id="FNanchor_195_195"></a><a href="#Footnote_195_195" class="fnanchor">[195]</a> It is right to say that the
+passage thus objected to is not to be found in later editions of the
+'Origin of Species,' while in the historical sketch we now read as
+follows:&mdash;"In my opinion it (the 'Vestiges of Creation') has done
+excellent service in this country by calling attention to the subject,
+removing prejudice, and in thus preparing the ground for the reception
+of analogous views."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Darwin, the main part of whose work on the 'Origin of Species' is
+taken up with supporting the theory of descent with modification (which
+frequently in the recapitulation chapter of the 'Origin of Species' he
+seems to treat as synonymous with natural selection), has fallen into
+the common error of thinking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> that Lamarck can be ignored or passed over
+in a couple of sentences. I only find Lamarck's name twice in the 1859
+edition of the 'Origin,' once on p. 242, where Mr. Darwin writes: "I am
+surprised that no one has advanced this demonstrative case of neuter
+insects, against the well-known doctrine of Lamarck;" and again, p. 427,
+where Lamarck is stated to have been the first to call attention to the
+"very important distinction between real affinities and analogical or
+adaptive resemblances." How far from demonstrative is the particular
+case which in 1859 Mr. Darwin considered so fatal to "the well-known
+doctrine of Lamarck"&mdash;which should surely, one would have thought,
+include the doctrine of descent with modification, which Mr. Darwin is
+himself supporting&mdash;I have attempted to show in 'Life and Habit,' but
+had perhaps better recapitulate briefly here.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Darwin writes: "In the simpler case of neuter insects all of one
+caste, <i>which, as I believe, have been rendered different from the
+fertile males and females through natural selection</i>...."<a name="FNanchor_196_196" id="FNanchor_196_196"></a><a href="#Footnote_196_196" class="fnanchor">[196]</a> He thus
+attributes the sterility and peculiar characteristics, we will say, of
+the common hive working bees&mdash;"neuter insects all of one caste"&mdash;to
+natural selection. Now, nothing is more certain than that these
+characteristics&mdash;sterility, a cavity in the thigh for collecting wax, a
+proboscis for gathering honey, &amp;c.&mdash;are due to the treatment which the
+eggs laid by the queen bee receive after they have left her body. Take
+an egg and treat it in a certain way, and it becomes a working bee;
+treat the same<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> egg in a certain other way, and it becomes a queen. If
+the bees are in danger of becoming queenless they take eggs which were
+in the way of being developed into working bees, and change their food
+and cells, whereon they develop into queens instead. How Mr. Darwin
+could attribute the neutralization of the working bees&mdash;an act which is
+obviously one of abortion committed by the body politic of the hive on a
+balance of considerations&mdash;to the action of what he calls "natural
+selection," and how, again, he could suppose that what he was advancing
+had any but a confirmatory bearing upon Lamarck's position, is
+incomprehensible, unless the passage in question be taken as a mere
+slip. That attention has been called to it is plain, for the words "the
+well-known doctrine of Lamarck" have been changed in later editions into
+"the well-known doctrine of inherited habit as advanced by
+Lamarck,"<a name="FNanchor_197_197" id="FNanchor_197_197"></a><a href="#Footnote_197_197" class="fnanchor">[197]</a> but this correction, though some apparent improvement on
+the original text, does little indeed in comparison with what is wanted.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Darwin has since introduced a paragraph concerning Lamarck into the
+"historical sketch," already more than once referred to in these pages.
+In this he summarises the theory which I am about to lay before the
+reader, by saying that Lamarck "upheld the doctrine that all species,
+including man, are descended from other species." If Lamarck had been
+alive he would probably have preferred to see Mr. Darwin write that he
+upheld "the doctrine of descent with modification as the explanation of
+all differentiations of structure<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> and instinct." Mr. Darwin continues,
+that Lamarck "seems" to have been chiefly led to his conclusion on the
+gradual change of species, "by the difficulty of distinguishing species
+and varieties, by the almost perfect gradation of forms in certain
+groups, and by the analogy of domestic productions."</p>
+
+<p>Lamarck would probably have said that though he did indeed turn&mdash;as Mr.
+Darwin has done, and as Buffon and Dr. Darwin had done before him&mdash;to
+animals and plants under domestication, in illustration and support of
+the theory of descent with modification; and that though he did also
+insist, as so many other writers have done, on the arbitrary and
+artificial nature of the distinction between species and varieties, he
+was mainly led to agree with Buffon and Dr. Darwin by a broad survey of
+the animal kingdom, with the details also of which few naturalists have
+ever been better acquainted.</p>
+
+<p>"Great," says Mr. Darwin, "is the power of steady
+misrepresentation,"&mdash;and greatly indeed has the just fame of Lamarck
+been eclipsed in consequence; "but," as Mr. Darwin finely continues,
+"the history of science shows that fortunately this power does not long
+endure."<a name="FNanchor_198_198" id="FNanchor_198_198"></a><a href="#Footnote_198_198" class="fnanchor">[198]</a></p>
+
+<p>That Lamarck anticipated it, was prepared to face it, and even felt that
+things were thus, after all, as they should be, will appear from the
+shrewd and pleasant passage which is to be found near the close of his
+preface:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"So great is the power of preconceived opinion, especially when any
+personal interest is enlisted on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> same side as itself, that though
+it is hard to deduce new truths from the study of nature, it is still
+harder to get them recognized by other people.</p>
+
+<p>"These difficulties, however, are on the whole more beneficial than
+hurtful to the cause of science; for it is through them that a number of
+eccentric, though perhaps plausible speculations, perish in their
+infancy, and are never again heard of. Sometimes, indeed, valuable ideas
+are thus lost; but it is better that a truth, when once caught sight of,
+should have to struggle for a long time without meeting the attention it
+deserves, than that every outcome of a heated imagination should be
+readily received.</p>
+
+<p>"The more I reflect upon the numerous causes which affect our judgments,
+the more convinced I am that, with the exception of such physical and
+moral facts as no one can now throw doubt upon, all else is matter of
+opinion and argument; and we know well that there is hardly an argument
+to be found anywhere, against which another argument cannot plausibly be
+adduced. Hence, though it is plain that the various opinions of men
+differ greatly in probability and in the weight which should be attached
+to them, it seems to me that we are wrong when we blame those who differ
+from us.</p>
+
+<p>"Are we then to recognize no opinions as well founded but those which
+are generally received? Nay&mdash;experience teaches us plainly that the
+highest and most cultivated minds must be at all times in an exceedingly
+small minority. No one can dispute this. Authority should be told by
+weight and not by number&mdash;but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> in good truth authority is a hard thing
+to weigh.</p>
+
+<p>"Nor again&mdash;in spite of the many and severe conditions which a judgment
+must fulfil before it can be declared good&mdash;is it quite certain that
+those whom public opinion has declared to be authorities, are always
+right in the conclusions they arrive at.</p>
+
+<p>"Positive facts are the only solid ground for man; the deductions he
+draws from them are a very different matter. Outside the facts of nature
+all is a question of probabilities, and the most that can be said is
+that some conclusions are more probable than others."</p>
+
+<p>Lamarck's poverty was perhaps one main reason of the ease with which it
+was found possible to neglect his philosophical opinions. Science is not
+a kingdom into which a poor man can enter easily, if he happens to
+differ from a philosopher who gives good dinners, and has "his sisters
+and his cousins and his aunts" to play the part of chorus to him.
+Lamarck's two daughters do not appear to have been the kind of persons
+who could make effective sisters or cousins or aunts. Men of science are
+of like passions even with the other holy ones who have set themselves
+up in all ages as the pastors and prophets of mankind. The saint has
+commonly deemed it to be for the interests of saintliness that he should
+strain a point or two in his own favour&mdash;and the more so according as
+his reputation for an appearance of candour has been the better earned.
+If, then, Lamarck's opponents could keep choruses, while Lamarck had
+nothing to fall back upon but the merits of his case only, it is not
+surprising<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> that he should have found himself neglected by the
+scientists of his own time. Moreover he was too old to have undertaken
+such an unequal contest. If he had been twenty years younger when he
+began it, he would probably have enjoyed his full measure of success
+before he died.</p>
+
+<p>Not that Lamarck can claim, as a thinker, to stand on the same level
+with Dr. Darwin, and still less so with Buffon. He attempted to go too
+fast and too far. Seeing that if we accept descent with modification,
+the question arises whether what we call life and consciousness may not
+themselves be evolved from some thing or things which looked at one time
+so little living and conscious that we call them inanimate&mdash;and being
+anxious to see his theory reach, and to follow it, as far back as
+possible, he speculates about the origin of life; having formed a theory
+thereon, he is more inclined to interpret the phenomena of lower animal
+life so as to make them fit in with his theory, than as he would have
+interpreted them if there had been no theory at stake.</p>
+
+<p>Thus his denial that sensation, and much more, intelligence and
+deliberate action, can exist without a brain and a nervous system, has
+led him to deny sensation, consciousness, and intelligence to many
+animals which act in such manner as would certainly have made him say
+that they feel and know what they are about, if he had formed no theory
+about brains and nervous systems.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing can be more different than the manners in which Lamarck and Dr.
+Darwin wrote on this head.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> Lamarck over and over again maintains that
+where there is no nervous system there can be no sensation. Combating,
+for example, the assertion of Cabanis, that to live is to feel, he says
+that "the greater number of the polypi and all the infusoria, having no
+nervous system, it must be said of them as also of worms, that to live
+is still not to feel; and so again of plants."<a name="FNanchor_199_199" id="FNanchor_199_199"></a><a href="#Footnote_199_199" class="fnanchor">[199]</a></p>
+
+<p>How different from this is the un-theory-ridden language of Dr. Darwin,
+quoted on p. 116 of this work.</p>
+
+<p>Lamarck again writes:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The very imperfect animals of the lowest classes, having no nervous
+system, are simply irritable, have nothing but certain habits,
+experience no sensations, and never conceive ideas."</p>
+
+<p>This, in the face of the performances of the am&oelig;ba&mdash;a minute jelly
+speck, without any special organ whatever&mdash;in making its tests, cannot
+be admitted. Is it possible that Lamarck was in some measure misled by
+believing Buffon to be in earnest when he advanced propositions little
+less monstrous?</p>
+
+<p>"But," continues Lamarck, "the less imperfect animals which have a
+nervous system, though they have not the organ of intelligence, have
+instinct, habits, and proclivities; they feel sensations, and yet form
+no ideas whatever. I venture to say that where there is no organ for a
+faculty that faculty cannot exist."<a name="FNanchor_200_200" id="FNanchor_200_200"></a><a href="#Footnote_200_200" class="fnanchor">[200]</a></p>
+
+<p>Who can tell what ideas a worm does or does not form? We can watch its
+actions, and see that they are such as involve what we call design and a
+perception of its own interest. Under these circumstances it seems<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>
+better to call the worm a reasonable creature with Dr. Darwin than to
+say with Lamarck that because worms do not appear to have that organ
+which he assumes to be the sole means of causing sensation and ideas,
+therefore they can neither feel nor think. Doubtless they cannot feel
+and think as many sensations and thoughts as we can, but our ideas of
+what they can and cannot feel must be formed through consideration of
+what we see them do, and must be biassed by no theories of what they
+ought to be able to feel or not feel.</p>
+
+<p>Again Lamarck, shortly after an excellent passage in which he points out
+that the lower animals gain by experience just as man does (and here
+probably he had in his mind the passage of Buffon referred to at p. 112
+of this work), nevertheless writes:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"If the facts and considerations put forward in this volume be held
+worthy of attention, it will follow necessarily that there are some
+animals which have neither reason nor instinct" (I should be glad to see
+one of these animals and to watch its movements), "such as those which
+have no power of feeling; that there are others which have instinct but
+no degree whatever of reason" (whereas from Dr. Darwin's premises it
+should follow, and would doubtless be readily admitted by him, that
+instinct is reason, but reason many times repeated made perfect, and
+finally repeated by rote; so that far from being prior to reason, as
+Lamarck here implies, it can only come long afterwards), "such as those
+which have a system enabling them to feel, but which still lack the
+organ of intelligence; and finally, that there are those which have not
+only instinct, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> over and above this a certain degree of reasoning
+power, such as those creatures which have one system for sensations and
+another for acts involving intelligence. Instinct is with these last
+animals the motive power of almost all their actions, and they rarely
+use what little reason they have. Man, who comes next above them, is
+also possessed of instincts which inspire some of his actions, but he
+can acquire much reason, and can use it so as to direct the greater part
+of his actions."<a name="FNanchor_201_201" id="FNanchor_201_201"></a><a href="#Footnote_201_201" class="fnanchor">[201]</a></p>
+
+<p>All this will be felt to be less satisfactory than the simple directness
+of Dr. Darwin. It comes in great measure from following Buffon without
+being <i>en rapport</i> with him. On the other hand, Lamarck must be admitted
+to have elaborated the theory of "descent with modification" with no
+less clearness than Dr. Darwin, and with much greater fulness of detail.
+There is no substantial difference between the points they wish to
+establish; Dr. Darwin has the advantage in that not content with
+maintaining that there will be a power of adaptation to the conditions
+of an animal's existence which will determine its organism, he goes on
+to say what the principal conditions are, and shows more lucidly than
+Lamarck has done (though Lamarck adopts the same three causes in a
+passage which will follow), that struggle, and consequently
+modification, will be chiefly conversant about the means of subsistence,
+of reproduction, and of self-protection. Nevertheless, though Dr. Darwin
+has said enough to show that he had the whole thing clearly before him,
+and could have elaborated it as finely as or better than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> Lamarck
+himself has done, if he had been so minded, yet the palm must be given
+to Lamarck on the score of what he actually did, and this I observe to
+be the verdict of history, for whereas Lamarck's name is still daily
+quoted, Dr. Darwin's is seldom mentioned, and never with the applause
+which it deserves.</p>
+
+<p>The resemblance between the two writers&mdash;that is to say, the complete
+coincidence of their views&mdash;is so remarkable that the question is forced
+upon us how far Lamarck knew the substance of Dr. Darwin's theory.
+Lamarck knew Buffon personally; he had been tutor to Buffon's son, and
+Buffon had three of Lamarck's volumes on the French Flora printed at the
+royal printing press;&mdash;how can we account for Lamarck's having had
+Buffon's theory of descent with modification before him for so many
+years, and yet remaining a partisan of immutability till 1801? Before
+this year we find no trace of his having accepted evolution;
+thenceforward he is one of the most ardent and constant exponents which
+this doctrine has ever had. What was it that repelled him in Buffon's
+system? How is it that in the 'Philosophie Zoologique' there is not, so
+far as I can remember, a single reference to Buffon, from whom, however,
+as we shall see, many paragraphs are taken with but very little
+alteration?</p>
+
+<p>I am inclined to think that the secret of this sudden conversion must be
+found in a French translation by M. Deleuze of Dr. Darwin's poem, 'The
+Loves of the Plants' which appeared in 1800. Lamarck&mdash;the most eminent
+botanist of his time&mdash;was sure to have heard of and seen this, and would
+probably know the translator,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> who would be able to give him a fair idea
+of the 'Zoonomia.'</p>
+
+<p>I will give a few of the passages which Lamarck would find in this
+translation. Speaking of Dr. Darwin, M. Deleuze says:&mdash;"Il falloit
+encore qu'un nouvel observateur, entrant dans la route qui venoit de
+s'ouvrir, s'y fray&acirc;t des sentiers ignor&eacute;s; que liant la physique
+v&eacute;g&eacute;tale &agrave; la botanique il nous montr&acirc;t dans les plantes, non seulement
+des corps organis&eacute;s soumis &agrave; des lois constantes, mais des &ecirc;tres dou&eacute;s
+sinon de sensibilit&eacute;, au moins d'une irritabilit&eacute; particuli&egrave;re, d'un
+principe de vie <i>qui leur fait ex&eacute;cuter des mouvements analogues &agrave; leurs
+besoins</i>....<a name="FNanchor_202_202" id="FNanchor_202_202"></a><a href="#Footnote_202_202" class="fnanchor">[202]</a></p>
+
+<p>"Il est des animaux et des plantes qui par le laps du tems paroissent
+avoir &eacute;prouv&eacute; des changemens dans leur organisation, <i>pour s'accommoder
+&agrave; de nouveaux genres de nourriture et aux moyens de se la procurer</i>.
+Peut-&ecirc;tre les productions de la nature font elles des progr&egrave;s vers la
+perfection. Cette id&eacute;e appuy&eacute;e par les observations modernes sur
+l'accroissement progressif des parties solides du globe, s'accorde avec
+la dignit&eacute; et la providence du cr&eacute;ateur de l'univers."<a name="FNanchor_203_203" id="FNanchor_203_203"></a><a href="#Footnote_203_203" class="fnanchor">[203]</a></p>
+
+<p>"La nature semble s'&ecirc;tre fait un jeu d'&eacute;tablir entre tous les &ecirc;tres
+organis&eacute;s une sorte de guerre qui entretient leur activit&eacute;: si elle a
+donn&eacute; aux uns des moyens de d&eacute;fense, elle a donn&eacute; aux autres des moyens
+d'attaque."<a name="FNanchor_204_204" id="FNanchor_204_204"></a><a href="#Footnote_204_204" class="fnanchor">[204]</a></p>
+
+<p>Turning to the 'Botanic Garden' itself, I find that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> this admirable
+sentence belongs to M. Deleuze, and not to Dr. Darwin, who, however, has
+said what comes to much the same thing,<a name="FNanchor_205_205" id="FNanchor_205_205"></a><a href="#Footnote_205_205" class="fnanchor">[205]</a> as may be seen p. 227 of
+this volume. But the authorship is immaterial; whether the passage was
+by Dr. Darwin or M. Deleuze, it was, in all probability, known to
+Lamarck before his change of front.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The note on Trapa Natans again<a name="FNanchor_206_206" id="FNanchor_206_206"></a><a href="#Footnote_206_206" class="fnanchor">[206]</a> suggests itself as the source from
+which the passage in the 'Philosophie Zoologique' about the Ranunculus
+aquatilis is taken,<a name="FNanchor_207_207" id="FNanchor_207_207"></a><a href="#Footnote_207_207" class="fnanchor">[207]</a> while one of the most important passages in the
+work, a summary, in fact, of the principal means of modification, seems
+to be taken, the first half of it from Buffon, and the second from Dr.
+Darwin. I have called attention to it on pp. 300, 301.</p>
+
+<p>We may then suppose that Lamarck failed to understand Buffon, and
+conceived that he ought either to have gone much farther, or not so far;
+not being yet prepared to go the whole length himself, he opposed
+mutability till Dr. Darwin's additions to Buffon's ostensible theory
+reached him, whereon he at once adopted them, and having received
+nothing but a few notes and hints, felt himself at liberty to work the
+theory out independently and claim it. In so original a work as the
+'<i>Philosophie Zoologique</i>' must always be considered, this may be
+legitimate, but I find in it, as Isidore Geoffroy seems also to have
+found, a little more claim to complete independence than is acceptable
+to one who is fresh from Buffon and Dr. Darwin.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_186_186" id="Footnote_186_186"></a><a href="#FNanchor_186_186"><span class="label">[186]</span></a> 'Hist. Nat. G&eacute;n.,' tom. ii. p. 404, 1859.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_187_187" id="Footnote_187_187"></a><a href="#FNanchor_187_187"><span class="label">[187]</span></a> 'Syst&egrave;me des Animaux sans Vert&egrave;bres,' Paris, in-8, an.
+ix. (1801); 'Discours d'Ouverture,' p. 12, &amp;c.; 'Recherches sur
+l'Organisation des Corps Vivants,' Paris, in-8, 1802, p. 50, &amp;c.;
+'Discours d'Ouverture d'un Cours de Zoologie pour l'an ix.,' Paris,
+in-8, 1803. This discourse is entirely devoted to the consideration of
+the question, "What is Species?"</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_188_188" id="Footnote_188_188"></a><a href="#FNanchor_188_188"><span class="label">[188]</span></a> 'Discours d'Ouverture d'un Cours de Zoologie,' 1806,
+Paris, in-8, p. 8, &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_189_189" id="Footnote_189_189"></a><a href="#FNanchor_189_189"><span class="label">[189]</span></a> See following <a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">chapter</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_190_190" id="Footnote_190_190"></a><a href="#FNanchor_190_190"><span class="label">[190]</span></a> 'Hist, des Anim. sans Vert&egrave;b.,' tom, i., Introduction,
+1<sup>re</sup> ed., 1815; 'Syst. des Conn. Positives,' Paris, in-8, 1820, 1<sup>re</sup>
+part, 2<sup>me</sup> sect. ch. ii. p. 114, &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_191_191" id="Footnote_191_191"></a><a href="#FNanchor_191_191"><span class="label">[191]</span></a> 'Hist. Nat. G&eacute;n.,' tom. ii. p. 407.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_192_192" id="Footnote_192_192"></a><a href="#FNanchor_192_192"><span class="label">[192]</span></a> 'History of Creation,' English translation, vol. i. pp.
+111, 112.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_193_193" id="Footnote_193_193"></a><a href="#FNanchor_193_193"><span class="label">[193]</span></a> M. Martins' edition of the 'Philosophie Zoologique,'
+Paris, 1873. Introd., p. vi.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_194_194" id="Footnote_194_194"></a><a href="#FNanchor_194_194"><span class="label">[194]</span></a> 'Origin of Species,' p. 3, 1859.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_195_195" id="Footnote_195_195"></a><a href="#FNanchor_195_195"><span class="label">[195]</span></a> 'Vestiges of Creation,' ed. 1860, Proofs, Illustrations,
+&amp;c., p. lxiv.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_196_196" id="Footnote_196_196"></a><a href="#FNanchor_196_196"><span class="label">[196]</span></a> 'Origin of Species,' ed. 1, p. 239; ed. 6, p. 231.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_197_197" id="Footnote_197_197"></a><a href="#FNanchor_197_197"><span class="label">[197]</span></a> 'Origin of Species,' ed. 1, p. 242; ed. 6, 1876, p. 233.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_198_198" id="Footnote_198_198"></a><a href="#FNanchor_198_198"><span class="label">[198]</span></a> 'Origin of Species,' p. 421, ed. 1876.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_199_199" id="Footnote_199_199"></a><a href="#FNanchor_199_199"><span class="label">[199]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' vol. i. p. 404.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_200_200" id="Footnote_200_200"></a><a href="#FNanchor_200_200"><span class="label">[200]</span></a> Ibid. vol. ii. p. 324.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_201_201" id="Footnote_201_201"></a><a href="#FNanchor_201_201"><span class="label">[201]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' vol. ii. p. 410.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_202_202" id="Footnote_202_202"></a><a href="#FNanchor_202_202"><span class="label">[202]</span></a> 'Les Amours des Plantes,' Discours Pr&eacute;lim., p. 7. Paris,
+1800.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_203_203" id="Footnote_203_203"></a><a href="#FNanchor_203_203"><span class="label">[203]</span></a> Ibid., Notes du chant i., p. 202.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_204_204" id="Footnote_204_204"></a><a href="#FNanchor_204_204"><span class="label">[204]</span></a> Ibid. p. 238.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_205_205" id="Footnote_205_205"></a><a href="#FNanchor_205_205"><span class="label">[205]</span></a> 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 507.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_206_206" id="Footnote_206_206"></a><a href="#FNanchor_206_206"><span class="label">[206]</span></a> 'Les Amours des Plantes,' p. 360.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_207_207" id="Footnote_207_207"></a><a href="#FNanchor_207_207"><span class="label">[207]</span></a> Vol. i. p. 231, ed. M. Martins, 1873.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span></p>
+<p class="subhead1"><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII.</p>
+
+<p class="subhead3">SUMMARY OF THE 'PHILOSOPHIE ZOOLOGIQUE.'</p>
+
+
+<p>The first part of the '<i>Philosophie Zoologique</i>' is the one which deals
+with the doctrine of evolution or descent with modification. It is to
+this, therefore, that our attention will be confined. Yet only a
+comparatively small part of the three hundred and fifty pages which
+constitute Lamarck's first part are devoted to setting forth the reasons
+which led him to arrive at his conclusions&mdash;the greater part of the
+volume being occupied with the classification of animals, which we may
+again omit, as foreign to our purpose.</p>
+
+<p>I shall condense whenever I can, but I do not think the reader will find
+that I have left out much that bears upon the argument. I shall also use
+inverted commas while translating with such freedom as to omit several
+lines together, where I can do so without suppressing anything essential
+to the elucidation of Lamarck's meaning. I shall, however, throughout
+refer the reader to the page of the original work from which I am
+translating.</p>
+
+<p>"The common origin of bodily and mental phenomena," says Lamarck in his
+preliminary chapter, "has been obscured, because we have studied them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span>
+chiefly in man, who, as the most highly developed of living beings,
+presents the problem in its most difficult and complicated aspect. If we
+had begun our study with that of the lowest organisms, and had proceeded
+from these to the more complex ones, we should have seen the progression
+which is observable in organization, and the successive acquisition of
+various special organs, with new faculties for every additional organ.
+We should thus have seen that sense of needs&mdash;originally hardly
+perceptible, but gradually increasing in intensity and variety&mdash;has led
+to the attempt to gratify them; that the actions thus induced, having
+become habitual and energetic, have occasioned the development of organs
+adapted for their performance; that the force which excites organic
+movements can in the case of the lowest animals exist outside them and
+yet animate them; that this force was subsequently introduced into the
+animals themselves, and fixed within them; and, lastly, that it gave
+rise to sensibility and, in the end, to intelligence."<a name="FNanchor_208_208" id="FNanchor_208_208"></a><a href="#Footnote_208_208" class="fnanchor">[208]</a> The reader
+had better be on his guard here, and whenever Lamarck is speculating
+about the lowest forms of action and sensation. I have thought it well,
+however, to give enough of these speculations, as occasion arises, to
+show their tendency.</p>
+
+<p>"Sensation is not the proximate cause of organic movements. It may be so
+with the higher animals, but it cannot be shown to be so with plants,
+nor even with all known animals. At the outset of life there was none of
+that sensation which could only arise<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> where organic beings had already
+attained a considerable development. Nature has done all by slow
+gradations, both organs and faculties being the outcome of a progressive
+development.<a name="FNanchor_209_209" id="FNanchor_209_209"></a><a href="#Footnote_209_209" class="fnanchor">[209]</a></p>
+
+<p>"The mere composition of an animal is but a small part of what deserves
+study in connection with the animal itself. The effects of its
+surroundings in causing new wants, the effects of its wants in giving
+rise to actions, those of its actions in developing habits and
+tendencies, the effects of use and disuse as affecting any organ, the
+means which nature takes to preserve and make perfect what has been
+already acquired&mdash;these are all matters of the highest importance.<a name="FNanchor_210_210" id="FNanchor_210_210"></a><a href="#Footnote_210_210" class="fnanchor">[210]</a></p>
+
+<p>"In their bearing upon these questions the invertebrate animals are more
+important and interesting than the vertebrate, for they are more in
+number, and being more in number are more varied; their variations are
+more marked, and the steps by which they have advanced in complexity are
+more easily observed.<a name="FNanchor_211_211" id="FNanchor_211_211"></a><a href="#Footnote_211_211" class="fnanchor">[211]</a></p>
+
+<p>"I propose, therefore, to divide this work into three parts, of which
+the first shall deal with the conventions necessary for the treatment of
+the subject, the importance of analogical structures, and the meaning
+which should be attached to the word species. I will point out on the
+one hand the evidence of a graduated descending scale, as existing
+between the highest and the lowest organisms; and, on the other, the
+effect of surroundings and habits on the organs of living beings, as the
+cause of their development or arrest of development. Lastly, I will
+treat of the natural order of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> animals, and show what should be their
+fittest classification and arrangement."<a name="FNanchor_212_212" id="FNanchor_212_212"></a><a href="#Footnote_212_212" class="fnanchor">[212]</a></p>
+
+<p>It seems unnecessary to give Lamarck's intentions with regard to his
+second and third parts, as they do not here concern us; they deal with
+the origin of life and mind.</p>
+
+<p>The first chapter of the work opens with the importance of bearing in
+mind the difference between the conventional and the natural, that is to
+say, between words and things. Here, as indeed largely throughout this
+part of his work, he follows Buffon, by whom he is evidently influenced.</p>
+
+<p>"The conventional deals with systems of arrangement, classification,
+orders, families, genera, and the nomenclature, whether of different
+sections or of individual objects.</p>
+
+<p>"An arrangement should be called systematic, or arbitrary, when it does
+not conform to the genealogical order taken by nature in the development
+of the things arranged, and when, by consequence it is not founded upon
+well-considered analogies. There is such a thing as a natural order in
+every department of nature; it is the order in which its several
+component items have been successively developed.<a name="FNanchor_213_213" id="FNanchor_213_213"></a><a href="#Footnote_213_213" class="fnanchor">[213]</a></p>
+
+<p>"Some lines certainly seem to have been drawn by Nature herself. It was
+hard to believe that mammals, for example, and birds, were not
+well-defined classes. Nevertheless the sharpness of definition was an
+illusion, and due only to our limited knowledge. The ornithorhynchus and
+the echidna bridge the gulf.<a name="FNanchor_214_214" id="FNanchor_214_214"></a><a href="#Footnote_214_214" class="fnanchor">[214]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span>"Simplicity is the main end of any classification. If all the races, or
+as they are called, species, of any kingdom were perfectly known, and if
+the true analogies between each species, and between the groups which
+species form, were also known, so that their approximations to each
+other and the position of the several groups were in conformity with the
+natural analogies between them&mdash;then classes, orders, sections, and
+genera would be families, larger or smaller; for each division would be
+a greater or smaller section of a natural order or sequence.<a name="FNanchor_215_215" id="FNanchor_215_215"></a><a href="#Footnote_215_215" class="fnanchor">[215]</a> But in
+this case it would be very difficult to assign the limits of each
+division; they would be continually subjected to arbitrary alteration,
+and agreement would only exist where plain and palpable gaps were
+manifest in our series. Happily, however, for classifiers there are, and
+will always probably remain, a number of unknown forms."<a name="FNanchor_216_216" id="FNanchor_216_216"></a><a href="#Footnote_216_216" class="fnanchor">[216]</a></p>
+
+<p>That the foregoing is still felt to be true by those who accept
+evolution, may be seen from the following passage, taken from Mr.
+Darwin's 'Origin of Species':&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"As all the organic beings which have ever lived can be arranged within
+a few great classes; and as all within each class have, according to our
+theory, been connected together by fine gradations, the best, and if our
+collections were nearly perfect, the only possible arrangement would be
+genealogical: descent being the hidden bond of connection which
+naturalists have been seeking under the term of the Natural System. On
+this view, we can understand how it is that in the eyes of most
+naturalists, the structure of the embryo is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> even more important for
+classifications than that of the adult."<a name="FNanchor_217_217" id="FNanchor_217_217"></a><a href="#Footnote_217_217" class="fnanchor">[217]</a></p>
+
+<p>In his second chapter Lamarck deals with the importance of comparative
+anatomy, and the study of homologous structures. These indicate a sort
+of blood relationship between the individuals in which they are found,
+and are our safest guide to any natural system of classification. Their
+importance is not confined to the study of classes, families, or even
+species; they must be studied also in the individuals of each species,
+as it is thus only, that we can recognize either identity or difference
+of species. The results arrived at, however, are only trustworthy over a
+limited period, for though the individuals of any species commonly so
+resemble one another at any given time, as to enable us to generalize
+from them, at the date of our observing them, yet species are not fixed
+and immutable through all time: they change, though with such extreme
+slowness that we do not observe their doing so, and when we come upon a
+species that <i>has</i> changed, we consider it as a new one, and as having
+always been such as we now see it.<a name="FNanchor_218_218" id="FNanchor_218_218"></a><a href="#Footnote_218_218" class="fnanchor">[218]</a></p>
+
+<p>"It is none the less true that when we compare the same kind of organs
+in different individuals, we can quickly and easily tell whether they
+are very like each other or not, and hence, whether the animals or
+plants in which they are found, should be set down as members of the
+same or of a different species. It is only therefore the general
+inference drawn from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> apparent immutability of species, that has
+been too inconsiderately drawn.<a name="FNanchor_219_219" id="FNanchor_219_219"></a><a href="#Footnote_219_219" class="fnanchor">[219]</a></p>
+
+<p>"The analogies and points of agreement between living organisms, are
+always incomplete when based upon the consideration of any single organ
+only. But though still incomplete, they will be much more important
+according as the organ on which they are founded is an essential one or
+otherwise.</p>
+
+<p>"With animals, those analogies are most important which exist between
+organs most necessary for the conservation of their life. With plants,
+between their organs of generation. Hence, with animals, it will be the
+interior structure which will determine the most important analogies:
+with plants it will be the manner in which they fructify.<a name="FNanchor_220_220" id="FNanchor_220_220"></a><a href="#Footnote_220_220" class="fnanchor">[220]</a></p>
+
+<p>"With animals we should look to nerves, organs of respiration, and those
+of the circulation; with plants, to the embryo and its accessories, the
+sexual organs of their flowers, &amp;c.<a name="FNanchor_221_221" id="FNanchor_221_221"></a><a href="#Footnote_221_221" class="fnanchor">[221]</a> To do this, will set us on to
+the Natural Method, which is as it were a sketch traced by man of the
+order taken by Nature in her productions.<a name="FNanchor_222_222" id="FNanchor_222_222"></a><a href="#Footnote_222_222" class="fnanchor">[222]</a> Nevertheless the
+divisions which we shall be obliged to establish, will still be
+arbitrary and artificial, though presenting to our view sections
+arranged in the order which Nature has pursued.<a name="FNanchor_223_223" id="FNanchor_223_223"></a><a href="#Footnote_223_223" class="fnanchor">[223]</a></p>
+
+<p>"What, then," he asks,<a name="FNanchor_224_224" id="FNanchor_224_224"></a><a href="#Footnote_224_224" class="fnanchor">[224]</a> "<i>is</i> species&mdash;and can we show that species
+has changed&mdash;however slowly?" He now covers some of the ground since
+enlarged upon in Mr. Darwin's second chapter, in which the arbitrary<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>
+nature of the distinction between species and varieties is so well
+exposed. "I shall show," says Lamarck (in substance, but I am compelled
+to condense much), "that the habits by which we now recognize any
+species, are due to the conditions of life [<i>circonstances</i>] under which
+it has for a long time existed, and that these habits have had such an
+influence upon the structure of each individual of the species, as to
+have at length modified this structure, and adapted it to the habits
+which have been contracted.<a name="FNanchor_225_225" id="FNanchor_225_225"></a><a href="#Footnote_225_225" class="fnanchor">[225]</a></p>
+
+<p>"The individuals of any species," he continues, "certainly resemble
+their parents; it is a universal law of nature that all offspring should
+differ but little from its immediate progenitors, but this does not
+justify the ordinary belief that species never vary. Indeed, naturalists
+themselves are in continual difficulty as regards distinguishing species
+from varieties; they do not recognize the fact that species are only
+constant as long as the conditions in which they are placed are
+constant. Individuals vary and form breeds which blend so insensibly
+into the neighbouring species, that the distinctions made by naturalists
+between species and varieties, are for the most part arbitrary, and the
+confusion upon this head is becoming day by day more serious.<a name="FNanchor_226_226" id="FNanchor_226_226"></a><a href="#Footnote_226_226" class="fnanchor">[226]</a></p>
+
+<p>"Not perceiving that species will not vary as long as the conditions in
+which they are placed remain essentially unchanged, naturalists have
+supposed that each species was due to a special act of creation on the
+part of the Supreme Author of all things. Assuredly, nothing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> can exist
+but by the will of this Supreme Author, but can we venture to assign
+rules to him in the execution of his will? May not his infinite power
+have chosen to create an order of things which should evolve in
+succession all that we know as well as all that we do not know? Whether
+we regard species as created or evolved, the boundlessness of his power
+remains unchanged, and incapable of any diminution whatsoever. Let us
+then confine ourselves simply to observing the facts around us, and if
+we find any clue to the path taken by Nature, let us say fearlessly that
+it has pleased her Almighty Author that she should take this path.<a name="FNanchor_227_227" id="FNanchor_227_227"></a><a href="#Footnote_227_227" class="fnanchor">[227]</a></p>
+
+<p>"What applies to species applies also to genera; the further our
+knowledge extends, the more difficult do we find it to assign its exact
+limits to any genus. Gaps in our collections are being continually
+filled up, to the effacement of our dividing lines of demarcation. We
+are thus compelled to settle the limits of species and variety
+arbitrarily, and in a manner about which there will be constant
+disagreement. Naturalists are daily classifying new species which blend
+into one another so insensibly that there can hardly be found words to
+express the minute differences between them. The gaps that exist are
+simply due to our not having yet found the connecting species.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not, however, mean to say that animal life forms a simple and
+continuously blended series. Life is rather comparable to a
+ramification. In life we should see, as it were, a ramified continuity,
+if certain species had not been lost. The species which, according<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> to
+this illustration, stands at the extremity of each bough, should bear a
+resemblance, at least upon one side, to the other neighbouring species;
+and this certainly is what we observe in nature.</p>
+
+<p>"Having arranged living forms in such an order as this, let us take one,
+and then, passing over several boughs, let us take another at some
+distance from it; a wide difference will now be seen between the species
+which the forms selected represent. Our earliest collections supplied us
+with such distantly allied forms only; now, however, that we have such
+an infinitely greater number of specimens, we can see that many of them
+blend one into the other without presenting noteworthy differences at
+any step."<a name="FNanchor_228_228" id="FNanchor_228_228"></a><a href="#Footnote_228_228" class="fnanchor">[228]</a></p>
+
+<p>This has been well extended by Mr. Darwin in a passage which
+begins:&mdash;"The affinities of all beings of the same class have sometimes
+been represented by a great tree. I believe that this simile largely
+speaks the truth."<a name="FNanchor_229_229" id="FNanchor_229_229"></a><a href="#Footnote_229_229" class="fnanchor">[229]</a></p>
+
+<p>"What, then," continues Lamarck, "can be the cause of all this? Surely
+the following: namely, that when individuals of any species change their
+situation, climate, mode of existence, or habits [conditions of life],
+their structure, form, organization, and in fact their whole being
+becomes little by little modified, till in the course of time it
+responds to the changes experienced by the creature."<a name="FNanchor_230_230" id="FNanchor_230_230"></a><a href="#Footnote_230_230" class="fnanchor">[230]</a></p>
+
+<p>In his preface Lamarck had already declared that "the thread which gives
+us a clue to the causes of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> various phenomena of animal
+organization, in the manifold diversity of its developments, is to be
+found in the fact that Nature conserves in offspring all that their life
+and environments has developed in parents." Heredity&mdash;"the hidden bond
+of common descent"&mdash;tempered with the modifications induced by changed
+habits&mdash;which changed habits are due to new conditions and
+surroundings&mdash;this with Lamarck, as with Buffon and Dr. Darwin, is the
+explanation of the diversity of forms which we observe in nature. He now
+goes on to support this&mdash;briefly, in accordance with his design&mdash;but
+with sufficient detail to prevent all possibility of mistake about his
+meaning.</p>
+
+<p>"In the same climate differences in situation, and a greater or less
+degree of exposure, affect simply, in the first instance, the
+individuals exposed to them; but in the course of time, these repeated
+differences of surroundings in individuals which reproduce themselves
+continually under similar circumstances, induce differences which become
+part of their very nature; so that after many successive generations,
+these individuals, which were originally, we will say, of any given
+species, become transformed into a different one."<a name="FNanchor_231_231" id="FNanchor_231_231"></a><a href="#Footnote_231_231" class="fnanchor">[231]</a></p>
+
+<p>"Let us suppose that a grass growing in a low-lying meadow gets carried
+by some accident to the brow of a neighbouring hill, where the soil is
+still damp enough for the plant to be able to exist. Let it live here
+for many generations, till it has become thoroughly accustomed to its
+position, and let it then gradually find its way to the dry and almost
+arid soil of a mountain side;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> if the plant is able to stand the change
+and to perpetuate itself for many generations, it will have become so
+changed that botanists will class it as a new species."<a name="FNanchor_232_232" id="FNanchor_232_232"></a><a href="#Footnote_232_232" class="fnanchor">[232]</a></p>
+
+<p>"The same sort of process goes on in the animal kingdom, but animals are
+modified more slowly than plants."<a name="FNanchor_233_233" id="FNanchor_233_233"></a><a href="#Footnote_233_233" class="fnanchor">[233]</a></p>
+
+<p>The sterility of hybrids, to which Mr. Darwin devotes a great part of
+the ninth chapter of his 'Origin of Species,'<a name="FNanchor_234_234" id="FNanchor_234_234"></a><a href="#Footnote_234_234" class="fnanchor">[234]</a> is then touched
+on&mdash;briefly, but sufficiently&mdash;as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The idea that species were fixed and immutable involved the belief that
+distinct species could not be fertile <i>inter se</i>. But unfortunately
+observation has proved, and daily proves, that this supposition is
+unfounded. Hybrids are very common among plants, and quite sufficiently
+so among animals to show that the boundaries of these so-called
+immutable species are not so well defined as has been supposed. Often,
+indeed, there is no offspring between the individuals of what are called
+distinct species, especially when they are widely different, and again,
+the offspring when produced is generally sterile; but when there is less
+difference between the parents, both the difficulty of breeding the
+hybrid, and its sterility when produced, are found to disappear. In this
+very power of crossing we see a source from which breeds, and ultimately
+species, may arise."<a name="FNanchor_235_235" id="FNanchor_235_235"></a><a href="#Footnote_235_235" class="fnanchor">[235]</a></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Darwin arrives at the same conclusion. He writes:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"We must, therefore, either give up the belief of the universal
+sterility of species when crossed, or we must look at this sterility in
+animals, not as an indelible characteristic, but as one capable of being
+removed by domestication.</p>
+
+<p>"Finally, on considering all the ascertained facts on the intercrossing
+of plants and animals, it may be concluded that some degree of
+sterility, both in first crosses and in hybrids, is an exceedingly
+general result, but that it cannot, under our present state of
+knowledge, be considered as absolutely universal."<a name="FNanchor_236_236" id="FNanchor_236_236"></a><a href="#Footnote_236_236" class="fnanchor">[236]</a></p>
+
+<p>Returning to Lamarck, we find him saying:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The limits, therefore, of so-called species are not so constant and
+unvarying as is commonly supposed. Consider also the following. All
+living forms upon the face of the globe have been brought forth in the
+course of infinite time by the process of generation only. Nature has
+directly created none but the lowest organisms; these she is still
+producing every day, they being, as it were, the first sketches of life,
+and produced by what is called spontaneous generation. Organs have been
+gradually developed in these low forms, and these organs have in the
+course of time increased in diversity and complexity. The power of
+growth in each living body has given rise to various modes of
+reproduction, and thus progress, already acquired, has been preserved
+and handed down to offspring.<a name="FNanchor_237_237" id="FNanchor_237_237"></a><a href="#Footnote_237_237" class="fnanchor">[237]</a> With sufficient time, favourable
+conditions of life [<i>circonstances</i>], successive changes in the surface
+of the globe, and the power of new surroundings and habits to modify the
+organs of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> living bodies, all animal and vegetable forms have been
+imperceptibly rendered such as we now see them. It follows that species
+will be constant only in relation to their environments, and cannot be
+as old as Nature herself.</p>
+
+<p>"But what are we to say of instinct? Can we suppose that all the tricks,
+cunning, artifices, precautions, patience, and skill of animals are due
+to evolution only? Must we not see here the design of an all-powerful
+Creator? No one certainly will assign limits to the Creator's power, but
+it is a bold thing to say that he did not choose to work in this way or
+that way, when his own handiwork declares to us that this is the way he
+chose. I find proof in Nature&mdash;meaning by nature the <i>ensemble</i> of all
+that is,<a name="FNanchor_238_238" id="FNanchor_238_238"></a><a href="#Footnote_238_238" class="fnanchor">[238]</a> but regarding her as herself the effect of an unknown
+first cause<a name="FNanchor_239_239" id="FNanchor_239_239"></a><a href="#Footnote_239_239" class="fnanchor">[239]</a>&mdash;that she is the author of organization, life, and even
+sensation; that she has multiplied and diversified the organs and mental
+powers of the creatures which she sustains and reproduces; that she has
+developed in animals, through the sole instrumentality of sense of need
+as establishing and directing their habits, all actions and all habits,
+from the simplest up to those which constitute instinct, industry, and
+finally reason.<a name="FNanchor_240_240" id="FNanchor_240_240"></a><a href="#Footnote_240_240" class="fnanchor">[240]</a></p>
+
+<p>"Against this it is alleged that we have no reason to believe species to
+have changed within any known era. The skeletons of some Egyptian birds,
+preserved two or three thousand years ago, differ in no particular from
+the same kind of creatures at the present day. But this is what we
+should expect, inasmuch as the position and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> climate of Egypt itself do
+not appear to have changed. If the conditions of life have not varied,
+why should the species subjected to those conditions have done so?
+Moreover, birds can move about freely, and if one place does not suit
+them they can find another that does. All that these Egyptian mummies
+really prove is, that there were animals in Egypt two or three thousand
+years ago which are like the animals of to-day; but how short a space is
+two or three thousand years, as compared with the time which Nature has
+had at her disposal! A time infinitely great <i>qu&acirc;</i> man, is still
+infinitely short <i>qu&acirc;</i> Nature.<a name="FNanchor_241_241" id="FNanchor_241_241"></a><a href="#Footnote_241_241" class="fnanchor">[241]</a></p>
+
+<p>"If, however, we turn to animals under confinement, we find immediate
+proof that the most startling changes are capable of being produced
+after some generations of changed habits. In the sixth chapter we shall
+have occasion to observe the power of changed conditions
+[<i>circonstances</i>] to develop new desires in animals, and to induce new
+courses of action; we shall see the power which these new actions will
+have, after a certain amount of repetition, to engender new habits and
+tendencies; and we shall also note the effects of use and disuse in
+either fortifying and developing an organ, or in diminishing it and
+causing it to disappear. With plants under domestication, we shall find
+corresponding phenomena. Species will thus appear to be unchangeable for
+comparatively short periods only."<a name="FNanchor_242_242" id="FNanchor_242_242"></a><a href="#Footnote_242_242" class="fnanchor">[242]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is interesting to see that Mr. Darwin lays no less stress on the
+study of animals and plants under domestication than Buffon, Dr. Darwin,
+and Lamarck.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> Indeed, all four writers appear to have been in great
+measure led to their conclusions by this very study. "At the
+commencement of my investigations," writes Mr. Darwin, "it seemed to me
+probable that a careful study of domesticated animals and of cultivated
+plants would offer the best chance of making out this obscure problem.
+Nor have I been disappointed; in this and in all other perplexing cases,
+I have invariably found that our knowledge, imperfect though it be, of
+variation under domestication, afforded the best and safest clue. I may
+venture to express my conviction of the high value of such studies,
+though they have been very commonly neglected by naturalists."<a name="FNanchor_243_243" id="FNanchor_243_243"></a><a href="#Footnote_243_243" class="fnanchor">[243]</a></p>
+
+<p>In justice to the three writers whom I have named, it should be borne in
+mind that they also ventured to express their conviction of the high
+value of these studies. Buffon, indeed, as we have seen, gives animals
+under domestication the foremost place in his work. He does not treat of
+wild animals till he has said all he has to say upon our most important
+domesticated breeds,&mdash;on whose descent from one or two wild stocks he is
+never weary of insisting. It was doubtless because of the opportunities
+they afforded him for demonstrating the plasticity of living organism
+that the most important position in his work was assigned to them.</p>
+
+<p>Lamarck professes himself unable to make up his mind about extinct
+species; how far, that is to say, whole breeds must be considered as
+having died out, or how far the difference between so many now living
+and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> fossil forms is due to the fact that our living species are
+modified descendants of the fossil ones. Such large parts of the globe
+were still practically unknown in Lamarck's time, and the recent
+discovery of the ornithorhynchus has raised such hopes as to what might
+yet be found in Australia, that he was inclined to think that only such
+creatures as man found hurtful to him, as, for example, the megatherium
+and the mastodon, had become truly extinct, nor was he, it would seem,
+without a hope that these would yet one day be discovered. The climatic
+and geological changes that have occurred in past ages, would, he
+believed, account for all the difference which we observe between living
+and fossil forms, inasmuch as they would have changed the conditions
+under which animals lived, and therefore their habits and organs would
+have become correspondingly modified. He therefore rather wondered to
+find so much, than so little, resemblance between existing and fossil
+forms.</p>
+
+<p>Buffon took a juster view of this matter; it will be remembered that he
+concluded his remarks upon the mammoth by saying that many species had
+doubtless disappeared without leaving any living descendants, while
+others had left descendants which had become modified.</p>
+
+<p>Lamarck anticipated Lyell in supposing geological changes to have been
+due almost entirely to the continued operation of the causes which we
+observe daily at work in nature: thus he writes:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Every observer knows that the surface of the earth has changed; every
+valley has been exalted, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> crooked has been made straight, and the
+rough places plain; not even is climate itself stable. Hence changed
+conditions; and these involve changed needs and habits of life; if such
+changes can give rise to modifications or developments, it is clear that
+every living body must vary, especially in its outward character, though
+the variation can only be perceptible after several generations.</p>
+
+<p>"It is not surprising then that so few living species should be
+represented in the geologic record. It is surprising rather that we
+should find any living species represented at all.<a name="FNanchor_244_244" id="FNanchor_244_244"></a><a href="#Footnote_244_244" class="fnanchor">[244]</a></p>
+
+<p>"Catastrophes have indeed been supposed, and they are an easy way of
+getting out of the difficulty; but unfortunately, they are not supported
+by evidence. Local catastrophes have undoubtedly occurred, as
+earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, of which the effects can be
+sufficiently seen; but why suppose any universal catastrophe, when the
+ordinary progress of nature suffices to account for the phenomena?
+Nature is never <i>brusque</i>. She proceeds slowly step by step,
+and this with occasional local catastrophes will remove all our
+difficulties."<a name="FNanchor_245_245" id="FNanchor_245_245"></a><a href="#Footnote_245_245" class="fnanchor">[245]</a></p>
+
+<p>In his fourth chapter Lamarck points out that animals move themselves,
+or parts of themselves, not through impulsion or movement communicated
+to them as from one billiard ball to another, but by reason of a cause
+which excites their irritability, which cause is within some animals and
+forms part of them, while it is wholly outside of others.<a name="FNanchor_246_246" id="FNanchor_246_246"></a><a href="#Footnote_246_246" class="fnanchor">[246]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span>I should again warn the reader to be on his guard against the opinion
+that any animals can be said to live if they have no "inward motion" of
+their own which prompts them to act. We cannot call anything alive which
+moves only as wind and water may make it move, but without any impulse
+from within to execute the smallest action and without any capacity of
+feeling. Such a creature does not look sufficiently like the other
+things which we call alive; it should be first shown to us, so that we
+may make up our minds whether the facts concerning it have been truly
+stated, and if so, what it most resembles; we may then classify it
+accordingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Some animals change their place by creeping, some by walking, some by
+running or leaping; others again fly, while others live in the water and
+swim.</p>
+
+<p>"The origin of these different kinds of locomotion is to be found in the
+two great wants of animal life: 1, the means of procuring food; 2, the
+search after mates with a view to reproduction.</p>
+
+<p>"Since then the power of locomotion was a matter affecting their
+individual self-preservation, as well as that of their race, the
+existence of the want led to the means of its being gratified."<a name="FNanchor_247_247" id="FNanchor_247_247"></a><a href="#Footnote_247_247" class="fnanchor">[247]</a></p>
+
+<p>Lamarck is practically at one with Dr. Erasmus Darwin, that modification
+will commonly travel along three main lines which spring from the need
+of reproduction, of procuring food, and (Dr. Darwin has added) the power
+of self-protection; but Dr. Darwin's treatment of this part of his
+subject is more lucid and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> satisfactory than Lamarck's, inasmuch as he
+immediately brings forward instances of various modifications which have
+in each case been due to one of the three main desires above specified,
+namely, reproduction, subsistence, and self-defence.</p>
+
+<p>Lamarck concludes the chapter with some passages which show that he was
+alive&mdash;as what Frenchman could fail to be after Buffon had written?&mdash;to
+the consequences which must follow from the geometrical ratio of
+increase, and to the struggle for existence, with consequent survival of
+the fittest, which must always be one of the conditions of any wild
+animal's existence. The paragraphs, indeed, on this subject are taken
+with very little alteration from Buffon's work. As Lamarck's theory is
+based upon the fact that it is on the nature of these conditions that
+the habits and consequently the structure of any animal will depend, he
+must have seen that the shape of many of its organs must vary greatly in
+correlation to the conditions to which it was subjected in the matter of
+self-protection. I do not see, then, that there is any substantial
+difference between the positions taken by Dr. Erasmus Darwin and by
+Lamarck in this respect.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us conclude," he writes, "by showing the means employed by nature
+to prevent the number of her creatures from injuring the conservation of
+what has been produced already, and of the general order which should
+subsist.<a name="FNanchor_248_248" id="FNanchor_248_248"></a><a href="#Footnote_248_248" class="fnanchor">[248]</a></p>
+
+<p class="subhead2a">. . . . . . . . . . .</p>
+
+<p>"In consequence of the extremely rapid rate of increase<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> of the smaller,
+and especially of the most imperfect, animals, their numbers would
+become so great as to prove injurious to the conservation of breeds, and
+to the progress already made towards more perfect organization, unless
+nature had taken precautions to keep them down within certain fixed
+limits which she cannot exceed."<a name="FNanchor_249_249" id="FNanchor_249_249"></a><a href="#Footnote_249_249" class="fnanchor">[249]</a></p>
+
+<p>This seems to contain, and in a nutshell, as much of the essence of what
+Mr. Herbert Spencer and Mr. Charles Darwin have termed the survival of
+the fittest in the struggle for existence, as was necessary for
+Lamarck's purpose.</p>
+
+<p>To Lamarck, as to Dr. Darwin and Buffon, it was perfectly clear that the
+facts, that animals have to find their food under varying circumstances,
+and that they must defend themselves in all manner of varying ways
+against other creatures which would eat them if they could, were simply
+some of the conditions of their existence. In saying that the
+surrounding circumstances&mdash;which amount to the conditions of
+existence&mdash;determined the direction in which any plant or animal should
+be slowly modified, Lamarck includes as a matter of course the fact that
+the "stronger and better armed should eat the weaker," and thus survive
+and bear offspring which would inherit the strength and better armour of
+its parents. Nothing therefore can be more at variance with the truth
+than to represent Lamarck and the other early evolutionists as ignoring
+the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest; these are
+inevitably implied whenever they use the word "<i>circonstances</i>"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> or
+environment, as I will more fully show later on, and are also expressly
+called attention to by the greater number of them.<a name="FNanchor_250_250" id="FNanchor_250_250"></a><a href="#Footnote_250_250" class="fnanchor">[250]</a></p>
+
+<p>"Animals, except those which are herbivorous, prey upon one another; and
+the herbivorous are exposed to the attacks of the flesh-eating races.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>The strongest and best armed for attack eat the weaker</i>, and the
+greater kinds eat the smaller. Individuals of the same race rarely eat
+one another; they war only with other races than their own."<a name="FNanchor_251_251" id="FNanchor_251_251"></a><a href="#Footnote_251_251" class="fnanchor">[251]</a></p>
+
+<p>Dr. Darwin here again has the advantage over Lamarck; for he has pointed
+out how the males contend with one another for the possession of the
+females, which I do not find Lamarck to have done, though he would at
+once have admitted the fact. Lamarck continues:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The smaller kinds of animals breed so numerously and so rapidly that
+they would people the globe to the exclusion of other forms of life, if
+nature had not limited their inconceivable multitude. As, however, they
+are the prey of a number of other creatures, live but a short time, and
+perish easily with cold, they are kept always within the proportions
+necessary for the maintenance both of their own and of other races.<a name="FNanchor_252_252" id="FNanchor_252_252"></a><a href="#Footnote_252_252" class="fnanchor">[252]</a></p>
+
+<p>"As regards the larger and stronger animals, they would become dominant,
+and be injurious to the conservation of many other races, if they could
+multiply in too great numbers. But as it is, they devour one another,
+and breed but slowly, and few at a birth, so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> that equilibrium is duly
+preserved among them. Man alone is the unquestionably dominant animal,
+but men war among themselves, so that it may be safely said the world
+will never be peopled to its utmost capacity."<a name="FNanchor_253_253" id="FNanchor_253_253"></a><a href="#Footnote_253_253" class="fnanchor">[253]</a></p>
+
+<p>In his fifth chapter Lamarck returns to the then existing arrangement
+and classification of animals.</p>
+
+<p>"Naturalists having remarked that many species, and some genera and even
+families present characters which as it were isolate them, it has been
+imagined that these approached or drew further from each other according
+as their points of agreement or difference seemed greater or less when
+set down as it were on a chart or map. They regard the small well-marked
+series which have been styled natural families, as groups which should
+be placed between the isolated species and their nearest neighbours so
+as to form a kind of reticulation. This idea, which some of our modern
+naturalists have held to be admirable, is evidently mistaken, and will
+be discarded on a profounder and more extended knowledge of
+organization, and more especially when the distinction has been duly
+drawn between what is due to the action of special conditions and to
+general advance of organization."<a name="FNanchor_254_254" id="FNanchor_254_254"></a><a href="#Footnote_254_254" class="fnanchor">[254]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span>I take it that Lamarck is here attempting to express what Mr. Charles
+Darwin has rendered much more clearly in the following excellent
+passage:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"It should always be borne in mind what sort of intermediate forms must,
+on the theory [what theory?], have formerly existed. I have found it
+difficult when looking at any two species to avoid picturing to myself
+forms <i>directly</i> intermediate between them. But this is a wholly false
+view; we should always look for forms intermediate between each species
+and a common but unknown progenitor; and the progenitor will generally
+have differed in some respects from all its modified descendants. To
+give a simple illustration: the fantail and pouter pigeons are both
+descended from the rock pigeon. If we possessed all the intermediate
+varieties which have ever existed, we should have an extremely close
+series, between both and the rock pigeon; but we should have no
+varieties directly intermediate between the fantail and the pouter;
+none, for instance, combining a tail somewhat expanded with a crop
+somewhat enlarged, the characteristic features of these two breeds.
+These two breeds, moreover, have become so much modified that, if we had
+no historical or indirect evidence regarding their origin, it would not
+have been possible to have determined, from a mere comparison of their
+structure with that of the rock<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> pigeon C. livia, whether they had
+descended from this species, or from some other allied form, as C.
+&oelig;nas.</p>
+
+<p>"So with natural species, if we look to forms very distinct&mdash;for
+instance, to the horse and the tapir&mdash;we have no reason to suppose that
+links directly intermediate between them ever existed, but between each
+and an unknown common parent. The common parent will have had in its
+whole organization much general resemblance to the tapir and the horse;
+but in some points of structure it may have differed considerably from
+both, even perhaps more than they differ from each other. Hence in all
+such cases we should be unable to recognize the parent form of any two
+or more species, even if we closely compared the structure of the parent
+with that of its modified descendants, unless at the same time we had a
+nearly perfect chain of the intermediate links.</p>
+
+<p class="subhead2a">. . . . . . . . . . .</p>
+
+<p>"By the theory of natural selection [surely this is a slip for "by the
+theory of descent with modification"] all living species have been
+connected with the parent species of each genus, by differences not
+greater than we see between the natural and domestic varieties of the
+same species at the present day; and their parent species, now generally
+extinct, have in their turn been similarly connected with more ancient
+forms, and so on backwards, always converging to the common ancestor of
+each great class; so that the number of intermediate and transitional
+links between all living and extinct species must have been
+inconceivably great. But assuredly if this theory [the theory of descent
+with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> modification or that of "natural selection"?] be true, such have
+lived upon the earth."<a name="FNanchor_255_255" id="FNanchor_255_255"></a><a href="#Footnote_255_255" class="fnanchor">[255]</a></p>
+
+<p>To return, however, to Lamarck.</p>
+
+<p>"Though Nature," he continues, "in the course of long time has evolved
+all animals and plants in a true scale of progression, the steps of this
+scale can be perceived only in the principal groups of living forms; it
+cannot be perceived in species nor even in genera. The reason of this
+lies in the extreme diversity of the surroundings in which each
+different race of animals and plants has existed. These surroundings
+have often been out of harmony with the growing organization of the
+plants and animals themselves; this has led to anomalies, and, as it
+were, digressions, which the mere development of organization by itself
+could not have occasioned."<a name="FNanchor_256_256" id="FNanchor_256_256"></a><a href="#Footnote_256_256" class="fnanchor">[256]</a> Or, in other words, to that divergency
+of type which is so well insisted on by Mr. Charles Darwin.</p>
+
+<p>"It is only therefore the principal groups of animal and vegetable life
+which can be arranged in a vertical line of descent; species and even
+genera cannot always be so&mdash;for these contain beings whose organization
+has been dependent on the possession of such and such a special system
+of essential organs.</p>
+
+<p>"Each great and separate group has its own system of essential organs,
+and it is these systems which can be seen to descend, within the limits
+of the group, from their most complex to their simplest form. But each
+organ, considered individually, does not descend by equally regular
+gradation; the gradations are less and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> less regular according as the
+organ is of less importance, and is more susceptible of modification by
+the conditions which surround it. Organs of small importance, and not
+essential to existence, are not always either perfected or degraded at
+an equal rate, so that in observing all the species of any class we find
+an organ in one species in the highest degree of perfection, while
+another organ, which in this same species is impoverished or very
+imperfect, is highly developed in another species of the same
+group."<a name="FNanchor_257_257" id="FNanchor_257_257"></a><a href="#Footnote_257_257" class="fnanchor">[257]</a></p>
+
+<p>The facts maintained in the preceding paragraph are in great measure
+supported by Mr. Charles Darwin, who, however, assigns their cause to
+natural selection.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Darwin writes, "Ordinary specific characters are more variable than
+generic;" and again, a little lower down, "The points in which all the
+species of a genus resemble each other, and in which they differ from
+allied genera, are called generic characters; and these characters may
+be attributed to inheritance from a common progenitor, for it can rarely
+happen that natural selection will have modified several distinct
+species fitted to more or less widely different habits, in exactly the
+same manner; and as these so called generic characters have been
+inherited from before the period when the several species first branched
+off from their common progenitor, and subsequently have not varied or
+come to differ in any degree, or only in a slight degree, it is not
+probable that they should vary at the present day. On the other hand,
+the points in which species differ from other species of the same genus
+are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> called specific characters; and as these specific characters have
+varied and come to differ since the period when the species branched off
+from a common progenitor, it is probable that they should still often be
+in some degree variable, or at least more variable than those parts of
+the organization which have for a very long time remained
+constant."<a name="FNanchor_258_258" id="FNanchor_258_258"></a><a href="#Footnote_258_258" class="fnanchor">[258]</a></p>
+
+<p>The fact, then, that it is specific characters which vary most is agreed
+upon by both Lamarck and Mr. Darwin. Lamarck, however, maintains that it
+is these specific characters which are most capable of being affected by
+the habits of the creature, and that it is for this reason they will be
+most variable, while Mr. Darwin simply says they <i>are</i> most variable,
+and that, this being so, the favourable variations will be preserved and
+accumulated&mdash;an assertion which Lamarck would certainly not demur to.</p>
+
+<p>"Irregular degrees of perfection," says Lamarck, "and degradation in the
+less essential organs, are due to the fact that these are more liable
+than the more essential ones to the influence of external circumstances:
+these induce corresponding differences in the more outward parts of the
+animal, and give rise to such considerable and singular difference in
+species, that instead of being able to arrange them in a direct line of
+descent, as we can arrange the main groups, these species often form
+lateral ramifications round about the main groups to which they belong,
+and in their extreme development are truly isolated."<a name="FNanchor_259_259" id="FNanchor_259_259"></a><a href="#Footnote_259_259" class="fnanchor">[259]</a></p>
+
+<p>In his summary of the second chapter of his 'Origin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> of Species,' Mr.
+Darwin well confirms this when he says, "In large genera the species are
+apt to be closely, but unequally, allied together, forming little
+clusters round other species."</p>
+
+<p>"A longer time," says Lamarck, "and a greater influence of surrounding
+conditions, is necessary in order to modify interior organs.
+Nevertheless we see that Nature does pass from one system to another
+without any sudden leap, when circumstances require it, provided the
+systems are not too far apart. Her method is to proceed from the more
+simple to the more complex.<a name="FNanchor_260_260" id="FNanchor_260_260"></a><a href="#Footnote_260_260" class="fnanchor">[260]</a></p>
+
+<p>"She does this not only in the race, but in the individual." Here
+Lamarck, like Dr. Erasmus Darwin, shows his perception of the importance
+of embryology in throwing light on the affinities of animals&mdash;as since
+more fully insisted on by the author of the 'Vestiges of Creation,' and
+by Mr. Darwin,<a name="FNanchor_261_261" id="FNanchor_261_261"></a><a href="#Footnote_261_261" class="fnanchor">[261]</a> as well as by other writers. "Breathing through
+gills is nearer to breathing through lungs than breathing through
+trachea is. Not only do we see Nature pass from gills to lungs in
+families which are not too far apart, as may be seen by considering the
+case of fishes and reptiles; but she does so during the existence of a
+single individual, which may successively make use both of the one and
+of the other system. The frog while yet a tadpole breathes through
+gills; on becoming a frog it breathes through lungs; but we cannot find
+that Nature in any case passes from trachea to lungs."<a name="FNanchor_262_262" id="FNanchor_262_262"></a><a href="#Footnote_262_262" class="fnanchor">[262]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span>Lamarck now rapidly reviews previous classifications, and propounds his
+own, which stands thus:&mdash;I. Vertebrata, consisting of Mammals, Birds,
+Fishes, and Reptiles. II. Invertebrata, consisting of Molluscs,
+Centipedes, Annelids, Crustacea, Arachnids, Insects, Worms, Radiata,
+Polyps, Infusoria.</p>
+
+<p>"The degradation of organism," he concludes, "in this descending scale
+is not perfectly even, and cannot be made so by any classification,
+nevertheless there is such evidence of sustained degradation in the
+principal groups as must point in the direction of some underlying
+general principle."<a name="FNanchor_263_263" id="FNanchor_263_263"></a><a href="#Footnote_263_263" class="fnanchor">[263]</a></p>
+
+<p>Lamarck's sixth chapter is headed "Degradation and Simplification of the
+Animal Chain as we proceed downwards from the most complex to the most
+simple Organisms."</p>
+
+<p>"This is a positive fact, and results from the operation of a constant
+law of nature; but a disturbing cause, which can be easily recognized,
+varies the regular operation of the law from one end to the other of the
+chain of life.<a name="FNanchor_264_264" id="FNanchor_264_264"></a><a href="#Footnote_264_264" class="fnanchor">[264]</a></p>
+
+<p>"We can see, nevertheless, that special organs become more and more
+simple the lower we descend; that they become changed, impoverished, and
+attenuated little by little; that they lose their local centres, and
+finally become definitely annihilated before we reach the lowest
+extremity of the chain.<a name="FNanchor_265_265" id="FNanchor_265_265"></a><a href="#Footnote_265_265" class="fnanchor">[265]</a></p>
+
+<p>"As has been said already, the degradation of organism is not always
+regular; such and such an organ often fails or changes suddenly, and
+sometimes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> in its changes assumes forms which are not allied with any
+others by steps that we can recognize. An organ may disappear and
+reappear several times before being entirely lost: but this is what we
+might expect, for the cause which has led to the evolution of living
+organisms has evolved many varieties, due to external influences.
+Nevertheless, looking at organization broadly, we observe a descending
+scale."<a name="FNanchor_266_266" id="FNanchor_266_266"></a><a href="#Footnote_266_266" class="fnanchor">[266]</a></p>
+
+<p>"If the tendency to progressive development was the only cause which had
+influenced the forms and organs of animals, development would have been
+regular throughout the animal chain; but it has not been so: Nature is
+compelled to submit her productions to an environment which acts upon
+them, and variation in environment will induce variation in organism:
+this is the true cause of the sometimes strange deviations from the
+direct line of progression which we shall have to observe.<a name="FNanchor_267_267" id="FNanchor_267_267"></a><a href="#Footnote_267_267" class="fnanchor">[267]</a></p>
+
+<p>"If Nature had only called aquatic beings into existence, and if these
+beings had lived always in the same climate, in the same kind of water,
+and at the same depth, the organization of these animals would doubtless
+have presented an even and regular scale of development. But there has
+been fresh water, salt water, running and stagnant water, warm and cold
+climates, an infinite variety of depth: animals exposed to these and
+other differences in their surroundings have varied in accordance with
+them.<a name="FNanchor_268_268" id="FNanchor_268_268"></a><a href="#Footnote_268_268" class="fnanchor">[268]</a> In like manner those animals which have been gradually fitted
+for living in air instead of water have been subjected to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> an endless
+diversity in their surroundings. The following law, then, may be now
+propounded, namely:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"<i>That anomalies in the development of organism are due to the
+influences of the environment and to the habits of the creature.</i><a name="FNanchor_269_269" id="FNanchor_269_269"></a><a href="#Footnote_269_269" class="fnanchor">[269]</a></p>
+
+<p>"Some have said that the anomalies above mentioned are so great
+as to disprove the existence of any scale which should indicate
+descent; but the nearer we approach species, the smaller we see
+differences become, till with species itself we find them at times
+almost imperceptible."<a name="FNanchor_270_270" id="FNanchor_270_270"></a><a href="#Footnote_270_270" class="fnanchor">[270]</a></p>
+
+<p>Lamarck here devotes about seventy pages to a survey of the animal
+kingdom in its entirety, beginning with the mammals and ending with the
+infusoria. He points out the manner in which organ after organ
+disappears as we descend the scale, till we are left with a form which,
+though presenting all the characteristics of life, has yet no special
+organ whatever. I am obliged to pass this classification over, but do so
+very unwillingly, for it is illustrative of Lamarck, both at his best
+and at his worst.</p>
+
+<p>The seventh chapter is headed&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"On the influence of their surroundings on the actions and habits of
+animals, and on the effect of these habits and actions in modifying
+their organization."</p>
+
+<p>"The effect of different conditions of our organization upon our
+character, tendencies, actions, and even our ideas, has been often
+remarked, but no attention has yet been paid to that of our actions and
+habits upon our organization itself. These actions and habits depend<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span>
+entirely upon our relations to the surroundings in which we habitually
+exist; we shall have occasion, therefore, to see how great is the effect
+of environment upon organization.</p>
+
+<p>"But for our having domesticated plants and animals we should never have
+arrived at the perception of this truth; for though the influence of the
+environment is at all times and everywhere active upon all living
+bodies, its effects are so gradual that they can only be perceived over
+long periods of time.<a name="FNanchor_271_271" id="FNanchor_271_271"></a><a href="#Footnote_271_271" class="fnanchor">[271]</a></p>
+
+<p>"Taking the chain of life in the inverse order of nature&mdash;that is to
+say, from man downwards&mdash;we certainly perceive a sustained but irregular
+degradation of organism, with an increasing simplicity both in organism
+and faculties.</p>
+
+<p>"This fact should throw light upon the order taken by nature, but it
+does not show us why the gradation is so irregular, nor why throughout
+its extent we find so many anomalies or digressions which have
+apparently no order at all in their manifold varieties.<a name="FNanchor_272_272" id="FNanchor_272_272"></a><a href="#Footnote_272_272" class="fnanchor">[272]</a> The
+explanation of this must be sought for in the infinite diversity of
+circumstances under which organisms have been developed. On the one
+hand, there is a tendency to a regular progressive development; on the
+other, there is a host of widely different surroundings which tend
+continually to destroy the regularity of development.</p>
+
+<p>"It is necessary to explain what is meant by such expressions as 'the
+effect of its environment upon the form and organization of an animal.'
+It must not be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> supposed that its surroundings directly effect any
+modification whatever in the form and organization of an animal.<a name="FNanchor_273_273" id="FNanchor_273_273"></a><a href="#Footnote_273_273" class="fnanchor">[273]</a>
+Great changes in surroundings involve great changes in the wants of
+animals, and these changes in their wants involve corresponding changes
+in their actions. If these new wants become permanent, or of very long
+duration, the animals contract new habits, which last as long as the
+wants which gave rise to them.<a name="FNanchor_274_274" id="FNanchor_274_274"></a><a href="#Footnote_274_274" class="fnanchor">[274]</a> A great change in surroundings, if
+it persist for a long time, must plainly, therefore, involve the
+contraction of new habits. These new habits in their turn involve a
+preference for the employment of such and such an organ over such and
+such another organ, and in certain cases the total disuse of an organ
+which is no longer wanted. This is perfectly self-evident.<a name="FNanchor_275_275" id="FNanchor_275_275"></a><a href="#Footnote_275_275" class="fnanchor">[275]</a></p>
+
+<p>"On the one hand, new wants have rendered a part necessary, which part
+has accordingly been created by a succession of efforts: use has kept it
+in existence, gradually strengthening and developing it till in the end
+it attains a considerable degree of perfection. On the other, new
+circumstances having in some cases rendered such or such a part useless,
+disuse has led to its gradually ceasing to receive the development which
+the other parts attain to; on this it becomes reduced, and in time
+disappears.<a name="FNanchor_276_276" id="FNanchor_276_276"></a><a href="#Footnote_276_276" class="fnanchor">[276]</a></p>
+
+<p>"Plants have neither actions nor habits properly so called, nevertheless
+they change in a changed environment as much as animals do. This is due
+to changes in nutrition, absorption and transpiration, to degrees of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>
+heat, light, and moisture, and to the preponderance over others which
+certain of the vital functions attain to."</p>
+
+<p>Lamarck is led into the statement that plants have neither actions nor
+habits, by his theories about the nervous system and the brain. Plain
+matter-of-fact people will prefer the view taken by Buffon, Dr. Darwin,
+and, more recently, by Mr. Francis Darwin, that there is no radical
+difference between plants and animals.</p>
+
+<p>"The differences between well-nourished and ill-nourished plants become
+little by little very noticeable. If individuals, whether animal or
+vegetable, are continually ill-fed and exposed to hardships for several
+generations, their organization becomes eventually modified, and the
+modification is transmitted until a race is formed which is quite
+distinct from those descendants of the common parent stock which have
+been placed in favourable circumstances.<a name="FNanchor_277_277" id="FNanchor_277_277"></a><a href="#Footnote_277_277" class="fnanchor">[277]</a> In a dry spring the meagre
+and stunted herbage seeds early. When, on the other hand, the spring is
+warm but with occasional days of rain, there is an excellent hay-crop.
+If, however, any cause perpetuates unfavourable circumstances, plants
+will vary correspondingly, first in appearance and general conditions,
+and then in several particulars of their actual character, certain
+organs having received more development than others, these differences
+will in the course of time become hereditary.<a name="FNanchor_278_278" id="FNanchor_278_278"></a><a href="#Footnote_278_278" class="fnanchor">[278]</a></p>
+
+<p>"Nature changes a plant or animal's surroundings gradually&mdash;man
+sometimes does so suddenly. All botanists know that plants vary so
+greatly under<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> domestication that in time they become hardly
+recognizable. They undergo so much change that botanists do not at all
+like describing domesticated varieties. Wheat itself is an example.
+Where can wheat be found as a wild plant, unless it have escaped from
+some neighbouring cultivation? Where are our cauliflowers, our lettuces,
+to be found wild, with the same characters as they possess in our
+kitchen gardens?</p>
+
+<p>"The same applies to our domesticated breeds of animals. What a variety
+of breeds has not man produced among fowls and pigeons, of which we can
+find no undomesticated examples!"<a name="FNanchor_279_279" id="FNanchor_279_279"></a><a href="#Footnote_279_279" class="fnanchor">[279]</a></p>
+
+<p>The foregoing remarks on the effects of domestication seem to have been
+inspired by those given p. 123 and pp. 168, 169 of this volume.<a name="FNanchor_280_280" id="FNanchor_280_280"></a><a href="#Footnote_280_280" class="fnanchor">[280]</a></p>
+
+<p>"Some, doubtless, have changed less than others, owing to their having
+undergone a less protracted domestication, and a less degree of change
+in climate; nevertheless, though our ducks and geese, for example, are
+of the same type as their wild progenitors, they have lost the power of
+long and sustained flight, and have become in other respects
+considerably modified.<a name="FNanchor_281_281" id="FNanchor_281_281"></a><a href="#Footnote_281_281" class="fnanchor">[281]</a></p>
+
+<p>"A bird, after having been kept five or six years in a cage, cannot on
+being liberated fly like its brethren which have been always free. Such
+a change in a single lifetime has not effected any transmissible
+modification of type; but captivity, continued during many<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> successive
+generations, would undoubtedly do so. If to the effects of captivity
+there be added also those of changed climate, changed food, and changed
+actions for the purpose of laying hold of food, these, united together
+and become constant, would in the course of time develop an entirely new
+breed."</p>
+
+<p>This, again, is almost identical with the passage from Buffon,<a name="FNanchor_282_282" id="FNanchor_282_282"></a><a href="#Footnote_282_282" class="fnanchor">[282]</a> p.
+148 of this volume. See also pp. 169, 170.</p>
+
+<p>"Where can our many domestic breeds of dogs be found in a wild state?
+Where are our bulldogs, greyhounds, spaniels, and lapdogs, breeds
+presenting differences which, in wild animals, would be certainly called
+specific? These are all descended from an animal nearly allied to the
+wolf, if not from the wolf itself. Such an animal was domesticated by
+early man, taken at successive intervals into widely different climates,
+trained to different habits, carried by man in his migrations as a
+precious capital into the most distant countries, and crossed from time
+to time with other breeds which had been developed in similar ways.
+Hence our present multiform breeds."<a name="FNanchor_283_283" id="FNanchor_283_283"></a><a href="#Footnote_283_283" class="fnanchor">[283]</a></p>
+
+<p>Here, also, it is impossible to forget Buffon's passages on the dog,
+given pp. 121, 122. See also p. 223.</p>
+
+<p>"Observe the gradations which are found between the <i>ranunculus
+aquatilis</i> and the <i>ranunculus hederaceus</i>: the latter&mdash;a land
+plant&mdash;resembles those parts of the former which grow above the surface
+of the water, but not those that grow beneath it.<a name="FNanchor_284_284" id="FNanchor_284_284"></a><a href="#Footnote_284_284" class="fnanchor">[284]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span>"The modifications of animals arise more slowly than those of plants;
+they are therefore less easily watched, and less easily assignable to
+their true causes, but they arise none the less surely. As regards these
+causes, the most potent is diversity of the surroundings in which they
+exist, but there are also many others.<a name="FNanchor_285_285" id="FNanchor_285_285"></a><a href="#Footnote_285_285" class="fnanchor">[285]</a></p>
+
+<p>"The climate of the same place changes, and the place itself changes
+with changed climate and exposure, but so slowly that we imagine all
+lands to be stable in their conditions. This, however, is not true;
+climatic and other changes induce corresponding changes in environment
+and habit, and these modify the structure of the living forms which are
+subjected to them. Indeed, we see intermediate forms and species
+corresponding to intermediate conditions.</p>
+
+<p>"To the above causes must be ascribed the infinite variety of existing
+forms, independently of any tendency towards progressive
+development."<a name="FNanchor_286_286" id="FNanchor_286_286"></a><a href="#Footnote_286_286" class="fnanchor">[286]</a></p>
+
+<p>The reader has now before him a fair sample of "the well-known doctrine
+of inherited habit as advanced by Lamarck."<a name="FNanchor_287_287" id="FNanchor_287_287"></a><a href="#Footnote_287_287" class="fnanchor">[287]</a> In what way, let me ask
+in passing, does "the case of neuter insects" prove "demonstrative"
+against it, unless it is held equally demonstrative against Mr. Darwin's
+own position? Lamarck continues:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The character of any habitable quarter of the globe is <i>qu&acirc;</i> man
+constant: the constancy of type in species is therefore also <i>qu&acirc;</i> man
+persistent. But this is an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> illusion. We establish, therefore, the three
+following propositions:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"1. That every considerable and sustained change in the surroundings of
+any animal involves a real change in its needs.</p>
+
+<p>"2. That such change of needs involves the necessity of changed action
+in order to satisfy these needs, and, in consequence, of new
+habits.<a name="FNanchor_288_288" id="FNanchor_288_288"></a><a href="#Footnote_288_288" class="fnanchor">[288]</a></p>
+
+<p>"3. It follows that such and such parts, formerly less used, are now
+more frequently employed, and in consequence become more highly
+developed; new parts also become insensibly evolved in the creature by
+its own efforts from within.</p>
+
+<p>"From the foregoing these two general laws may be deduced:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Firstly. That in every animal which has not passed its limit of
+development, the more frequent and sustained employment of any organ
+develops and aggrandizes it, giving it a power proportionate to the
+duration of its employment, while the same organ in default of constant
+use becomes insensibly weakened and deteriorated, decreasing
+imperceptibly in power until it finally disappears.</i><a name="FNanchor_289_289" id="FNanchor_289_289"></a><a href="#Footnote_289_289" class="fnanchor">[289]</a></p>
+
+<p>"<i>Secondly. That these gains or losses of organic development, due to
+use or disuse, are transmitted to offspring, provided they have been
+common to both sexes, or to the animals from which the offspring have
+descended.</i>"<a name="FNanchor_290_290" id="FNanchor_290_290"></a><a href="#Footnote_290_290" class="fnanchor">[290]</a></p>
+
+<p>Lamarck now sets himself to establish the fact that animals have
+developed modifications which have been transmitted to their offspring.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Naturalists," he says, "have believed that the possession of certain
+organs has led to their employment. This is not so: it is need and use
+which have developed the organs, and even called them into existence."
+[I have already sufficiently insisted that it is impossible to dispense
+with either of these two views. Demand and Supply have gone hand in
+hand, each reacting upon the other.] "Otherwise a special act of
+creation would be necessary for every different combination of
+conditions; and it would be also necessary that the conditions should
+remain always constant.</p>
+
+<p>"If this were really so we should have no racehorses like those of
+England, nor drayhorses so heavy in build and so unlike the racehorse;
+for there are no such breeds in a wild state. For the same reason, we
+should have no turnspit dogs with crooked legs, no greyhounds nor
+water-spaniels; we should have no tailless breed of fowls nor fantail
+pigeons, &amp;c. Nor should we be able to cultivate wild plants in our
+gardens, for any length of time we please, without fear of their
+changing.</p>
+
+<p>"'Habit,' says the proverb, 'is a second nature'; what possible meaning
+can this proverb have, if descent with modification is unfounded?<a name="FNanchor_291_291" id="FNanchor_291_291"></a><a href="#Footnote_291_291" class="fnanchor">[291]</a></p>
+
+<p>"As regards the circumstances which give rise to variation, the
+principal are climatic changes, different temperatures of any of a
+creature's environments, differences of abode, of habit, of the most
+frequent actions; and lastly, of the means of obtaining food,
+self-defence, reproduction, &amp;c., &amp;c."<a name="FNanchor_292_292" id="FNanchor_292_292"></a><a href="#Footnote_292_292" class="fnanchor">[292]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span>Here we have absolute agreement with Dr. Erasmus Darwin,<a name="FNanchor_293_293" id="FNanchor_293_293"></a><a href="#Footnote_293_293" class="fnanchor">[293]</a> except
+that there seems a tendency in this passage to assign more effect to the
+direct action of conditions than is common with Lamarck. He seems to be
+mixing Buffon and Dr. Darwin.</p>
+
+<p>"In consequence of change in any of these respects, the faculties of an
+animal become extended and enlarged by use: they become diversified
+through the long continuance of the new habits, until little by little
+their whole structure and nature, as well as the organs originally
+affected, participate in the effects of all these influences, and are
+modified to an extent which is capable of transmission to
+offspring."<a name="FNanchor_294_294" id="FNanchor_294_294"></a><a href="#Footnote_294_294" class="fnanchor">[294]</a></p>
+
+<p>This sentence alone would be sufficient to show that Lamarck was as much
+alive as Buffon and Dr. Darwin were before him, to the fact that one of
+the most important conditions of an animal's life, is the relation in
+which it stands to the other inhabitants of the same neighbourhood&mdash;from
+which the survival of the fittest follows as a self-evident proposition.
+Nothing, therefore, can be more unfounded than the attempt, so
+frequently made by writers who have not read Lamarck, or who think
+others may be trusted not to do so, to represent him as maintaining
+something perfectly different from what is maintained by modern writers
+on evolution. The difference, in so far as there is any difference, is
+one of detail only. Lamarck would not have hesitated to admit, that, if
+animals are modified in a direction which is favourable to them, they
+will have a better chance of surviving and transmitting their
+favourable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> modifications. In like manner, our modern evolutionists
+should allow that animals are modified not because they subsequently
+survive, but because they have done this or that which has led to their
+modification, and hence to their surviving.</p>
+
+<p>Having established that animals and plants are capable of being
+materially changed in the course of a few generations, Lamarck proceeds
+to show that their modification is due to changed distribution of the
+use and disuse of their organs at any given time.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>The disuse of an organ</i>," he writes, "<i>if it becomes constant in
+consequence of new habits, gradually reduces the organ, and leads
+finally to its disappearance</i>."<a name="FNanchor_295_295" id="FNanchor_295_295"></a><a href="#Footnote_295_295" class="fnanchor">[295]</a></p>
+
+<p>"Thus whales have lost their teeth, though teeth are still found in the
+embryo. So, again, M. Geoffroy has discovered in birds the groove where
+teeth were formerly placed. The ant-eater, which belongs to a genus that
+has long relinquished the habit of masticating its food, is as toothless
+as the whale."<a name="FNanchor_296_296" id="FNanchor_296_296"></a><a href="#Footnote_296_296" class="fnanchor">[296]</a></p>
+
+<p>Then are adduced further examples of rudimentary organs, which will be
+given in another place, and need not be repeated here. Speaking of the
+fact, however, that serpents have no legs, though they are higher in the
+scale of life than the batrachians, Lamarck attributes this "to the
+continued habit of trying to squeeze through very narrow places, where
+four feet would be in the way, and would be very little good to them,
+inasmuch as more than four would be wanted in order to turn bodies that
+were already so much elongated."<a name="FNanchor_297_297" id="FNanchor_297_297"></a><a href="#Footnote_297_297" class="fnanchor">[297]</a></p>
+
+<p>If it be asked why, on Lamarck's theory, if serpents<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> wanted more legs
+they could not have made them, the answer is that the attempt to do this
+would be to unsettle a question which had been already so long settled,
+that it would be impossible to reopen it. The animal must adapt itself
+to four legs, or must get rid of all or some of them if it does not like
+them; but it has stood so long committed to the theory that if there are
+to be legs at all, there are to be not more than four, that it is
+impossible for it now to see this matter in any other light.</p>
+
+<p>The experiments of M. Brown S&eacute;quard on guinea pigs, quoted by Mr.
+Darwin,<a name="FNanchor_298_298" id="FNanchor_298_298"></a><a href="#Footnote_298_298" class="fnanchor">[298]</a> suggest that the form of the serpent may be due to its
+having lost its legs by successive accidents in squeezing through narrow
+places, and that the wounds having been followed by disease, the
+creature may have bitten the limbs off, in which case the loss might
+have been very readily transmitted to offspring; the animal would
+accordingly take to a sinuous mode of progression that would doubtless
+in time elongate the body still further. M. Brown S&eacute;quard "carefully
+recorded" thirteen cases, and saw even a greater number, in which the
+loss of toes by guinea pigs which had gnawed their own toes off, was
+immediately transmitted to offspring. Accidents followed by disease seem
+to have been somewhat overlooked as a possible means of modification.
+The missing forefinger to the hand of the potto<a name="FNanchor_299_299" id="FNanchor_299_299"></a><a href="#Footnote_299_299" class="fnanchor">[299]</a> would appear at
+first sight to have been lost by some such mishap. Returning to Lamarck,
+we find him saying:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Even in the lifetime of a single individual we can see organic changes
+in consequence of changed habits. Thus M. Tenon has constantly found the
+intestinal canal of drunkards to be greatly shorter than that of people
+who do not drink. This is due to the fact that habitual drunkards eat
+but little solid food, so that the stomach and intestines are more
+rarely distended. The same applies to people who lead studious and
+sedentary lives. The stomachs of such persons and of drunkards have
+little power, and a small quantity will fill them, while those of men
+who take plenty of exercise remain in full vigour and are even
+increased."<a name="FNanchor_300_300" id="FNanchor_300_300"></a><a href="#Footnote_300_300" class="fnanchor">[300]</a></p>
+
+<p>It becomes now necessary to establish the converse proposition, namely
+that:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"<i>The frequent use of an organ increases its power; it even develops the
+organ itself, and makes it acquire dimensions and powers which it is not
+found to have in animals which make no use of such an organ.</i></p>
+
+<p>"In support of this we see that the bird whose needs lead it to the
+water, in which to find its prey, extends the toes of its feet when it
+wants to strike the water, and move itself upon the surface. The skin at
+the base of the toes of such a bird contracts the habit of extending
+itself from continual practice. To this cause, in the course of time,
+must be attributed the wide membrane which unites the toes of ducks,
+geese, &amp;c. The same efforts to swim, that is to say, to push the water
+for the purpose of moving itself forward, has extended the membrane
+between the toes of frogs, turtles, the otter, and the beaver."<a name="FNanchor_301_301" id="FNanchor_301_301"></a><a href="#Footnote_301_301" class="fnanchor">[301]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span>[This is taken, I believe, from Dr. Darwin or Buffon, but I have lost
+the passage, if, indeed, I ever found it. It had been met by Paley some
+years earlier (1802) in the following:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"There is nothing in the action of swimming as carried on by a bird upon
+the surface of the water that should generate a membrane between the
+toes. As to that membrane it is an action of constant resistance.... The
+web feet of amphibious quadrupeds, seals, otters, &amp;c., fall under the
+same observation."<a name="FNanchor_302_302" id="FNanchor_302_302"></a><a href="#Footnote_302_302" class="fnanchor">[302]</a>]</p>
+
+<p>"On the other hand those birds whose habits lead them to perch on trees,
+and which have sprung from parents that have long contracted this habit,
+have their toes shaped in a perfectly different manner. Their claws
+become lengthened, sharpened, and curved, so as to enable the creature
+to lay hold of the boughs on which it so often rests. The shore bird
+again, which does not like to swim, is nevertheless continually obliged
+to enter the water when searching after its prey. Not liking to plunge
+its body in the water, it makes every endeavour to extend and lengthen
+its lower limbs. In the course of long time these birds have come to be
+elevated, as it were, on stilts, and have got long legs bare of feathers
+as far as their thighs, and often still higher. The same bird is
+continually trying to extend its neck in order to fish without wetting
+its body, and in the course of time its neck has become modified
+accordingly.<a name="FNanchor_303_303" id="FNanchor_303_303"></a><a href="#Footnote_303_303" class="fnanchor">[303]</a></p>
+
+<p>"Swans, indeed, and geese have short legs and very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> long necks, but this
+is because they plunge their heads as low in the water as they can in
+their search for aquatic larv&aelig; and other animalcules, but make no effort
+to lengthen their legs."<a name="FNanchor_304_304" id="FNanchor_304_304"></a><a href="#Footnote_304_304" class="fnanchor">[304]</a></p>
+
+<p>This too is taken from some passage which I have either never seen or
+have lost sight of. Paley never gives a reference to an opponent, though
+he frequently does so when quoting an author on his own side, but I can
+hardly doubt that he had in his mind the passage from which Lamarck in
+1809 derived the foregoing, when in 1802 he wrote &sect; 5 of chapter xv. and
+the latter half of chapter xxiii. of his 'Natural Theology.'</p>
+
+<p>"The tongues of the ant-eater and the woodpecker," continues Lamarck,
+"have become elongated from similar causes. Humming birds catch hold of
+things with their tongues; serpents and lizards use their tongues to
+touch and reconnoitre objects in front of them, hence their tongues have
+come to be forked.</p>
+
+<p>"Need&mdash;always occasioned by the circumstances in which an animal is
+placed, and followed by sustained efforts at gratification&mdash;can not only
+modify an organ, that is to say, augment or reduce it, but can change
+its position when the case requires its removal.<a name="FNanchor_305_305" id="FNanchor_305_305"></a><a href="#Footnote_305_305" class="fnanchor">[305]</a></p>
+
+<p>"Ocean fishes have occasion to see what is on either side of them, and
+have their eyes accordingly placed on either side their head. Some
+fishes, however, have their abode near coasts on submarine banks and
+inclinations, and are thus forced to flatten themselves as much as
+possible in order to get as near as they can to the shore. In this
+situation they receive more light<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> from above than from below, and find
+it necessary to pay attention to whatever happens to be above them; this
+need has involved the displacement of their eyes, which now take the
+remarkable position which we observe in the case of soles, turbots,
+plaice, &amp;c. The transfer of position is not even yet complete in the
+case of these fishes, and the eyes are not, therefore, symmetrically
+placed; but they are so with the skate, whose head and whole body are
+equally disposed on either side a longitudinal section. Hence the eyes
+of this fish are placed symmetrically upon the uppermost side.<a name="FNanchor_306_306" id="FNanchor_306_306"></a><a href="#Footnote_306_306" class="fnanchor">[306]</a></p>
+
+<p>"The eyes of serpents are placed on the sides and upper portions of the
+head, so that they can easily see what is on one side of them or above
+them; but they can only see very little in front of them, and supplement
+this deficiency of power with their tongue, which is very long and
+supple, and is in many kinds so divided that it can touch more than one
+object at a time; the habit of reconnoitring objects in front of them
+with their tongues has even led to their being able to pass it through
+the end of their nostrils without being obliged to open their jaws.<a name="FNanchor_307_307" id="FNanchor_307_307"></a><a href="#Footnote_307_307" class="fnanchor">[307]</a></p>
+
+<p>"Herbivorous mammals, such as the elephant, rhinoceros, ox, buffalo,
+horse, &amp;c., owe their great size to their habit of daily distending
+themselves with food and taking comparatively little exercise. They
+employ their feet for standing, walking, or running, but not for
+climbing trees. Hence the thick horn which covers their toes. These toes
+have become useless to them, and are now in many cases rudimentary only.
+Some <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span>pachyderms have five toes covered with horn; some four, some
+three. The ruminants, which appear to be the earliest mammals that
+confined themselves to a life upon the ground, have but two hooves,
+while the horse has only one.<a name="FNanchor_308_308" id="FNanchor_308_308"></a><a href="#Footnote_308_308" class="fnanchor">[308]</a></p>
+
+<p>"Some herbivorous animals, especially among the ruminants, have been
+incessantly preyed upon by carnivorous animals, against which their only
+refuge is in flight. Necessity has therefore developed the light and
+active limbs of antelopes, gazelles, &amp;c. Ruminants, only using their
+jaws to graze with, have but little power in them, and therefore
+generally fight with their heads. The males fight frequently with one
+another, and their desires prompt an access of fluids to the parts of
+their heads with which they fight; thus the horns and bosses have arisen
+with which the heads of most of these animals are armed.<a name="FNanchor_309_309" id="FNanchor_309_309"></a><a href="#Footnote_309_309" class="fnanchor">[309]</a> The
+giraffe owes its long neck to its continued habit of browsing upon
+trees, whence also the great length of its fore legs as compared with
+its hinder ones. Carnivorous animals, in like manner, have had their
+organs modified in correlation with their desires and habits. Some
+climb, some scratch in order to burrow in the earth, some tear their
+prey; they therefore have need of toes, and we find their toes separated
+and armed with claws. Some of them are great hunters, and also plunge
+their claws deeply into the bodies of their victims, trying to tear out
+the part on which they have seized; this habit has developed a size and
+curvature of claw which would impede them greatly in travelling over
+stony ground;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> they have therefore been obliged to make efforts to draw
+back their too projecting claws, and so, little by little, has arisen
+the peculiar sheath into which cats, tigers, lions, &amp;c., withdraw their
+claws when they no longer wish to use them.<a name="FNanchor_310_310" id="FNanchor_310_310"></a><a href="#Footnote_310_310" class="fnanchor">[310]</a></p>
+
+<p>"We see then that the long-sustained and habitual exercise of any part
+of a living organism, in consequence of the necessities engendered by
+its environment, develops such part, and gives it a form which it would
+never have attained if the exercise had not become an habitual action.
+All known animals furnish us with examples of this.<a name="FNanchor_311_311" id="FNanchor_311_311"></a><a href="#Footnote_311_311" class="fnanchor">[311]</a> If anyone
+maintains that the especially powerful development of any organ has had
+nothing to do with its habitual use&mdash;that use has added nothing, and
+disuse detracted nothing from its efficiency, but that the organ has
+always been as we now see it from the creation of the particular species
+onwards&mdash;I would ask why cannot our domesticated ducks fly like wild
+ducks? I would also quote a multitude of examples of the effects of use
+and disuse upon our own organs, effects which, if the use and disuse
+were constant for many generations, would become much more marked.</p>
+
+<p>"A great number of facts show, as will be more fully insisted on, that
+when its will prompts an animal to this or that action, the organs which
+are to execute it receive an excess of nervous fluid, and this is the
+determinant cause of the movements necessary for the required action.
+Modifications acquired in this way eventually become permanent in the
+breed that has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> acquired them, and are transmitted to offspring, without
+the offspring's having itself gone through the processes of acquisition
+which were necessary in the case of the ancestor.<a name="FNanchor_312_312" id="FNanchor_312_312"></a><a href="#Footnote_312_312" class="fnanchor">[312]</a> Frequent crosses,
+however, with unmodified individuals, destroy the effect produced. It is
+only owing to the isolation of the races of man through geographical and
+other causes, that man himself presents so many varieties, each with a
+distinctive character.</p>
+
+<p>"A review of all existing classes, orders, genera, and species would
+show that their structure, organs, and faculties, are in all cases
+solely attributable to the surroundings to which each creature has been
+subjected by nature, and to the habits which individuals have been
+compelled to contract; and that they are not at all the result of a form
+originally bestowed, which has imposed certain habits upon the
+creature.<a name="FNanchor_313_313" id="FNanchor_313_313"></a><a href="#Footnote_313_313" class="fnanchor">[313]</a></p>
+
+<p>"It is unnecessary to multiply instances; the fact is simply this, that
+all animals have certain habits, and that their organization is always
+in perfect harmony with these habits.<a name="FNanchor_314_314" id="FNanchor_314_314"></a><a href="#Footnote_314_314" class="fnanchor">[314]</a> The conclusion hitherto
+accepted is that the Author of Nature, when he created animals, foresaw
+all the possible circumstances in which they would be placed, and gave
+an unchanging organism to each creature, in accordance with its future
+destiny. The conclusion, on the other hand, here maintained is that
+nature has evolved all existing forms of life successively, beginning
+with the simplest organisms and gradually proceeding to those which are
+more complete. Forms of life have spread themselves throughout all the
+habitable parts of the earth, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> each species has received its habits
+and corresponding modification of organs, from the influence of the
+surroundings in which it found itself placed.<a name="FNanchor_315_315" id="FNanchor_315_315"></a><a href="#Footnote_315_315" class="fnanchor">[315]</a></p>
+
+<p>"The first conclusion supposes an unvarying organism and unvarying
+conditions. The second, which is my theory (<i>la mienne propre</i>),
+supposes that each animal is capable of modifications which in the
+course of generations amount to a wide divergence of type.</p>
+
+<p>"If a single animal can be shown to have varied considerably under
+domestication, the first conclusion is proved to be inadmissible, and
+the second to be in conformity with the laws of nature."</p>
+
+<p>This is a milder version of Buffon's conclusion (see <i>ante</i>, pp. <a href="#Page_90">90</a>,
+<a href="#Page_91">91</a>). It is a little grating to read the words "la
+mienne propre," and to recall no mention of Buffon in the 'Philosophie
+Zoologique.'</p>
+
+<p>"Animal forms then are the result of conditions of life and of the
+habits engendered thereby. With new forms new faculties are developed,
+and thus nature has little by little evolved the existing
+differentiations of animal and vegetable life."<a name="FNanchor_316_316" id="FNanchor_316_316"></a><a href="#Footnote_316_316" class="fnanchor">[316]</a></p>
+
+<p>Lamarck makes no exception in man's favour to the rule of descent with
+modification. He supposes that a race of quadrumanous apes gradually
+acquired the upright position in walking, with a corresponding
+modification of the feet and facial angle. Such a race having become
+master of all the other animals, spread itself over all parts of the
+world that suited it. It hunted out the other higher races which were in
+a condition to dispute with it for enjoyment of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> world's
+productions, and drove them to take refuge in such places as it did not
+desire to occupy. It checked the increase of the races nearest itself,
+and kept them exiled in woods and desert places, so that their further
+development was arrested, while itself, able to spread in all
+directions, to multiply without opposition, and to lead a social life,
+it developed new requirements one after another, which urged it to
+industrial pursuits, and gradually perfected its capabilities.
+Eventually this pre-eminent race, having acquired absolute supremacy,
+came to be widely different from even the most perfect of the lower
+animals.</p>
+
+<p>"Certain apes approach man more nearly than any other animal approaches
+him; nevertheless, they are far inferior to him, both in bodily and
+mental capacity. Some of them frequently stand upright, but as they do
+not habitually maintain this attitude, their organization has not been
+sufficiently modified to prevent it from being irksome to them to stand
+for long together. They fall on all fours immediately at the approach of
+danger. This reveals their true origin.<a name="FNanchor_317_317" id="FNanchor_317_317"></a><a href="#Footnote_317_317" class="fnanchor">[317]</a></p>
+
+<p>"But is the upright position altogether natural, even to man? He uses it
+in moving from place to place, but still standing is a fatiguing
+position, and one which can only be maintained for a limited time, and
+by the aid of muscular contraction. The vertebrate column does not pass
+through the axis of the head so as to maintain it in like equilibrium
+with other limbs. The head, chest, stomach, and intestines weigh almost
+entirely on the anterior part of the vertebrate column, and this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> column
+itself is placed obliquely, so that, as M. Richerand has observed,
+continual watchfulness and muscular exertion are necessary to avoid the
+falls towards which the weight and disposition of our parts are
+continually inclining us. 'Children,' he remarks, 'have a constant
+tendency to assume the position of quadrupeds.'"<a name="FNanchor_318_318" id="FNanchor_318_318"></a><a href="#Footnote_318_318" class="fnanchor">[318]</a></p>
+
+<p>"Surely these facts should reveal man's origin as analogous to that of
+the other mammals, if his organization only be looked to. But the
+following consideration must be added. New wants, developed in societies
+which had become numerous, must have correspondingly multiplied the
+ideas of this dominant race, whose individuals must have therefore
+gradually felt the need of fuller communication with each other. Hence
+the necessity for increasing and varying the number of the signs
+suitable for mutual understanding. It is plain therefore that incessant
+efforts would be made in this direction.<a name="FNanchor_319_319" id="FNanchor_319_319"></a><a href="#Footnote_319_319" class="fnanchor">[319]</a></p>
+
+<p>"The lower animals, though often social, have been kept in too great
+subjection for any such development of power. They continue, therefore,
+stationary as regards their wants and ideas, very few of which need be
+communicated from one individual to another. A few movements of the
+body, a few simple cries and whistles, or inflexions of voice, would
+suffice for their purpose. With the dominant race, on the other hand,
+the continued multiplication of ideas which it was desirable to
+communicate rapidly, would exhaust the power of pantomimic gesture and
+of all possible<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> inflexions of the voice&mdash;therefore by a succession of
+efforts this race arrived at the utterance of articulate sounds. A few
+only would be at first made use of, and these would be supplemented by
+inflexions of the voice: presently they would increase in number,
+variety, and appropriateness, with the increase of needs and of the
+efforts made to speak. Habitual exercise would increase the power of the
+lips and tongue to articulate distinctly.</p>
+
+<p>"The diversity of language is due to geographical distribution, with
+consequent greater or less isolation of certain races, and corruption of
+the signs originally agreed upon for each idea. Man's own wants,
+therefore, will have achieved the whole result. They will have given
+rise to endeavour, and habitual use will have developed the organs of
+articulation."<a name="FNanchor_320_320" id="FNanchor_320_320"></a><a href="#Footnote_320_320" class="fnanchor">[320]</a></p>
+
+<p>How, let me ask again, is "the case of neuter insects" "demonstrative"
+against the "well-known" theory put forward in the foregoing chapter?</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_208_208" id="Footnote_208_208"></a><a href="#FNanchor_208_208"><span class="label">[208]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i., edited by M. Martins, 1873, pp.
+25, 26.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_209_209" id="Footnote_209_209"></a><a href="#FNanchor_209_209"><span class="label">[209]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.' tom. i. pp. 26, 27.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_210_210" id="Footnote_210_210"></a><a href="#FNanchor_210_210"><span class="label">[210]</span></a> Page 28.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_211_211" id="Footnote_211_211"></a><a href="#FNanchor_211_211"><span class="label">[211]</span></a> Pages 28-31.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_212_212" id="Footnote_212_212"></a><a href="#FNanchor_212_212"><span class="label">[212]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. pp. 34, 35.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_213_213" id="Footnote_213_213"></a><a href="#FNanchor_213_213"><span class="label">[213]</span></a> Page 42.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_214_214" id="Footnote_214_214"></a><a href="#FNanchor_214_214"><span class="label">[214]</span></a> Page 46.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_215_215" id="Footnote_215_215"></a><a href="#FNanchor_215_215"><span class="label">[215]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 50.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_216_216" id="Footnote_216_216"></a><a href="#FNanchor_216_216"><span class="label">[216]</span></a> Pages 50, 51.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_217_217" id="Footnote_217_217"></a><a href="#FNanchor_217_217"><span class="label">[217]</span></a> 'Origin of Species,' p. 395, ed. 1876.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_218_218" id="Footnote_218_218"></a><a href="#FNanchor_218_218"><span class="label">[218]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 61.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_219_219" id="Footnote_219_219"></a><a href="#FNanchor_219_219"><span class="label">[219]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 62.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_220_220" id="Footnote_220_220"></a><a href="#FNanchor_220_220"><span class="label">[220]</span></a> Page 63.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_221_221" id="Footnote_221_221"></a><a href="#FNanchor_221_221"><span class="label">[221]</span></a> Page 64.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_222_222" id="Footnote_222_222"></a><a href="#FNanchor_222_222"><span class="label">[222]</span></a> Page 65.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_223_223" id="Footnote_223_223"></a><a href="#FNanchor_223_223"><span class="label">[223]</span></a> Page 67.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_224_224" id="Footnote_224_224"></a><a href="#FNanchor_224_224"><span class="label">[224]</span></a> Chap. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_225_225" id="Footnote_225_225"></a><a href="#FNanchor_225_225"><span class="label">[225]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 72.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_226_226" id="Footnote_226_226"></a><a href="#FNanchor_226_226"><span class="label">[226]</span></a> Pages 71-73.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_227_227" id="Footnote_227_227"></a><a href="#FNanchor_227_227"><span class="label">[227]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 74, 75.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_228_228" id="Footnote_228_228"></a><a href="#FNanchor_228_228"><span class="label">[228]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. pp. 75-77.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_229_229" id="Footnote_229_229"></a><a href="#FNanchor_229_229"><span class="label">[229]</span></a> 'Origin of Species,' p. 104, ed. 1876.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_230_230" id="Footnote_230_230"></a><a href="#FNanchor_230_230"><span class="label">[230]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 79.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_231_231" id="Footnote_231_231"></a><a href="#FNanchor_231_231"><span class="label">[231]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. pp. 79, 80.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_232_232" id="Footnote_232_232"></a><a href="#FNanchor_232_232"><span class="label">[232]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 80.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_233_233" id="Footnote_233_233"></a><a href="#FNanchor_233_233"><span class="label">[233]</span></a> Page 80.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_234_234" id="Footnote_234_234"></a><a href="#FNanchor_234_234"><span class="label">[234]</span></a> Ed. 1876.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_235_235" id="Footnote_235_235"></a><a href="#FNanchor_235_235"><span class="label">[235]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 81.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_236_236" id="Footnote_236_236"></a><a href="#FNanchor_236_236"><span class="label">[236]</span></a> 'Origin of Species,' p. 241.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_237_237" id="Footnote_237_237"></a><a href="#FNanchor_237_237"><span class="label">[237]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' p. 82.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_238_238" id="Footnote_238_238"></a><a href="#FNanchor_238_238"><span class="label">[238]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 83.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_239_239" id="Footnote_239_239"></a><a href="#FNanchor_239_239"><span class="label">[239]</span></a> Pages 349-351.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_240_240" id="Footnote_240_240"></a><a href="#FNanchor_240_240"><span class="label">[240]</span></a> Page 84.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_241_241" id="Footnote_241_241"></a><a href="#FNanchor_241_241"><span class="label">[241]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 88.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_242_242" id="Footnote_242_242"></a><a href="#FNanchor_242_242"><span class="label">[242]</span></a> Page 90.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_243_243" id="Footnote_243_243"></a><a href="#FNanchor_243_243"><span class="label">[243]</span></a> 'Origin of Species,' p. 3.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_244_244" id="Footnote_244_244"></a><a href="#FNanchor_244_244"><span class="label">[244]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 94.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_245_245" id="Footnote_245_245"></a><a href="#FNanchor_245_245"><span class="label">[245]</span></a> Pages 95-96.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_246_246" id="Footnote_246_246"></a><a href="#FNanchor_246_246"><span class="label">[246]</span></a> Page 97.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_247_247" id="Footnote_247_247"></a><a href="#FNanchor_247_247"><span class="label">[247]</span></a> Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 98.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_248_248" id="Footnote_248_248"></a><a href="#FNanchor_248_248"><span class="label">[248]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 111.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_249_249" id="Footnote_249_249"></a><a href="#FNanchor_249_249"><span class="label">[249]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 112.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_250_250" id="Footnote_250_250"></a><a href="#FNanchor_250_250"><span class="label">[250]</span></a> See pp. <a href="#Page_227">227</a> and <a href="#Page_259">259</a> of this book.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_251_251" id="Footnote_251_251"></a><a href="#FNanchor_251_251"><span class="label">[251]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 113.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_252_252" id="Footnote_252_252"></a><a href="#FNanchor_252_252"><span class="label">[252]</span></a> Page 113.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_253_253" id="Footnote_253_253"></a><a href="#FNanchor_253_253"><span class="label">[253]</span></a> 'Phil Zool.,' tom. i. p. 113.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_254_254" id="Footnote_254_254"></a><a href="#FNanchor_254_254"><span class="label">[254]</span></a> This passage is rather obscure. I give it therefore in
+the original:&mdash;
+</p><p>
+"Ainsi les naturalistes ayant remarqu&eacute; que beaucoup d'esp&egrave;ces, certains
+genres, et m&ecirc;me quelques familles paraissent dans une sorte d'isolement,
+quant &agrave; leurs caract&egrave;res, plusieurs se sont imagin&eacute;s que les &ecirc;tres
+vivants, dans l'un ou l'autre r&egrave;gne, s'avoisinaient, ou s'&eacute;loignaient
+entre eux, relativement &agrave; leurs <i>rapports naturels</i>, dans une
+disposition semblable aux differents points d'une carte de g&eacute;ographie ou
+d'une mappemonde. Ils regardent les petites s&eacute;ries bien prononc&eacute;es qu'on
+a nomm&eacute;es familles naturelles, comme devant &ecirc;tre dispos&eacute;es entre elles
+de mani&egrave;re &agrave; former une r&eacute;ticulation. Cette id&eacute;e qui a paru sublime &agrave;
+quelques modernes, est &eacute;videmment une erreur, et, sans doute, elle se
+dissipera d&egrave;s qu'on aura des connaissances plus profondes et plus
+g&eacute;n&eacute;rales de l'organisation, et surtout lorsqu'on distinguera ce qui
+appartient &agrave; l'influence des lieux d'habitation et des habitudes
+contract&eacute;es, de ce qui r&eacute;sulte des progr&egrave;s plus ou moins avanc&eacute;s dans la
+composition ou le perfectionnement de l'organisation."&mdash;(p. 120).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_255_255" id="Footnote_255_255"></a><a href="#FNanchor_255_255"><span class="label">[255]</span></a> 'Origin of Species,' pp. 265, 266.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_256_256" id="Footnote_256_256"></a><a href="#FNanchor_256_256"><span class="label">[256]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 121.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_257_257" id="Footnote_257_257"></a><a href="#FNanchor_257_257"><span class="label">[257]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 122.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_258_258" id="Footnote_258_258"></a><a href="#FNanchor_258_258"><span class="label">[258]</span></a> 'Origin of Species,' pp. 122, 123.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_259_259" id="Footnote_259_259"></a><a href="#FNanchor_259_259"><span class="label">[259]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 123.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_260_260" id="Footnote_260_260"></a><a href="#FNanchor_260_260"><span class="label">[260]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 123.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_261_261" id="Footnote_261_261"></a><a href="#FNanchor_261_261"><span class="label">[261]</span></a> 'Origin of Species,' chap. xiv.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_262_262" id="Footnote_262_262"></a><a href="#FNanchor_262_262"><span class="label">[262]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 123.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_263_263" id="Footnote_263_263"></a><a href="#FNanchor_263_263"><span class="label">[263]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 140.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_264_264" id="Footnote_264_264"></a><a href="#FNanchor_264_264"><span class="label">[264]</span></a> Page 142.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_265_265" id="Footnote_265_265"></a><a href="#FNanchor_265_265"><span class="label">[265]</span></a> Page 143.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_266_266" id="Footnote_266_266"></a><a href="#FNanchor_266_266"><span class="label">[266]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 143.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_267_267" id="Footnote_267_267"></a><a href="#FNanchor_267_267"><span class="label">[267]</span></a> Page 144.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_268_268" id="Footnote_268_268"></a><a href="#FNanchor_268_268"><span class="label">[268]</span></a> Ibid.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_269_269" id="Footnote_269_269"></a><a href="#FNanchor_269_269"><span class="label">[269]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 145.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_270_270" id="Footnote_270_270"></a><a href="#FNanchor_270_270"><span class="label">[270]</span></a> Page 146.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_271_271" id="Footnote_271_271"></a><a href="#FNanchor_271_271"><span class="label">[271]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 221.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_272_272" id="Footnote_272_272"></a><a href="#FNanchor_272_272"><span class="label">[272]</span></a> Page 222.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_273_273" id="Footnote_273_273"></a><a href="#FNanchor_273_273"><span class="label">[273]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 223.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_274_274" id="Footnote_274_274"></a><a href="#FNanchor_274_274"><span class="label">[274]</span></a> Page 224.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_275_275" id="Footnote_275_275"></a><a href="#FNanchor_275_275"><span class="label">[275]</span></a> Page 223.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_276_276" id="Footnote_276_276"></a><a href="#FNanchor_276_276"><span class="label">[276]</span></a> Page 225.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_277_277" id="Footnote_277_277"></a><a href="#FNanchor_277_277"><span class="label">[277]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 225.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_278_278" id="Footnote_278_278"></a><a href="#FNanchor_278_278"><span class="label">[278]</span></a> Page 226.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_279_279" id="Footnote_279_279"></a><a href="#FNanchor_279_279"><span class="label">[279]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 228.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_280_280" id="Footnote_280_280"></a><a href="#FNanchor_280_280"><span class="label">[280]</span></a> See Buffon, 'Hist. Nat.,' tom. v. pp. 196, 197, and Supp.
+tom. v. pp. 250-253.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_281_281" id="Footnote_281_281"></a><a href="#FNanchor_281_281"><span class="label">[281]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 229.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_282_282" id="Footnote_282_282"></a><a href="#FNanchor_282_282"><span class="label">[282]</span></a> 'Hist. Nat.,' tom. xi. p. 290.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_283_283" id="Footnote_283_283"></a><a href="#FNanchor_283_283"><span class="label">[283]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 231.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_284_284" id="Footnote_284_284"></a><a href="#FNanchor_284_284"><span class="label">[284]</span></a> Page 231. See Dr. Darwin's note on <i>Trapa natans</i>,
+'Botanic Garden,' part ii. canto 4, l. 204.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_285_285" id="Footnote_285_285"></a><a href="#FNanchor_285_285"><span class="label">[285]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 232.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_286_286" id="Footnote_286_286"></a><a href="#FNanchor_286_286"><span class="label">[286]</span></a> Page 233. See Buffon on Climate, tom. ix., 'The Animals
+of the Old and New Worlds.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_287_287" id="Footnote_287_287"></a><a href="#FNanchor_287_287"><span class="label">[287]</span></a> 'Origin of Species,' p. 233, ed. 1876.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_288_288" id="Footnote_288_288"></a><a href="#FNanchor_288_288"><span class="label">[288]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p 234.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_289_289" id="Footnote_289_289"></a><a href="#FNanchor_289_289"><span class="label">[289]</span></a> Page 235.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_290_290" id="Footnote_290_290"></a><a href="#FNanchor_290_290"><span class="label">[290]</span></a> Page 236.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_291_291" id="Footnote_291_291"></a><a href="#FNanchor_291_291"><span class="label">[291]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 237.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_292_292" id="Footnote_292_292"></a><a href="#FNanchor_292_292"><span class="label">[292]</span></a> Page 238.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_293_293" id="Footnote_293_293"></a><a href="#FNanchor_293_293"><span class="label">[293]</span></a> See <i>ante</i>, pp. 220-228.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_294_294" id="Footnote_294_294"></a><a href="#FNanchor_294_294"><span class="label">[294]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 239.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_295_295" id="Footnote_295_295"></a><a href="#FNanchor_295_295"><span class="label">[295]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p 240.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_296_296" id="Footnote_296_296"></a><a href="#FNanchor_296_296"><span class="label">[296]</span></a> Page 241.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_297_297" id="Footnote_297_297"></a><a href="#FNanchor_297_297"><span class="label">[297]</span></a> Page 245.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_298_298" id="Footnote_298_298"></a><a href="#FNanchor_298_298"><span class="label">[298]</span></a> 'Animals and Plants under Domestication,' vol. i. p. 467,
+&amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_299_299" id="Footnote_299_299"></a><a href="#FNanchor_299_299"><span class="label">[299]</span></a> See frontispiece to Professor Mivart's 'Genesis of
+Species.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_300_300" id="Footnote_300_300"></a><a href="#FNanchor_300_300"><span class="label">[300]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 247.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_301_301" id="Footnote_301_301"></a><a href="#FNanchor_301_301"><span class="label">[301]</span></a> Page 248.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_302_302" id="Footnote_302_302"></a><a href="#FNanchor_302_302"><span class="label">[302]</span></a> 'Nat. Theol.,' vol. xii., end of &sect; viii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_303_303" id="Footnote_303_303"></a><a href="#FNanchor_303_303"><span class="label">[303]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 249.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_304_304" id="Footnote_304_304"></a><a href="#FNanchor_304_304"><span class="label">[304]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 250.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_305_305" id="Footnote_305_305"></a><a href="#FNanchor_305_305"><span class="label">[305]</span></a> Page 250.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_306_306" id="Footnote_306_306"></a><a href="#FNanchor_306_306"><span class="label">[306]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 251.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_307_307" id="Footnote_307_307"></a><a href="#FNanchor_307_307"><span class="label">[307]</span></a> Page 252.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_308_308" id="Footnote_308_308"></a><a href="#FNanchor_308_308"><span class="label">[308]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 253.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_309_309" id="Footnote_309_309"></a><a href="#FNanchor_309_309"><span class="label">[309]</span></a> Page 254.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_310_310" id="Footnote_310_310"></a><a href="#FNanchor_310_310"><span class="label">[310]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 256.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_311_311" id="Footnote_311_311"></a><a href="#FNanchor_311_311"><span class="label">[311]</span></a> Page 257.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_312_312" id="Footnote_312_312"></a><a href="#FNanchor_312_312"><span class="label">[312]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 259.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_313_313" id="Footnote_313_313"></a><a href="#FNanchor_313_313"><span class="label">[313]</span></a> Page 260.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_314_314" id="Footnote_314_314"></a><a href="#FNanchor_314_314"><span class="label">[314]</span></a> Page 263.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_315_315" id="Footnote_315_315"></a><a href="#FNanchor_315_315"><span class="label">[315]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 263.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_316_316" id="Footnote_316_316"></a><a href="#FNanchor_316_316"><span class="label">[316]</span></a> Page 265.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_317_317" id="Footnote_317_317"></a><a href="#FNanchor_317_317"><span class="label">[317]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 343.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_318_318" id="Footnote_318_318"></a><a href="#FNanchor_318_318"><span class="label">[318]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 343.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_319_319" id="Footnote_319_319"></a><a href="#FNanchor_319_319"><span class="label">[319]</span></a> Page 346.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_320_320" id="Footnote_320_320"></a><a href="#FNanchor_320_320"><span class="label">[320]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 347.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span></p>
+<p class="subhead1"><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII.</p>
+
+<p class="subhead3">MR. PATRICK MATTHEW, MM. &Eacute;TIENNE AND ISIDORE GEOFFROY ST. HILAIRE, AND
+MR. HERBERT SPENCER.</p>
+
+
+<p>The same complaint must be made against Mr. Matthew's excellent survey
+of the theory of evolution, as against Dr. Erasmus Darwin's original
+exposition of the same theory, namely, that it is too short. It may be
+very true that brevity is the soul of wit, but the leaders of science
+will generally succeed in burking new-born wit, unless the brevity of
+its soul is found compatible with a body of some bulk.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Darwin writes thus concerning Mr. Matthew in the historical sketch
+to which I have already more than once referred.</p>
+
+<p>"In 1831 Mr. Patrick Matthew published his work on 'Naval Timber and
+Arboriculture,' in which he gives precisely the same view on the origin
+of species as that (presently to be alluded to) propounded by Mr.
+Wallace and myself in the 'Linnean Journal,' and as that enlarged in the
+present volume. Unfortunately the view was given by Mr. Matthew very
+briefly, in scattered passages in an appendix to a work on a different
+subject, so that it remained unnoticed until Mr. Matthew himself drew
+attention to it in the 'Gardener's Chronicle' for April 7, 1860. The
+differences of Mr. Matthew's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> view from mine are not of much importance;
+he seems to consider that the world was nearly depopulated at successive
+periods, and then re-stocked, and he gives as an alternative, that new
+forms may be generated 'without the presence of any mould or germ of
+former aggregates.' I am not sure that I understand some passages; but
+it seems that he attributes much influence to the direct action of the
+conditions of life. He clearly saw, however, the full force of the
+principle of natural selection."<a name="FNanchor_321_321" id="FNanchor_321_321"></a><a href="#Footnote_321_321" class="fnanchor">[321]</a></p>
+
+<p>Nothing could well be more misleading. If Mr. Matthew's view of the
+origin of species is "precisely the same as that" propounded by Mr.
+Darwin, it is hard to see how Mr. Darwin can call those of Lamarck and
+Dr. Erasmus Darwin "erroneous"; for Mr. Matthew's is nothing but an
+excellent and well-digested summary of the conclusions arrived at by
+these two writers and by Buffon. If, again, Mr. Darwin is correct in
+saying that Mr. Matthew "clearly saw the full force of the principle of
+natural selection," he condemns the view he has himself taken of it in
+his 'Origin of Species,' for Mr. Darwin has assigned a far more
+important and very different effect to the fact that the fittest
+commonly survive in the struggle for existence, than Mr. Matthew has
+done. Mr. Matthew sees a cause underlying all variations; he takes the
+most teleological or purposive view of organism that has been taken by
+any writer (not a theologian) except myself, while Mr. Darwin's view, if
+not the least teleological, is certainly nearly so, and his confession
+of inability to detect any<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> general cause underlying variations, leaves,
+as will appear presently, less than common room for ambiguity. Here are
+Mr. Matthew's own words:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"There is a law universal in nature, tending to render every
+reproductive being the best possibly suited to the condition that its
+kind, or that organized matter is susceptible of, and which appears
+intended to model the physical and mental or instinctive, powers to
+their highest perfection, and to continue them so. This law sustains the
+lion in his strength, the hare in her swiftness, and the fox in his
+wiles. As nature in all her modifications of life has a power of
+increase far beyond what is needed to supply the place of what falls by
+Time's decay, those individuals who possess not the requisite strength,
+swiftness, hardihood, or cunning, fall prematurely without
+reproducing&mdash;either a prey to their natural devourers, or sinking under
+disease, generally induced by want of nourishment, their place being
+occupied by the more perfect of their own kind, who are pressing on the
+means of existence.</p>
+
+<p>"Throughout this volume, we have felt considerable inconvenience from
+the adopted dogmatical classification of plants, and have all along been
+floundering between species and variety, which certainly under culture
+soften into each other. A particular conformity, each after its own
+kind, when in a state of nature, termed species, no doubt exists to a
+considerable degree. This conformity has existed during the last forty
+centuries; geologists discover a like particular conformity&mdash;fossil
+species&mdash;through the deep deposition of each great epoch; but they also
+discover an almost complete difference to exist<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> between the species or
+stamp of life of one epoch from that of every other. We are therefore
+led to admit either a repeated miraculous conception, or <i>a power of
+change under change of circumstances</i> to belong to living organized
+matter, or rather to the congeries of inferior life which appears to
+form superior." (By this I suppose Mr. Matthew to imply his assent to
+the theory, that our personality or individuality is but as it were "the
+consensus, or full flowing river of a vast number of subordinate
+individualities or personalities, each one of which is a living being
+with thoughts and wishes of its own.") "The derangements and changes in
+organized existence, induced by a change of circumstances from the
+interference of man, afford us proof of the plastic quality of superior
+life; and the likelihood that circumstances have been very different in
+the different epochs, though steady in each, tend strongly to heighten
+the probability of the latter theory.</p>
+
+<p>"When we view the immense calcareous and bituminous formations,
+principally from the waters and atmosphere, and consider the oxidations
+and depositions which have taken place, either gradually or during some
+of the great convulsions, it appears at least probable that the liquid
+elements containing life have varied considerably at different times in
+composition and weight; that our atmosphere has contained a much greater
+proportion of carbonic acid or oxygen; and our waters, aided by excess
+of carbonic acid, and greater heat resulting from greater density of
+atmosphere, have contained a greater quantity of lime, and other mineral
+solutions. Is the inference, then, unphilosophic that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> living things
+which are proved to have <i>a circumstance-suiting power</i> (a very slight
+change of circumstance by culture inducing a corresponding change of
+character), may have gradually accommodated themselves to the variations
+of the elements containing them, and without new creation, have
+presented the diverging changeable phenomena of past and present
+organized existence?</p>
+
+<p>"The destructive liquid currents before which the hardest mountains have
+been swept and comminuted into gravel, sand, and mud, which intervened
+between and divided these epochs, probably extending over the whole
+surface of the globe and destroying nearly all living things, must have
+reduced existence so much that an unoccupied field would be formed for
+new diverging ramifications of life, which from the connected sexual
+system of vegetables, and the natural instinct of animals to herd and
+combine with their own kind, would fall into specific groups&mdash;these
+remnants in the course of time moulding and accommodating their being
+anew to the change of circumstances, and to every possible means of
+subsistence&mdash;and the millions of ages of regularity which appear to have
+followed between the epochs, probably after this accommodation was
+completed, affording fossil deposit of regular specific character.</p>
+
+<p class="subhead2a">. . . . . . . . . . .</p>
+
+<p>"In endeavouring to trace ... the principle of these changes of fashion
+which have taken place in the domiciles of life the following questions
+occur: Do they arise from admixture of species nearly allied producing
+intermediate species? Are they the diverging ramifications<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span> of the
+living principle under modification of circumstance? or have they
+resulted from the combined agency of both?</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Is there only one living principle? Does organized existence, and
+perhaps all material existence, consist of one Proteus principle of
+life</i> capable of gradual circumstance-suited modifications and
+aggregations without bound, under the solvent or motion-giving principle
+of heat or light? There is more beauty and unity of design in this
+continual balancing of life to circumstance, and greater conformity to
+those dispositions of nature that are manifest to us, than in total
+destruction and new creation. It is improbable that much of this
+diversification is owing to commixture of species nearly allied; all
+change by this appears very limited and confined within the bounds of
+what is called species; the progeny of the same parents under great
+difference of circumstance, might in several generations even become
+distinct species, incapable of co-reproduction.</p>
+
+<p>"The self-regulating adaptive disposition of organized life may, in
+part, be traced to the extreme fecundity of nature, who, as before
+stated, has in all the varieties of her offspring a prolific power much
+beyond (in many cases a thousand fold) what is necessary to fill up the
+vacancies caused by senile decay. As the field of existence is limited
+and preoccupied, it is only the hardier, more robust, better suited to
+circumstance individuals, who are able to struggle forward to maturity,
+these inhabiting only the situations to which they have <i>superior
+adaptation and greater power of occupancy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span> than any other kind; the
+weaker and less circumstance-suited being prematurely destroyed</i>. This
+principle is in constant action; it regulates the colour, the figure,
+the capacities, and instincts; those individuals in each species whose
+colour and covering are best suited to concealment or protection from
+enemies, or defence from inclemencies and vicissitudes of climate, whose
+figure is best accommodated to health, strength, defence, and support;
+whose capacities and instincts can best regulate the physical energies
+to self-advantage according to circumstances&mdash;in such immense waste of
+primary and youthful life those only come forward to maturity from the
+strict ordeal by which nature tests their adaptation to her standard of
+perfection and fitness to continue their kind by reproduction.</p>
+
+<p>"From the unremitting operation of this law acting in concert with the
+tendency which the progeny have to take the more particular qualities of
+the parents, together with the connected sexual system in vegetables and
+instinctive limitation to its own kind in animals, a considerable
+uniformity of figure, colour, and character is induced constituting
+species; the breed gradually acquiring the very best possible adaptation
+of these to its condition which it is susceptible of, and when
+alteration of circumstance occurs, thus changing in character to suit
+these, as far as its nature is susceptible of change.</p>
+
+<p>"This circumstance-adaptive law operating upon the slight but continued
+natural disposition to sport in the progeny (seedling variety) <i>does not
+preclude the supposed influence which volition or sensation may have had
+over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> the configuration of the body</i>. To examine into the disposition to
+sport in the progeny, even when there is only one parent as in many
+vegetables, and to investigate how much variation is modified by the
+mind or nervous sensation of the parents, or of the living thing itself
+during its progress to maturity; how far it depends upon external
+circumstance, and how far on the will, irritability, and muscular
+exertion, is open to examination and experiment. In the first place, we
+ought to examine its dependency upon the preceding links of the
+particular chain of life, variety being often merely types or
+approximations of former parentage; thence the variation of the family
+as well as of the individual must be embraced by our experiments.</p>
+
+<p>"This continuation of family type, not broken by casual particular
+aberration, is mental as well as corporeal, and is exemplified in many
+of the dispositions or instincts of particular races of men. <i>These
+innate or continuous ideas or habits seem proportionally greater in the
+insect tribes, and in those especially of shorter revolution; and
+forming an abiding memory, may resolve much of the enigma of instinct,
+and the foreknowledge which these tribes have of what is necessary to
+completing their round of life, reducing this to knowledge or
+impressions and habits acquired by a long experience.</i></p>
+
+<p>"This greater continuity of existence, or rather continuity of
+perceptions and impressions in insects, is highly probable; <i>it is even
+difficult in some to ascertain the particular steps when each individual
+commences</i>, under the different phases of egg, larva, pupa, or if much
+consciousness of individuality exists. The continuation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> of reproduction
+for several generations by the females alone in some of these tribes,
+<i>tends to the probability of the greater continuity of existence; and
+the subdivisions of life by cuttings (even in animal life), at any rate,
+must stagger the advocate of individuality</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Among the millions of specific varieties of living things which occupy
+the humid portions of the surface of our planet, as far back as can be
+traced, there does not appear, with the exception of man, to have been
+any particular engrossing race, but a pretty fair balance of power of
+occupancy&mdash;or rather most wonderful variation of circumstance parallel
+to the nature of every species, <i>as if circumstance and species had
+grown up together</i>. There are, indeed, several races which have
+threatened ascendancy in some particular regions; but it is man alone
+from whom any general imminent danger to the existence of his brethren
+is to be dreaded.</p>
+
+<p>"As far back as history reaches, man had already had considerable
+influence, and had made encroachments upon his fellow denizens, probably
+occasioning the destruction of many species, and the production and
+continuation of a number of varieties, and even species, which he found
+more suited to supply his wants, but which from the infirmity of their
+condition&mdash;<i>not having undergone selection by the law of nature</i>, of
+which we have spoken&mdash;cannot maintain their ground without culture and
+protection.</p>
+
+<p>"It is only however in the present age that man has begun to reap the
+fruits of his tedious education, and has proven how much 'knowledge is
+power.' He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> has now acquired a dominion over the material world, and a
+consequent power of increase, so as to render it probable that the whole
+surface of the earth may soon be overrun by this engrossing anomaly, to
+the annihilation of every wonderful and beautiful variety of animal
+existence which does not administer to his wants, principally as
+laboratories of preparation to befit cruder elemental matter for
+assimilation by his organs.</p>
+
+<p class="subhead2a">. . . . . . . . . . .</p>
+
+<p>"The consequences are being now developed of our deplorable ignorance
+of, or inattention to, one of the most evident traits of natural
+history&mdash;that vegetables, as well as animals, are generally liable to an
+almost unlimited diversification, regulated by climate, soil,
+nourishment, and new commixture of already-formed varieties. In those
+with which man is most intimate, and where his agency in throwing them
+from their natural locality and disposition has brought out this power
+of diversification in stronger shades, it has been forced upon his
+notice, as in man himself, in the dog, horse, cow, sheep, poultry,&mdash;in
+the apple, pear, plum, gooseberry, potato, pea, which sport in infinite
+varieties, differing considerably in size, colour, taste, firmness of
+texture, period of growth, almost in every recognizable quality. In all
+these kinds man is influential in preventing deterioration, by careful
+selection of the largest or most valuable as breeders."<a name="FNanchor_322_322" id="FNanchor_322_322"></a><a href="#Footnote_322_322" class="fnanchor">[322]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center padtop"><i>&Eacute;tienne and Isidore Geoffroy.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Both Cuvier and &Eacute;tienne Geoffroy," says Isidore Geoffroy, "had early
+perceived the philosophical importance of a question (evolution) which
+must be admitted as&mdash;with that of unity of composition&mdash;the greatest in
+natural history. We find them laying it down in the year 1795 in one of
+their joint 'Memoirs' (on the Orangs), in the very plainest terms, in
+the following question, 'Must we see,' they inquire, 'what we commonly
+call species, as the modified descendants of the same original form?'</p>
+
+<p>"Both were at that time doubtful. Some years afterwards Cuvier not only
+answered this question in the negative, but declared, and pretended to
+prove, that the same forms have been perpetuated from the beginning of
+things. Lamarck, his antagonist <i>par excellence</i> on this point,
+maintained the contrary position with no less distinctness, showing that
+living beings are unceasingly variable with change of their
+surroundings, and giving with some boldness a zoological genesis in
+conformity with this doctrine.</p>
+
+<p>"Geoffroy St. Hilaire had long pondered over this difficult subject. The
+doctrine which in his old age he so firmly defended, does not seem to
+have been conceived by him till after he had completed his 'Philosophie
+Anatomique,' and except through lectures delivered orally to the museum
+and the faculty, it was not published till 1828; nor again in the work
+then published do we find his theory in its neatest expression and
+fullest development."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire tells us in a note that the work referred
+to as first putting his father's views before the public in a printed
+form, was a report to the Academy of Sciences on a memoir by M. Roulin;
+but that before this report some indications of them are to be found in
+a paper on the Gavials, published in 1825. Their best rendering,
+however, and fullest development is in several memoirs, published in
+succession, between the years 1828 and 1837.</p>
+
+<p>"This doctrine," he continues, "is diametrically opposed to that of
+Cuvier, and is not entirely the same as Lamarck's. Geoffroy St. Hilaire
+refutes the one, he restrains and corrects the other. Cuvier, according
+to him, sums up against the facts, while Lamarck goes further than they
+will bear him out. Essentially however on questions of this nature he is
+a follower of Lamarck, and took pleasure on several occasions in
+describing himself as the disciple of his illustrious <i>confr&egrave;re</i>."<a name="FNanchor_323_323" id="FNanchor_323_323"></a><a href="#Footnote_323_323" class="fnanchor">[323]</a></p>
+
+<p>I have been unable to detect any substantial difference of opinion
+between Geoffroy St. Hilaire and Lamarck, except that the first
+maintained that a line must be drawn somewhere&mdash;and did not draw
+it&mdash;while the latter said that no line could be drawn, and therefore
+drew none. Mr. Darwin is quite correct in saying that Geoffroy St.
+Hilaire "relied chiefly on the conditions of life, or the 'monde
+ambiant,' as the cause of change." But this is only Lamarck over again,
+for though Lamarck attributes variation directly to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span> change of habits in
+the creature, he is almost wearisome in his insistence on the fact that
+the habit will not change, unless the conditions of life also do so.
+With both writers then it is change in the relative positions of the
+exterior circumstances, and of the organism, which results in variation,
+and finally in specific modification.</p>
+
+<p>Here is another sketch of &Eacute;tienne Geoffroy, also by his son Isidore.</p>
+
+<p>In 1795, while Lamarck was still a believer in immutability, &Eacute;tienne
+Geoffroy St. Hilaire "had ventured to say that species might well be
+'degenerations from a single type,'" but, though he never lost sight of
+the question, he waited more than a quarter of a century before passing
+from meditation to action. "He at length put forward his opinion in
+1825, he returned to it, but still briefly, in 1828 and 1829, and did
+not set himself to develop and establish it till the year 1831&mdash;the year
+following the memorable discussion in the Academy, on the unity of
+organic composition."<a name="FNanchor_324_324" id="FNanchor_324_324"></a><a href="#Footnote_324_324" class="fnanchor">[324]</a></p>
+
+<p>"If," says his son, "he began by paying homage to his illustrious
+precursor, and by laying it down as a general axiom, that there is no
+such thing as fixity in nature, and especially in animated nature, he
+follows this adhesion to the general doctrine of variability by a
+dissent which goes to the very heart of the matter. And this dissent
+becomes deeper and deeper in his later works. Not only is Geoffroy St.
+Hilaire at pains to deny the unlimited extension of variability which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span>
+is the foundation of the Lamarckian system, but he moreover and
+particularly declines to explain those degenerations which he admits as
+possible, by changes of action and habit on the part of the creature
+varying&mdash;Lamarck's favourite hypothesis, which he laboured to
+demonstrate without even succeeding in making it appear probable."<a name="FNanchor_325_325" id="FNanchor_325_325"></a><a href="#Footnote_325_325" class="fnanchor">[325]</a></p>
+
+<p>Isidore Geoffroy then declares that his father, "though chronologically
+a follower of Lamarck, should be ranked philosophically as having
+continued the work of Buffon, to whom all his differences of opinion
+with Lamarck serve to bring him nearer."<a name="FNanchor_326_326" id="FNanchor_326_326"></a><a href="#Footnote_326_326" class="fnanchor">[326]</a> If he had understood
+Buffon he would not have said so.</p>
+
+<p>His conclusions are thus summed up:&mdash;"Geoffroy St. Hilaire maintains
+that species are variable if the environment varies in character;
+differences, then, more or less considerable according to the power of
+the modifying causes <i>may have</i> been produced in the course of time, and
+the living forms of to-day <i>may be</i> the descendants of more ancient
+forms."<a name="FNanchor_327_327" id="FNanchor_327_327"></a><a href="#Footnote_327_327" class="fnanchor">[327]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is not easy to see that much weight should be attached to Geoffroy
+St. Hilaire's opinion. He seems to have been a person of hesitating
+temperament, under an impression that there was an opening just then
+through which a judicious trimmer might pass himself in among men of
+greater power. If his son has described his teaching correctly, it
+amounts practically to a <i>bon&acirc; fide</i> endorsement of what Buffon can only
+be considered to have pretended to believe. The same objection that must
+be fatal to the view pretended by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span> Buffon, is so in like manner to those
+put forward seriously of both the Geoffroys&mdash;for Isidore Geoffroy
+followed his father, but leant a little more openly towards Lamarck. He
+writes:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The characters of species are neither absolutely fixed, as has been
+maintained by some; nor yet, still more, indefinitely variable as
+according to others. They are fixed for each species as long as that
+species continues to reproduce itself in an unchanged environment; but
+they become modified if the environment changes."<a name="FNanchor_328_328" id="FNanchor_328_328"></a><a href="#Footnote_328_328" class="fnanchor">[328]</a></p>
+
+<p>This is all that Lamarck himself would expect, as no one could be more
+fully aware than M. Geoffroy, who, however, admits that degeneration may
+extend to generic differences.<a name="FNanchor_329_329" id="FNanchor_329_329"></a><a href="#Footnote_329_329" class="fnanchor">[329]</a></p>
+
+<p>I have been unable to find in M. Isidore Geoffroy's work anything like a
+refutation of Lamarck's contention that the modifications in animals and
+plants are due to the needs and wishes of the animals and plants
+themselves; on the contrary, to some extent he countenances this view
+himself, for he says, "hence arise notable differences of habitation and
+climate, and these in their turn induce secondary differences in diet
+<i>and even in habits</i>."<a name="FNanchor_330_330" id="FNanchor_330_330"></a><a href="#Footnote_330_330" class="fnanchor">[330]</a> From which it must follow, though I cannot
+find it said expressly, that the author attributes modification in some
+measure to changed habits, and therefore to the changed desires from
+which the change of habits has arisen; but in the main he appears<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span> to
+refer modification to the direct action of a changed environment.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center padtop"><i>Mr. Herbert Spencer.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Those who cavalierly reject the theory of Lamarck and his followers as
+not adequately supported by facts," wrote Mr. Herbert Spencer,<a name="FNanchor_331_331" id="FNanchor_331_331"></a><a href="#Footnote_331_331" class="fnanchor">[331]</a>
+"seem quite to forget that their own theory is supported by no facts at
+all"&mdash;inasmuch as no one pretends to have seen an act of direct
+creation. Mr. Spencer points out that, according to the best
+authorities, there are some 320,000 species of plants now existing, and
+about 2,000,000 species of animals, including insects, and that if the
+extinct forms which have successively appeared and disappeared be added
+to these, there cannot have existed in all less than some ten million
+species. "Which," asks Mr. Spencer, "is the most rational theory about
+these ten millions of species? Is it most likely that there have been
+ten millions of special creations? or, is it most likely that by
+continual modification <i>due to change of circumstances</i>, ten millions of
+varieties may have been produced as varieties are being produced still?"</p>
+
+<p class="subhead2a">. . . . . . . . . . .</p>
+
+<p>"Even could the supporters of the development hypothesis merely show
+that the production of species by the process of modification is
+conceivable, they would be in a better position than their opponents.
+But they can do much more than this; they can show that the process of
+modification has effected and is effecting great changes in all
+organisms, subject to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span> modifying influences ... they can show that any
+existing species&mdash;animal or vegetable&mdash;when placed under conditions
+different from its previous ones, <i>immediately begins to undergo certain
+changes of structure</i> fitting it for the new conditions. They can show
+that in successive generations these changes continue until ultimately
+the new conditions become the natural ones. They can show that in
+cultivated plants and domesticated animals, and in the several races of
+men, these changes have uniformly taken place. They can show that the
+degrees of difference, so produced, are often, as in dogs, greater than
+those on which distinctions of species are in other cases founded. They
+can show that it is a matter of dispute whether some of these modified
+forms <i>are</i> varieties or modified species. They can show too that the
+changes daily taking place in ourselves; the facility that attends long
+practice, and the loss of aptitude that begins when practice ceases; the
+strengthening of passions habitually gratified, and the weakening of
+those habitually curbed; the development of every faculty, bodily, moral
+or intellectual, according to the use made of it, are all explicable on
+this same principle. And thus they can show that throughout all organic
+nature there <i>is</i> at work a modifying influence of the kind they assign
+as the cause of these specific differences, an influence which, though
+slow in its action, does in time, if the circumstances demand it,
+produce marked changes; an influence which, to all appearance, would
+produce in the millions of years, and under the great varieties of
+condition which geological records imply, any amount of change."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This leaves nothing to be desired. It is Buffon, Dr. Darwin, and
+Lamarck, well expressed. Those were the days before "Natural Selection"
+had been discharged into the waters of the evolution controversy, like
+the secretion of a cuttle fish. Changed circumstances immediately induce
+changed habits, and hence a changed use of some organs, and disuse of
+others: as a consequence of this, organs and instincts become changed,
+"and these changes continue in successive generations, until ultimately
+the new conditions become the natural ones." This is the whole theory of
+"development," "evolution," or "descent with modification." Volumes may
+be written to adduce the details which warrant us in accepting it, and
+to explain the causes which have brought it about, but I fail to see how
+anything essential can be added to the theory itself, which is here so
+well supported by Mr. Spencer, and which is exactly as Lamarck left it.
+All that remains is to have a clear conception of the oneness of
+personality between parents and offspring, of the eternity, and latency,
+of memory, and of the unconsciousness with which habitual actions are
+repeated, which last point, indeed, Mr. Spencer has himself touched
+upon.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Spencer continues&mdash;"That by any series of changes a zoophyte should
+ever become a mammal, seems to those who are not familiar with zoology,
+and who have not seen how clear becomes the relationship between the
+simplest and the most complex forms, when all intermediate forms are
+examined, a very grotesque notion ... they never realize the fact that
+by small increments of modification, any amount of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> modification may in
+time be generated. That surprise which they feel on finding one whom
+they last saw as a boy, grown into a man, becomes incredulity when the
+degree of change is greater. Nevertheless, abundant instances are at
+hand of the mode in which we may pass to the most diverse forms by
+insensible gradations."</p>
+
+<p>Nothing can be more satisfactory and straightforward. I will make one
+more quotation from this excellent article:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"But the blindness of those who think it absurd to suppose that complex
+organic forms may have arisen by successive modifications out of simple
+ones, becomes astonishing when we remember that complex organic forms
+are daily being thus produced. A tree differs from a seed immeasurably
+in every respect&mdash;in bulk, in structure, in colour, in form, in specific
+gravity, in chemical composition&mdash;differs so greatly that no visible
+resemblance of any kind can be pointed out between them. Yet is the one
+changed in the course of a few years into the other&mdash;changed so
+gradually that at no moment can it be said, 'Now the seed ceases to be,
+and the tree exists.' What can be more widely contrasted than a
+newly-born child, and the small, semi-transparent gelatinous spherule
+constituting the human ovum? The infant is so complex in structure that
+a cyclop&aelig;dia is needed to describe its constituent parts. The germinal
+vesicle is so simple, that a line will contain all that can be said of
+it. Nevertheless, a few months suffices to develop the one out of the
+other, and that too by a series of modifications so small, that were
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span> embryo examined at successive minutes, not even a microscope would
+disclose any sensible changes. That the uneducated and ill-educated
+should think the hypothesis that all races of beings, man inclusive, may
+in process of time have been evolved from the simplest monad a ludicrous
+one is not to be wondered at. But for the physiologist, who knows that
+every individual being <i>is</i> so evolved&mdash;who knows further that in their
+earliest condition the germs of all plants and animals whatsoever are so
+similar, 'that there is no appreciable distinction among them which
+would enable it to be determined whether a particular molecule is the
+germ of a conferva or of an oak, of a zoophyte or of a man'<a name="FNanchor_332_332" id="FNanchor_332_332"></a><a href="#Footnote_332_332" class="fnanchor">[332]</a>&mdash;for
+him to make a difficulty of the matter is inexcusable. Surely, if a
+single structureless cell may, when subjected to certain influences,
+become a man in the space of twenty years, there is nothing absurd in
+the hypothesis that under certain other influences a cell may, in the
+course of millions of years, give origin to the human race. The two
+processes are generically the same, and differ only in length and
+complexity."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The very important extract from Professor Hering's lecture should
+perhaps have been placed here. The reader will, however, find it on page
+<a href="#Page_199">199</a>.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_321_321" id="Footnote_321_321"></a><a href="#FNanchor_321_321"><span class="label">[321]</span></a> 'Origin of Species,' Hist. Sketch, p. xvi.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_322_322" id="Footnote_322_322"></a><a href="#FNanchor_322_322"><span class="label">[322]</span></a> See 'Naval Timber and Arboriculture,' by Patrick Matthew,
+published by Adam and C. Black, Edinburgh, and Longmans and Co., London,
+1831, pp. 364, 365, 381-388, and also 106-108, 'Gardeners' Chronicle,'
+April 7, 1860.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_323_323" id="Footnote_323_323"></a><a href="#FNanchor_323_323"><span class="label">[323]</span></a> 'Vie et Doctrine Scientifique de Geoffroy &Eacute;tienne St.
+Hilaire,' Paris, Strasbourg, 1847, pp. 344-346.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_324_324" id="Footnote_324_324"></a><a href="#FNanchor_324_324"><span class="label">[324]</span></a> 'Hist. Nat. G&eacute;n.,' tom. ii. 413.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_325_325" id="Footnote_325_325"></a><a href="#FNanchor_325_325"><span class="label">[325]</span></a> 'Hist. Nat. G&eacute;n.,' tom. ii. p. 415.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_326_326" id="Footnote_326_326"></a><a href="#FNanchor_326_326"><span class="label">[326]</span></a> Ibid.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_327_327" id="Footnote_327_327"></a><a href="#FNanchor_327_327"><span class="label">[327]</span></a> Ibid. p. 421.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_328_328" id="Footnote_328_328"></a><a href="#FNanchor_328_328"><span class="label">[328]</span></a> 'Hist. Nat. G&eacute;n.,' vol. ii. p. 431, 1859.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_329_329" id="Footnote_329_329"></a><a href="#FNanchor_329_329"><span class="label">[329]</span></a> 'Origin of Species,' Hist. Sketch, p. xix.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_330_330" id="Footnote_330_330"></a><a href="#FNanchor_330_330"><span class="label">[330]</span></a> 'Hist. Nat. G&eacute;n.,' vol. ii. p. 432.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_331_331" id="Footnote_331_331"></a><a href="#FNanchor_331_331"><span class="label">[331]</span></a> See 'The Leader,' March 20, 1852, "The Haythorne
+Papers."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_332_332" id="Footnote_332_332"></a><a href="#FNanchor_332_332"><span class="label">[332]</span></a> Carpenter's 'Principles of Physiology', 3rd ed., p. 867.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span></p>
+<p class="subhead1"><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX.</p>
+
+<p class="subhead3">MAIN POINTS OF AGREEMENT AND OF DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE OLD AND NEW
+THEORIES OF EVOLUTION.</p>
+
+
+<p>Having put before the reader with some fulness the theories of the three
+writers to whom we owe the older or teleological view of evolution, I
+will now compare that view more closely with the theory of Mr. Darwin
+and Mr. Wallace, to whom, in spite of my profound difference of opinion
+with them on the subject of natural selection, I admit with pleasure
+that I am under deep obligation. For the sake of brevity, I shall take
+Lamarck as the exponent of the older view, and Mr. Darwin as that of the
+one now generally accepted.</p>
+
+<p>We have seen, that up to a certain point there is very little difference
+between Lamarck and Mr. Darwin. Lamarck maintains that animals and
+plants vary: so does Mr. Darwin. Lamarck maintains that variations
+having once arisen have a tendency to be transmitted to offspring and
+accumulated: so does Mr. Darwin. Lamarck maintains that the accumulation
+of variations, so small, each one of them, that it cannot be, or is not
+noticed, nevertheless will lead in the course of that almost infinite
+time during which life has existed upon earth, to very wide differences
+in form, structure, and instincts: so does Mr. Darwin.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span> Finally, Lamarck
+declares that all, or nearly all, the differences which we observe
+between various kinds of animals and plants are due to this exceedingly
+gradual and imperceptible accumulation, during many successive
+generations, of variations each one of which was in the outset small: so
+does Mr. Darwin. But in the above we have a complete statement of the
+fact of evolution, or descent with modification&mdash;wanting nothing, but
+entire, and incapable of being added to except in detail, and by way of
+explanation of the causes which have brought the fact about. As regards
+the general conclusion arrived at, therefore, I am unable to detect any
+difference of opinion between Lamarck and Mr. Darwin. They are both bent
+on establishing the theory of evolution in its widest extent.</p>
+
+<p>The late Sir Charles Lyell, in his 'Principles of Geology,' bears me out
+here. In a note to his <i>r&eacute;sum&eacute;</i> of the part of the 'Philosophie
+Zoologique' which bears upon evolution, he writes:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I have reprinted in this chapter word for word my abstract of Lamarck's
+doctrine of transmutation, as drawn up by me in 1832 in the first
+edition of the 'Principles of Geology.'<a name="FNanchor_333_333" id="FNanchor_333_333"></a><a href="#Footnote_333_333" class="fnanchor">[333]</a> I have thought it right to
+do this in justice to Lamarck, in order to show how nearly the opinions
+taught by him at the commencement of this century resembled those now in
+vogue amongst a large body of naturalists respecting the infinite
+variability of species, and the progressive development in past time of
+the organic world. The reader<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span> must bear in mind that when I made this
+analysis of the 'Philosophie Zoologique' in 1832, I was altogether
+opposed to the doctrine that the animals and plants now living were the
+lineal descendants of distinct species, only known to us in a fossil
+state, and ... so far from exaggerating, I did not do justice to the
+arguments originally adduced by Lamarck and Geoffroy St. Hilaire,
+especially those founded on the occurrence of rudimentary organs. There
+is therefore no room for suspicion that my account of the Lamarckian
+hypothesis, written by me thirty-five years ago, derived any colouring
+from my own views tending to bring it more into harmony with the theory
+since propounded by Darwin."<a name="FNanchor_334_334" id="FNanchor_334_334"></a><a href="#Footnote_334_334" class="fnanchor">[334]</a> So little difference did Sir Charles
+Lyell discover between the views of Lamarck and those of his successors.</p>
+
+<p>With the identity, however, of the main proposition which, both Lamarck
+and Mr. Darwin alike endeavour to establish, the points of agreement
+between the two writers come to an end. Lamarck's great aim was to
+discover the cause of those variations whose accumulation results in
+specific, and finally in generic, differences. Not content with
+establishing the fact of descent with modification, he, like his
+predecessors, wishes to explain how it was that the fact came about. He
+finds its explanation in changed surroundings&mdash;that is to say, in
+changed conditions of existence&mdash;as the indirect cause, and in the
+varying needs arising from these changed conditions as the direct cause.</p>
+
+<p>According to Lamarck, there is a broad principle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span> which underlies
+variation generally, and this principle is the power which all living
+beings possess of slightly varying their actions in accordance with
+varying needs, coupled with the fact observable throughout nature that
+use develops, and disuse enfeebles an organ, and that the effects,
+whether of use or disuse, become hereditary after many generations.</p>
+
+<p>This resolves itself into the effect of the mutual interaction of mind
+on body and of body on mind. Thus he writes:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The physical and the mental are to start with undoubtedly one and the
+same thing; this fact is most easily made apparent through study of the
+organization of the various orders of known animals. From the common
+source there proceeded certain effects, and these effects, in the outset
+hardly separated, have in the course of time become so perfectly
+distinct, that when looked at in their extremest development they appear
+to have little or nothing in common.</p>
+
+<p>"The effect of the body upon the mind has been already sufficiently
+recognized; not so that of the mind upon the body itself. The two, one
+in the outset though they were, interact upon each other more and more
+the more they present the appearance of having become widely sundered,
+and it can be shown that each is continually modifying the other and
+causing it to vary."<a name="FNanchor_335_335" id="FNanchor_335_335"></a><a href="#Footnote_335_335" class="fnanchor">[335]</a></p>
+
+<p>And again, later:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I shall show that the habits by which we now<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span> recognize any creature
+are due to the environment (<i>circonstances</i>) under which it has for a
+long while existed, <i>and that these habits have had such an influence
+upon the structure of each individual of the species as to have at
+length</i>" (that is to say, through many successive slight variations,
+each due to habit engendered by the wishes of the animal itself),
+"modified this structure and adapted it to the habits contracted."<a name="FNanchor_336_336" id="FNanchor_336_336"></a><a href="#Footnote_336_336" class="fnanchor">[336]</a></p>
+
+<p>These quotations must suffice, for the reader has already had Lamarck's
+argument sufficiently put before him.</p>
+
+<p>Variation, and consequently modification, are, according to Lamarck, the
+outward and visible signs of the impressions made upon animals and
+plants in the course of their long and varied history, each organ
+chronicling a time during which such and such thoughts and actions
+dominated the creature, and specific changes being the effect of certain
+long-continued wishes upon the body, and of certain changed surroundings
+upon the wishes. Plants and animals are living forms of faith, or faiths
+of form, whichever the reader pleases.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Darwin, on the other hand, repeatedly avows ignorance, and profound
+ignorance, concerning the causes of those variations which, or nothing,
+must be the fountain-heads of species. Thus he writes of "the complex
+and <i>little known</i> laws of variation."<a name="FNanchor_337_337" id="FNanchor_337_337"></a><a href="#Footnote_337_337" class="fnanchor">[337]</a> "There is also <i>some
+probability</i> in the view propounded by Andrew Knight, that variability
+<i>may be partly</i> connected with excess of food."<a name="FNanchor_338_338" id="FNanchor_338_338"></a><a href="#Footnote_338_338" class="fnanchor">[338]</a> "Many laws regulate
+variation, <i>some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span> few of which</i> can be <i>dimly seen</i>."<a name="FNanchor_339_339" id="FNanchor_339_339"></a><a href="#Footnote_339_339" class="fnanchor">[339]</a> "The results
+of the <i>unknown</i>, or <i>but dimly understood</i>, laws of variation are
+infinitely complex and diversified."<a name="FNanchor_340_340" id="FNanchor_340_340"></a><a href="#Footnote_340_340" class="fnanchor">[340]</a> "We are <i>profoundly ignorant</i>
+of the cause of each slight variation or individual difference."<a name="FNanchor_341_341" id="FNanchor_341_341"></a><a href="#Footnote_341_341" class="fnanchor">[341]</a>
+"We are <i>far too ignorant</i> to speculate on the relative importance of
+the several known and unknown causes of variation."<a name="FNanchor_342_342" id="FNanchor_342_342"></a><a href="#Footnote_342_342" class="fnanchor">[342]</a> He admits,
+indeed, the effects of use and disuse to have been important, but how
+important we have no means of knowing; he also attributes considerable
+effect to the action of changed conditions of life&mdash;but how considerable
+again we know not; nevertheless, he sees no great principle underlying
+the variations generally, and tending to make them appear for a length
+of time together in any definite direction advantageous to the creature
+itself, but either expressly, as at times, or by implication, as
+throughout his works, ascribes them to accident or chance.</p>
+
+<p>In other words, he admits his ignorance concerning them, and dwells only
+on the accumulation of variations the appearance of which for any length
+of time in any given direction he leaves unaccounted for.</p>
+
+<p>Lamarck, again, having established his principle that sense of need is
+the main direct cause of variation, and having also established that the
+variations thus engendered are inherited, so that divergences accumulate
+and result in species and genera, is comparatively indifferent to
+further details. His work is avowedly an outline. Nevertheless, we have
+seen that he was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span> quite alive to the effects of the geometrical ratio of
+increase, and of the struggle for existence which thence inevitably
+follows.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Darwin, on the other hand, comparatively indifferent to, or at any
+rate silent concerning the causes of those variations which appeared so
+all-important to Lamarck, inasmuch as they are the raindrops which unite
+to form the full stream of modification, goes into very full detail upon
+natural selection, or the survival of the fittest, and maintains it to
+have been "the most important but not the exclusive means of
+modification."<a name="FNanchor_343_343" id="FNanchor_343_343"></a><a href="#Footnote_343_343" class="fnanchor">[343]</a></p>
+
+<p>It will be readily seen that, according to Lamarck, the variations which
+when accumulated amount to specific and generic differences, will have
+been due to causes which have been mainly of the same kind for long
+periods together. Conditions of life change for the most part slowly,
+steadily, and in a set direction; as in the direction of steady, gradual
+increase or decrease of cold or moisture; of the steady, gradual
+increase of such and such an enemy, or decrease of such and such a kind
+of food; of the gradual upheaval or submergence of such and such a
+continent, and consequent drying up or encroachment of such and such a
+sea, and so forth. The thoughts of the creature varying will thus have
+been turned mainly in one direction for long together; and hence the
+consequent modifications will also be mainly in fixed and definite
+directions for many successive generations; as in the direction of a
+warmer or cooler covering; of a better means of defence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span> or of attack in
+relation to such and such another species; of a longer neck and longer
+legs, or of whatever other modification the gradually changing
+circumstances may be rendering expedient. It is easy to understand the
+accumulation of slight successive modifications which thus make their
+appearance in given organs and in a set direction.</p>
+
+<p>With Mr. Darwin, on the contrary, the variations being accidental, and
+due to no special and uniform cause, will not appear for any length of
+time in any given direction, nor in any given organ, but will be just as
+liable to appear in one organ as in another, and may be in one
+generation in one direction, and in another in another.</p>
+
+<p>In confirmation of the above, and in illustration of the important
+consequences that will follow according as we adopt the old or the more
+recent theory, I would quote the following from Mr. Mivart's 'Genesis of
+Species.'</p>
+
+<p>Shortly before maintaining that two similar structures have often been
+developed independently of one another, Mr. Mivart points out that if we
+are dependent upon indefinite variations only, as provided for us by Mr.
+Darwin, this would be "so improbable as to be practically
+impossible."<a name="FNanchor_344_344" id="FNanchor_344_344"></a><a href="#Footnote_344_344" class="fnanchor">[344]</a> The number of possible variations being indefinitely
+great, "it is therefore an indefinitely great number to one against a
+similar series of variations occurring and being similarly preserved in
+any two independent instances." It will be felt (as Mr. Mivart presently
+insists) that this objection does<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span> not apply to a system which maintains
+that in case an animal feels any given want it will gradually develop
+the structure which shall meet the want&mdash;that is to say, if the want be
+not so great and so sudden as to extinguish the creature to which it has
+become a necessity. For if there be such a power of self-adaptation as
+thus supposed, two or more very widely different animals feeling the
+same kind of want might easily adopt similar means to gratify it, and
+hence develop eventually a substantially similar structure; just as two
+men, without any kind of concert, have often hit upon like means of
+compassing the same ends. Mr. Spencer's theory&mdash;so Mr. Mivart tells
+us&mdash;and certainly that of Lamarck, whose disciple Mr. Spencer would
+appear to be,<a name="FNanchor_345_345" id="FNanchor_345_345"></a><a href="#Footnote_345_345" class="fnanchor">[345]</a> admits "a certain peculiar, but limited power of
+response and adaptation in each animal and plant"&mdash;to the conditions of
+their existence. "Such theories," says Mr. Mivart, "have not to contend
+against the difficulty proposed, and it has been urged that even very
+complex extremely similar structures have again and again been developed
+quite independently one of the other, and this because the process has
+taken place not by merely haphazard, indefinite variations in all
+directions, but by the concurrence of some other internal natural law or
+laws co-operating with external influences and with Natural Selection in
+the evolution of organic forms.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>It must never be forgotten that to admit any such constant operation
+of any such unknown natural cause is to deny the purely Darwinian theory
+which relies upon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span> the survival of the fittest by means of minute
+fortuitous indefinite variations.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Among many other obligations which the author has to acknowledge to
+Professor Huxley, are the pointing out of this very difficulty, and the
+calling his attention to the striking resemblance between certain teeth
+of the dog, and of the thylacine, as one instance, and certain ornithic
+peculiarities of pterodactyles as another."<a name="FNanchor_346_346" id="FNanchor_346_346"></a><a href="#Footnote_346_346" class="fnanchor">[346]</a></p>
+
+<p>In brief then, changed distribution of use and disuse in consequence of
+changed conditions of the environment is with Lamarck the main cause of
+modification. According to Mr. Darwin natural selection, or the survival
+of favourable but accidental variations, is the most important means of
+modification. In a word, with Lamarck the variations are definite; with
+Mr. Darwin indefinite.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_333_333" id="Footnote_333_333"></a><a href="#FNanchor_333_333"><span class="label">[333]</span></a> Vol. ii. chap. i.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_334_334" id="Footnote_334_334"></a><a href="#FNanchor_334_334"><span class="label">[334]</span></a> Vol. ii. chap, xxxiv., ed. 1872.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_335_335" id="Footnote_335_335"></a><a href="#FNanchor_335_335"><span class="label">[335]</span></a> 'Philosophie Zoologique,' ed. M. Martins, Paris, Lyons,
+1873, tom. i. p. 24.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_336_336" id="Footnote_336_336"></a><a href="#FNanchor_336_336"><span class="label">[336]</span></a> 'Philosophie Zoologique,' tom. i. p. 72.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_337_337" id="Footnote_337_337"></a><a href="#FNanchor_337_337"><span class="label">[337]</span></a> 'Origin of Species,' p. 3.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_338_338" id="Footnote_338_338"></a><a href="#FNanchor_338_338"><span class="label">[338]</span></a> Ibid. p. 5.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_339_339" id="Footnote_339_339"></a><a href="#FNanchor_339_339"><span class="label">[339]</span></a> 'Origin of Species,' p. 8.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_340_340" id="Footnote_340_340"></a><a href="#FNanchor_340_340"><span class="label">[340]</span></a> Ibid. p. 9.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_341_341" id="Footnote_341_341"></a><a href="#FNanchor_341_341"><span class="label">[341]</span></a> Ibid. p. 158.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_342_342" id="Footnote_342_342"></a><a href="#FNanchor_342_342"><span class="label">[342]</span></a> Ibid. p. 159.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_343_343" id="Footnote_343_343"></a><a href="#FNanchor_343_343"><span class="label">[343]</span></a> 'Origin of Species,' p. 4.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_344_344" id="Footnote_344_344"></a><a href="#FNanchor_344_344"><span class="label">[344]</span></a> 'Genesis of Species,' p. 74, 1871.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_345_345" id="Footnote_345_345"></a><a href="#FNanchor_345_345"><span class="label">[345]</span></a> See <i>ante</i>, p. <a href="#Page_330">330</a>, line 1 after heading.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_346_346" id="Footnote_346_346"></a><a href="#FNanchor_346_346"><span class="label">[346]</span></a> 'Genesis of Species,' p. 76, ed. 1871.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span></p>
+<p class="subhead1"><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX.</p>
+
+<p class="subhead3">NATURAL SELECTION CONSIDERED AS A MEANS OF MODIFICATION. THE CONFUSION
+WHICH THIS EXPRESSION OCCASIONS.</p>
+
+
+<p>When Mr. Darwin says that natural selection is the most important
+"means" of modification, I am not sure that I understand what he wishes
+to imply by the word "means." I do not see how the fact that those
+animals which are best fitted for the conditions of their existence
+commonly survive in the struggle for life, can be called in any special
+sense a "means" of modification.</p>
+
+<p>"Means" is a dangerous word; it slips too easily into "cause." We have
+seen Mr. Darwin himself say that Buffon did not enter on "the <i>causes or
+means</i>"<a name="FNanchor_347_347" id="FNanchor_347_347"></a><a href="#Footnote_347_347" class="fnanchor">[347]</a> of modification, as though these two words were synonymous,
+or nearly so. Nevertheless, the use of the word "means" here enables Mr.
+Darwin to speak of Natural Selection as if it were an active cause
+(which he constantly does), and yet to avoid expressly maintaining that
+it is a cause of modification. This, indeed, he has not done in express
+terms, but he does it by implication when he writes, "Natural Selection
+<i>might be most effective in giving</i> the proper colour to each kind of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span>
+grouse, and in <i>keeping</i> that colour when once acquired." Such language,
+says the late Mr. G. H. Lewes, "is misleading;" it makes "selection an
+agent."<a name="FNanchor_348_348" id="FNanchor_348_348"></a><a href="#Footnote_348_348" class="fnanchor">[348]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is plain that natural selection cannot be considered a cause of
+variation; and if not of variation, which is as the rain drop, then not
+of specific and generic modification, which are as the river; for the
+variations must make their appearance before they can be selected.
+Suppose that it is an advantage to a horse to have an especially hard
+and broad hoof, then a horse born with such a hoof will indeed probably
+survive in the struggle for existence, but he was not born with the
+larger and harder hoof <i>because of his subsequently surviving</i>. He
+survived because he was born fit&mdash;not, he was born fit because he
+survived. The variation must arise first and be preserved afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Darwin therefore is in the following dilemma. If he does not treat
+natural selection as a cause of variation, the 'Origin of Species' will
+turn out to have no <i>raison d'&ecirc;tre</i>. It will have professed to have
+explained to us the manner in which species has originated, but it will
+have left us in the dark concerning the origin of those variations
+which, when added together, amount to specific and generic differences.
+Thus, as I said in 'Life and Habit,' Mr. Darwin will have made us think
+we know the whole road, in spite of his having almost ostentatiously
+blindfolded us at every step in the journey. The 'Origin of Species'
+would thus prove to be no less a piece of intellectual sleight-of-hand
+than Paley's 'Natural Theology.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>If, on the other hand, Mr. Darwin maintains natural selection to be a
+cause of variation, this comes to saying that when an animal has varied
+in an advantageous direction, the fact of its subsequently surviving in
+the struggle for existence is the cause of its having varied in the
+advantageous direction&mdash;or more simply still&mdash;that the fact of its
+having varied is the cause of its having varied.</p>
+
+<p>And this is what we have already seen Mr. Darwin actually to say, in a
+passage quoted near the beginning of this present book. When writing of
+the eye he says, "Variation will cause the slight alterations;"<a name="FNanchor_349_349" id="FNanchor_349_349"></a><a href="#Footnote_349_349" class="fnanchor">[349]</a> but
+the "slight alterations" <i>are</i> the variations; so that Mr. Darwin's
+words come to this&mdash;that "variation will cause the variations."</p>
+
+<p>There does not seem any better way out of this dilemma than that which
+Mr. Darwin has adopted&mdash;namely, to hold out natural selection as "a
+means" of modification, and thenceforward to treat it as an efficient
+cause; but at the same time to protest again and again that it is
+not a cause. Accordingly he writes that "Natural Selection <i>acts
+only by the preservation and accumulation</i> of small inherited
+modifications,"<a name="FNanchor_350_350" id="FNanchor_350_350"></a><a href="#Footnote_350_350" class="fnanchor">[350]</a>&mdash;that is to say, it has had no share in inducing or
+causing these modifications. Again, "What applies to one animal will
+apply throughout all time to all animals&mdash;<i>that is, if they vary, for
+otherwise natural selection can effect nothing</i>"<a name="FNanchor_351_351" id="FNanchor_351_351"></a><a href="#Footnote_351_351" class="fnanchor">[351]</a>; and again, "for
+natural selection only <i>takes advantage of such variations as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span>
+arise</i>"<a name="FNanchor_352_352" id="FNanchor_352_352"></a><a href="#Footnote_352_352" class="fnanchor">[352]</a>&mdash;the variations themselves arising, as we have just seen,
+from variation.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing, then, can be clearer from these passages than that natural
+selection is not a cause of modification; while, on the other hand,
+nothing can be clearer, from a large number of such passages, as, for
+instance, "natural selection may be <i>effective</i> in <i>giving</i> and
+<i>keeping</i> colour,"<a name="FNanchor_353_353" id="FNanchor_353_353"></a><a href="#Footnote_353_353" class="fnanchor">[353]</a> than that natural selection is an efficient
+cause; and in spite of its being expressly declared to be only a "means"
+of modification, it will be accepted as cause by the great majority of
+readers.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Darwin explains this apparent inconsistency thus:&mdash;He maintains that
+though the advantageous modification itself is fortuitous, or without
+known cause or principle underlying it, yet its becoming the predominant
+form of the species in which it appears is due to the fact that those
+animals which have been advantageously modified commonly survive in
+times of difficulty, while the unmodified individuals perish: offspring
+therefore is more frequently left by the favourably modified animal, and
+thus little by little the whole species will come to inherit the
+modification. Hence the survival of the fittest becomes a means of
+modification, though it is no cause of variation.</p>
+
+<p>It will appear more clearly later on how much this amounts to. I will
+for the present content myself with the following quotation from the
+late Mr. G. H. Lewes in reference to it. Mr. Lewes writes:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Darwin seems to imply that the external conditions which cause a
+variation are to be distinguished<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span> from the conditions which accumulate
+and perfect such variation, that is to say, he implies a radical
+difference between the process of variation and the process of
+selection. This I have already said does not seem to me acceptable; the
+selection I conceive to be simply the variation which has
+survived."<a name="FNanchor_354_354" id="FNanchor_354_354"></a><a href="#Footnote_354_354" class="fnanchor">[354]</a></p>
+
+<p>Certainly those animals and plants which are best fitted for their
+environment, or, as Lamarck calls it, "<i>circonstances</i>"&mdash;those animals,
+in fact, which are best fitted to comply with the conditions of their
+existence&mdash;are most likely to survive and transmit their especial
+fitness. No one would admit this more readily than Lamarck. This is no
+theory; it is a commonly observed fact in nature which no one will
+dispute, but it is not more "a means of modification" than many other
+commonly observed facts concerning animals.</p>
+
+<p>Why is "the survival of the fittest" more a means of modification than,
+we will say, the fact that animals live at all, or that they live in
+successive generations, being born, continuing their species, and dying,
+instead of living on for ever as one single animal in the common
+acceptation of the term; or than that they eat and drink?</p>
+
+<p>The heat whereby the water is heated, the water which is turned into
+steam, the piston on which the steam acts, the driving wheel, &amp;c., &amp;c.,
+are all one as much as another a means whereby a train is made to go
+from one place to another; it is impossible to say that any one of them
+is the main means. So (<i>mutatis mutandis</i>) with modification. There is
+no reason therefore<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span> why "the survival of the fittest" should claim to
+be an especial "means of modification" rather than any other necessary
+adjunct of animal or vegetable life.</p>
+
+<p>I find that the late Mr. G. H. Lewes has insisted on this objection in
+his 'Physical Basis of Mind.' I observe, also, that in the very passage
+in which he does so, Mr. Lewes appears to have been misled by Mr.
+Darwin's use of that dangerous word "means," and, at the same time, by
+his frequent treatment of natural selection as though it were an active
+cause; so that Mr. Lewes supposes Mr. Darwin to have fallen into the
+very error of which, as I have above shown, he is evidently struggling
+to keep clear&mdash;namely, that of maintaining natural selection to be a
+"cause" of variation. Mr. Lewes then continues:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"He [Mr. Darwin] separates Natural Selection from all the primary causes
+of variation either internal or external&mdash;either as results of the laws
+of growth, of the correlations of variation, of use and disuse, &amp;c., and
+limits it to the slow accumulation of such variations as are profitable
+in the struggle with competitors. And for his purpose this separation is
+necessary. But biological philosophy must, I think, regard the
+distinction as artificial, <i>referring only to one of the great factors
+in the production of species</i>."<a name="FNanchor_355_355" id="FNanchor_355_355"></a><a href="#Footnote_355_355" class="fnanchor">[355]</a></p>
+
+<p>The fact that one in a brood or litter is born fitter for the conditions
+of its existence than its brothers and sisters, and, again, the causes
+that have led to this one's having been born fitter&mdash;which last is what
+the older<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span> evolutionists justly dwelt upon as the most interesting
+consideration in connection with the whole subject&mdash;are more noteworthy
+factors of modification than the factor that an animal, if born fitter
+for its conditions, will commonly survive longer in the struggle for
+existence. If the first of these can be explained in such a manner as to
+be accepted as true, or highly probable, we have a substantial gain to
+our knowledge. The second is little&mdash;if at all&mdash;better than a truism.
+Granted, if it were not generally the case that those forms are most
+likely to survive which are best fitted for the conditions of their
+existence, no adaptation of form to conditions of existence could ever
+have come about. "The survival of the fittest" therefore, or, perhaps
+better, "the fertility of the fittest," is thus a <i>sine qu&acirc; non</i> for
+modification. But, as we have just insisted, this does not render "the
+fertility of the fittest" an especial "means of modification," rather
+than any other <i>sine qu&acirc; non</i> for modification.</p>
+
+<p>But, to look at the matter in another light. Mr. Darwin maintains
+natural selection to be "the most important but not the exclusive means
+of modification."</p>
+
+<p>For "natural selection" substitute the words "survival of the fittest,"
+which we may do with Mr. Darwin's own consent abundantly given.</p>
+
+<p>To the words "survival of the fittest" add what is elided, but what is,
+nevertheless, unquestionably as much implied as though it were said
+openly whenever these words are used, and without which "fittest" has no
+force&mdash;I mean, "for the conditions of their existence."</p>
+
+<p>We thus find that when Mr. Darwin says that natural<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span> selection is the
+most important, but not exclusive means of modification, he means that
+the survival in the struggle for existence of those creatures which are
+best fitted to comply with the conditions of their existence is the most
+important, but not exclusive means whereby the descendants of a
+creature, we will say, A, have become modified, so as to be now
+represented by a creature, we will say, B.</p>
+
+<p>But the word "<i>circonstances</i>," so frequently used by Lamarck for the
+conditions of an animal's existence, contains, by implication, the idea
+of animals <i>which shall exist or not according as they fulfil those
+conditions or fail to fulfil them</i>. Conditions of existence are
+conditions which something capable of existing must fulfil if it would
+exist at all, and nothing is a condition of an animal's existence which
+that animal need not comply with and may yet continue to exist. Again,
+the words "animals" and "plants" comprehend the ideas of "fit,"
+"fitter," and "fittest," "unfit," "unfitter," and "unfittest" for
+certain conditions, for we know of no animals or plants in which we do
+not observe degrees of fitness or unfitness for their "<i>circonstances</i>"
+or environment, or conditions of existence.</p>
+
+<p>The use, therefore, of the term "conditions of existence" is sufficient
+to show that the person using it intends to imply that those animals and
+plants will live longest (or survive) and thrive best which are best
+able to fulfil those conditions. Hence it implies neither more nor less
+than what is implied by the words "struggle for existence, with
+consequent survival of the fittest"&mdash;that is to say, if we hold the
+complying<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span> with any condition of life to which difficulty is attached to
+be part of "the struggle" for life, and this we should certainly do.</p>
+
+<p>The words "conditions of existence" may, then, be used instead of the
+"struggle for existence with consequent survival of the fittest," for as
+they cannot imply any less than the "struggle, &amp;c.," when they are set
+out in full, and without suppression, so neither do they imply more; for
+nothing is a condition of existence, in so far as its power of effecting
+the modification of any animal is concerned, which does not also involve
+more or less difficulty or struggle; for if there is no difficulty or
+struggle there will be nothing to bring about change of habit, and hence
+of structure. This identity of meaning may be also seen if we call to
+mind that the conditions of existence can be only a synonym for "the
+conditions of continuing to live," and "the conditions of continuing to
+live" a synonym for "the conditions of continuing to live a longer
+time," and "the conditions of continuing to live a longer time," for
+"the conditions of survival," and "the conditions of survival," for "the
+survival of the fittest," inasmuch as the being fittest is the condition
+of being the longest survivor.</p>
+
+<p>But we have already seen that "the survival of the fittest," is,
+according to Mr. Darwin, a synonym for "natural selection"; hence it
+follows that "the conditions of existence" imply neither more nor less
+than what is implied by "natural selection" when this expression is
+properly explained, and may be used instead of it; so that when Mr.
+Darwin says that "natural selection" is the main but not exclusive means
+of modification,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span> he must mean, consciously or unconsciously, that "the
+conditions of existence" are the main but not exclusive means of
+modification. But this is only falling in with "the views and erroneous
+grounds of opinion," as Mr. Darwin briefly calls them, of Lamarck
+himself; a fact which Mr. Darwin's readers would have seen more readily
+if he had kept to the use of the words "survival of the fittest" instead
+of "natural selection." Of that expression Mr. Darwin says<a name="FNanchor_356_356" id="FNanchor_356_356"></a><a href="#Footnote_356_356" class="fnanchor">[356]</a> that it
+is "more accurate" than natural selection, but naively adds, "and
+sometimes equally convenient."</p>
+
+<p>I have said that there is a practical identity of meaning between
+"natural selection" and "the conditions of existence," when both
+expressions are fully extended. I say this, however, without prejudice
+to my right of maintaining that, of the two expressions, the one is
+accurate, lucid, and calculated to keep the thread of the argument well
+in sight of the reader, while the other is inaccurate, and always, if I
+may say so, less "convenient," as being always liable to lead the reader
+astray. Nor should it be lost sight of that Lamarck and Dr. Erasmus
+Darwin maintain that species and genera have arisen <i>because animals can
+fashion themselves into accord with</i> their conditions, so that, as
+Lamarck is so continually insisting, the action of the conditions is
+indirect only&mdash;changed use and disuse being the direct causes; while,
+according to Mr. Darwin, it is natural selection itself (which, as we
+have seen, is but another way of saying conditions of existence) that is
+the most important means of modification.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The identity of meaning above insisted on was, on the face of it, almost
+as obscure as that between "<i>ev&ecirc;que</i> and bishop." Yet we know that
+"<i>ev&ecirc;que</i>" is "episc" and "bishop" "piscop," and that "episcopus" is the
+Latin for bishop; the words, therefore, are really one and the same, in
+spite of the difference in their appearance. I think I can show,
+moreover, that Mr. Darwin himself holds natural selection and the
+conditions of existence to be one and the same thing. For he writes, "in
+one sense," and it is hard to see any sense but one in what follows,
+"the conditions of life may be said not only to cause variability" (so
+that here Mr. Darwin appears to support Lamarck's main thesis) "either
+directly or indirectly, but likewise to include natural selection; for
+the conditions determine whether this or that variety shall
+survive."<a name="FNanchor_357_357" id="FNanchor_357_357"></a><a href="#Footnote_357_357" class="fnanchor">[357]</a> But later on we find that "the expression of conditions
+of existence, so often insisted upon by the illustrious Cuvier" (and
+surely also by the illustrious Lamarck, though he calls them
+"<i>circonstances</i>") "is fully embraced by the principle of natural
+selection."<a name="FNanchor_358_358" id="FNanchor_358_358"></a><a href="#Footnote_358_358" class="fnanchor">[358]</a> So we see that the conditions of life "<i>include</i>"
+natural selection, and yet the conditions of existence "<i>are fully
+embraced by</i>" natural selection, which, I take it, is an enigmatic way
+of saying that they are one and the same thing, for it is not until two
+bodies absolutely coincide and occupy the same space that the one can be
+said both to include and to be embraced by the other.</p>
+
+<p>The difficulty, again, of understanding Mr. Darwin's meaning is enhanced
+by his repeatedly writing of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span> "natural selection," or the fact that the
+fittest survive in the struggle for existence, as though it were the
+same thing as "evolution" or the descent, through the accumulation of
+small modifications in many successive generations, of one species from
+another and different one. In the concluding and recapitulatory chapter
+of the 'Origin of Species,' he writes:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Turning to geographical distribution, the difficulties encountered <i>on
+the theory of descent with modification</i> are serious enough;"<a name="FNanchor_359_359" id="FNanchor_359_359"></a><a href="#Footnote_359_359" class="fnanchor">[359]</a> and
+in the next paragraph, "As, according to <i>the theory of natural
+selection, &amp;c.</i>," the context showing that in each case descent with
+modification is intended.</p>
+
+<p>Again:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"On the theory of the <i>natural selection</i> of successive, slight, but
+profitable, modifications,"<a name="FNanchor_360_360" id="FNanchor_360_360"></a><a href="#Footnote_360_360" class="fnanchor">[360]</a> that is to say, on the theory of the
+survival of the fittest; while on the next page we find "<i>the theory of
+descent with modification</i>," and "<i>the principle of natural selection</i>,"
+used as though they were convertible terms.</p>
+
+<p>Again:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The existence of closely allied or representative species in any two
+areas implies, <i>on the theory of descent with modification, &amp;c.</i>;"<a name="FNanchor_361_361" id="FNanchor_361_361"></a><a href="#Footnote_361_361" class="fnanchor">[361]</a>
+and, in the next paragraph, "<i>the theory of natural selection</i>, with its
+contingencies of extinction and divergence of character," is substituted
+as though the two expressions were identical.</p>
+
+<p>This is calculated to mislead. Independently of the fact that "natural
+selection," or "the survival of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span> fittest," is in no sense a theory,
+but simply an observed fact, yet even if the words are allowed to stand
+for "descent with modification by means of natural selection," it is
+still misleading to write as though this were synonymous with "the
+theory of evolution," or "the theory of descent with modification." To
+do this prevents the reader from bearing in mind that "evolution by
+means of the circumstance-suiting power of plants and animals" as
+advanced by the earlier evolutionists; and "evolution by means of lucky
+accidents" with comparatively little circumstance-suiting power, are two
+very different things, of which the one may be true and the other
+untrue. It leads the reader to forget that evolution by no means stands
+or falls with evolution by means of natural selection, and makes him
+think that if he accepts evolution at all, he is bound to Mr. Darwin's
+view of it. Hence, when he falls in with such writers as Professor
+Mivart and the Rev. J. J. Murphy, who show, and very plainly, that the
+survival of the fittest, unsupplemented by something which shall give a
+definite aim to the variations which successively occur, fails to
+account for the coadaptations of need and structure, he imagines that
+evolution has much less to say for itself than it really has. If Mr.
+Darwin, instead of taking the line which he has thought fit to adopt
+towards Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck, and the author of the
+'Vestiges,' had shown us what these men taught, why they taught it,
+wherein they were wrong, and how he proposed to set them right, he would
+have taken a course at once more agreeable with ordinary practice, and
+more likely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span> to clear misconception from his own mind and from those of
+his readers.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Darwin says,<a name="FNanchor_362_362" id="FNanchor_362_362"></a><a href="#Footnote_362_362" class="fnanchor">[362]</a> "it is easy to hide our ignorance under such
+expressions as 'the plan of creation' and 'unity of design.'" Surely,
+also, it is easy to hide want of precision of thought, and the absence
+of any fundamental difference between his own main conclusion and that
+of Dr. Darwin and Lamarck whom he condemns, under the term "natural
+selection."</p>
+
+<p>I assure the reader that I find the task of forming a clear,
+well-defined conception of Mr. Darwin's meaning, as expressed in his
+'Origin of Species,' comparable only to that of one who has to act on
+the advice of a lawyer who has obscured the main issue as far as he can,
+and whose chief aim has been to make as many loopholes as possible for
+himself to escape through in case of his being called to account. Or,
+again, to that of one who has to construe an Act of Parliament which was
+originally framed so as to throw dust in the eyes of those who would
+oppose the measure, and which, having been since found unworkable, has
+had clauses repealed and inserted up and down it, till it is in an
+inextricable tangle of confusion and contradiction.</p>
+
+<p>As an example of my meaning, I will quote a passage to which I called
+attention in 'Life and Habit.' It runs:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"In the earlier editions of this work I underrated, as now seems
+probable, the frequency and importance of modifications due to
+spontaneous variability. But it is impossible to attribute to <i>this
+cause</i>" (i. e. spontaneous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span> variability, which is itself only an
+expression for unknown causes) "the innumerable structures which are so
+well adapted to the habits of life of each species. I can no more
+believe in <i>this</i>" (i. e. that the innumerable structures, &amp;c., can be
+due to unknown causes) "than that the well adapted form of a racehorse
+or greyhound, which, before the principle of selection by man was well
+understood, excited so much surprise in the minds of the older
+naturalists, can <i>thus</i>" (i. e. by attributing them to unknown causes)
+"be explained."<a name="FNanchor_363_363" id="FNanchor_363_363"></a><a href="#Footnote_363_363" class="fnanchor">[363]</a></p>
+
+<p>This amounts to saying that unknown causes can do so much, but cannot do
+so much more. On this passage I wrote, in 'Life and Habit':&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"It is impossible to believe that, after years of reflection upon his
+subject, Mr. Darwin should have written as above, especially in such a
+place, if his mind was clear about his own position. Immediately after
+the admission of a certain amount of miscalculation there comes a more
+or less exculpatory sentence, which sounds so right that ninety-nine
+people out of a hundred would walk through it, unless led by some
+exigency of their own position to examine it closely, but which yet,
+upon examination, proves to be as nearly meaningless as a sentence can
+be."<a name="FNanchor_364_364" id="FNanchor_364_364"></a><a href="#Footnote_364_364" class="fnanchor">[364]</a></p>
+
+<p>No one, to my knowledge, has impugned the justice of this criticism, and
+I may say that further study of Mr. Darwin's works has only strengthened
+my conviction of the confusion and inaccuracy of thought, which detracts
+so greatly from their value.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>So little is it generally understood that "evolution" and what is called
+"Darwinism" convey indeed the same main conclusion, but that this
+conclusion has been reached by two distinct roads, one of which is
+impregnable, while the other has already fallen into the hands of the
+enemy, that in the last November number of the 'Nineteenth Century'
+Professor Tyndall, while referring to descent with modification or
+evolution, speaks of it as though it were one and inseparable from Mr.
+Darwin's theory that it has come about mainly by means of natural
+selection. He writes:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Darwin's theory</i>, as pointed out nine or ten years ago by Helmholtz
+and Hooker, was then exactly in this condition of growth; and had they
+to speak of the subject to-day they would be able to announce an
+enormous strengthening of the theoretic fibre. Fissures in continuity
+which then existed, and which left little hope of being ever spanned,
+have been since bridged over, so that the further <i>the theory</i> is tested
+the more fully does it harmonize with progressive experience and
+discovery. We shall never probably fill all the gaps; but this will not
+prevent a profound belief in the truth of <i>the theory</i> from taking root
+in the general mind. Much less will it justify a total denial of <i>the
+theory</i>. The man of science, who assumes in such a case the position of
+a denier, is sure to be stranded and isolated."</p>
+
+<p>This is in the true vein of the professional and orthodox scientist; of
+that new orthodoxy which is clamouring for endowment, and which would
+step into the Pope's shoes to-morrow, if we would only let it. If<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span>
+Professor Tyndall means that those who deny evolution will find
+themselves presently in a very small minority, I agree with him; but if
+he means that evolution is Mr. Darwin's theory, and that he who rejects
+what Mr. Darwin calls "the theory of natural selection" will find
+himself stranded, his assertion will pass muster with those only who
+know little of the history and literature of evolution.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_347_347" id="Footnote_347_347"></a><a href="#FNanchor_347_347"><span class="label">[347]</span></a> 'Origin of Species,' Hist. Sketch, p. xiii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_348_348" id="Footnote_348_348"></a><a href="#FNanchor_348_348"><span class="label">[348]</span></a> 'Physical Basis of Mind,' p. 108.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_349_349" id="Footnote_349_349"></a><a href="#FNanchor_349_349"><span class="label">[349]</span></a> 'Origin of Species,' p. 146.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_350_350" id="Footnote_350_350"></a><a href="#FNanchor_350_350"><span class="label">[350]</span></a> Ibid. p. 75.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_351_351" id="Footnote_351_351"></a><a href="#FNanchor_351_351"><span class="label">[351]</span></a> Ibid. p. 88.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_352_352" id="Footnote_352_352"></a><a href="#FNanchor_352_352"><span class="label">[352]</span></a> 'Origin of Species,' p. 98.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_353_353" id="Footnote_353_353"></a><a href="#FNanchor_353_353"><span class="label">[353]</span></a> Ibid. p. 66.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_354_354" id="Footnote_354_354"></a><a href="#FNanchor_354_354"><span class="label">[354]</span></a> 'Physical Basis of the Mind,' p. 109, 1878.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_355_355" id="Footnote_355_355"></a><a href="#FNanchor_355_355"><span class="label">[355]</span></a> 'Physical Basis of the Mind,' p. 107, 1878.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_356_356" id="Footnote_356_356"></a><a href="#FNanchor_356_356"><span class="label">[356]</span></a> 'Origin of Species,' p. 49.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_357_357" id="Footnote_357_357"></a><a href="#FNanchor_357_357"><span class="label">[357]</span></a> 'Origin of Species,' p. 107.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_358_358" id="Footnote_358_358"></a><a href="#FNanchor_358_358"><span class="label">[358]</span></a> Ibid. p. 166.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_359_359" id="Footnote_359_359"></a><a href="#FNanchor_359_359"><span class="label">[359]</span></a> 'Origin of Species,' p. 406.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_360_360" id="Footnote_360_360"></a><a href="#FNanchor_360_360"><span class="label">[360]</span></a> Ibid, p. 416.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_361_361" id="Footnote_361_361"></a><a href="#FNanchor_361_361"><span class="label">[361]</span></a> Ibid. p. 419.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_362_362" id="Footnote_362_362"></a><a href="#FNanchor_362_362"><span class="label">[362]</span></a> 'Origin of Species,' p. 422.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_363_363" id="Footnote_363_363"></a><a href="#FNanchor_363_363"><span class="label">[363]</span></a> 'Origin of Species,' p. 171, ed. 1876.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_364_364" id="Footnote_364_364"></a><a href="#FNanchor_364_364"><span class="label">[364]</span></a> 'Life and Habit,' p. 260.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span></p>
+<p class="subhead1"><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI.</p>
+
+<p class="subhead3">MR. DARWIN'S DEFENCE OF THE EXPRESSION, NATURAL SELECTION&mdash;PROFESSOR
+MIVART AND NATURAL SELECTION.</p>
+
+
+<p>So important is it that we should come to a clear understanding upon the
+positions taken by Mr. Darwin and Lamarck respectively, that at the risk
+of wearying the reader I will endeavour to exhaust this subject here. In
+order to do so, I will follow Mr. Darwin's answer to those who have
+objected to the expression, "natural selection."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Darwin says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Several writers have misapprehended or objected to the term 'natural
+selection.' Some have even imagined that natural selection induces
+variability."<a name="FNanchor_365_365" id="FNanchor_365_365"></a><a href="#Footnote_365_365" class="fnanchor">[365]</a></p>
+
+<p>And small wonder if they have; but those who have fallen into this error
+are hardly worth considering. The true complaint is that Mr. Darwin has
+too often written of "natural selection" as though it does induce
+variability, and that his language concerning it is so confusing that
+the reader is not helped to see that it really comes to nothing but a
+cloak of difference from his predecessors, under which there lurks a
+concealed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span> identity of opinion as to the main facts. The reader is thus
+led to look upon it as something positive and special, and, in spite of
+Mr. Darwin's disclaimer, to think of it as an actively efficient cause.</p>
+
+<p>Few will deny that this complaint is a just one, or that ninety-nine out
+of a hundred readers of average intelligence, if asked, after reading
+Mr. Darwin's 'Origin of Species,' what was the most important cause of
+modification, would answer "natural selection." Let the same readers
+have read the 'Zoonomia' of Dr. Erasmus Darwin, or the 'Philosophie
+Zoologique' of Lamarck, and they would at once reply, "the wishes of an
+animal or plant, as varying with its varying conditions," or more
+briefly, "sense of need."</p>
+
+<p>"Whereas," continues Mr. Darwin, "it" (natural selection) "implies only
+the preservation of such variations as arise, and are beneficial to the
+being under its conditions of life. No one objects to agriculturists
+speaking of the potent effects of man's selection."</p>
+
+<p>Of course not; for there <i>is</i> an actual creature man, who actually does
+select with a set purpose in order to produce such and such a result,
+which result he presently produces.</p>
+
+<p>"And in this case the individual differences given by nature, which man
+for some object selects, must first occur."</p>
+
+<p>This shows that the complaint has already reached Mr. Darwin, that in
+not showing us how "the individual differences first occur," he is
+really leaving us absolutely in the dark as to the cause of all
+modification&mdash;giving us an 'Origin of Species' with "the origin" cut<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span>
+out; but I do not think that any reader who has not been compelled to go
+somewhat deeply into the question would find out that this is the real
+gist of the objection which Mr. Darwin is appearing to combat. A general
+impression is left upon the reader that some very foolish objectors are
+being put to silence, that Mr. Darwin is the most candid literary
+opponent in the world, and as just as Aristides himself; but if the
+unassisted reader will cross-question himself what it is all about, I
+shall be much surprised if he is ready with his answer.</p>
+
+<p>"Others"&mdash;to resume our criticism on Mr. Darwin's defence&mdash;"have
+objected that the term implies conscious choice in the animals which
+become modified, and it has been even urged that as plants have no
+volition, natural selection is not applicable to them!"</p>
+
+<p>This&mdash;unfortunately&mdash;must have been the objection of a slovenly, or
+wilfully misapprehending reader, and was unworthy of serious notice. But
+its introduction here tends to draw the reader from the true ground of
+complaint, which is that at the end of Mr. Darwin's book we stand much
+in the same place as we did when we started, as regards any knowledge of
+what is the "origin of species."</p>
+
+<p>"In the literal sense of the word, no doubt, natural selection is a
+false term."</p>
+
+<p>Then why use it when another, and, by Mr. Darwin's own admission, a
+"more accurate" one is to hand in "the survival of the fittest"?<a name="FNanchor_366_366" id="FNanchor_366_366"></a><a href="#Footnote_366_366" class="fnanchor">[366]</a>
+This term is not appreciably longer than natural selection. Mr. Darwin
+may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span> say, indeed, that it is "sometimes" as convenient a term as natural
+selection; but the kind of men who exercise permanent effect upon the
+opinions of other people will bid such a passage as this stand aside
+somewhat sternly. If a term is not appreciably longer than another, and
+if at the same time it more accurately expresses the idea which is
+intended to be conveyed, it is not sometimes only, but always, more
+convenient, and should immediately be substituted for the less accurate
+one.</p>
+
+<p>No one complains of the use of what is, strictly speaking, an inaccurate
+expression, when it is nevertheless the best that we can get. It may be
+doubted whether there is any such thing possible as a perfectly accurate
+expression. All words that are not simply names of things are apt to
+turn out little else than compendious false analogies; but we have a
+right to complain when a writer tells us that he is using a less
+accurate expression when a more accurate one is ready to his hand.
+Hence, when Mr. Darwin continues, "Who ever objected to chemists
+speaking of the elective affinities of the various elements? and yet an
+acid cannot strictly be said to elect the base with which it by
+preference combines," he is beside the mark. Chemists do not speak of
+"elective affinities" in spite of there being a more accurate and not
+appreciably longer expression at their disposal.</p>
+
+<p>"It has been said," continues Mr. Darwin, "that I speak of natural
+selection as an active power or deity. But who objects to an author
+speaking of the attraction of gravity? Everyone knows what is meant and
+implied<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span> by such metaphorical expressions, and they are almost necessary
+for brevity."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Darwin certainly does speak of natural selection "acting,"
+"accumulating," "operating"; and if "every-one knew what was meant and
+implied by this metaphorical expression," as they now do, or think they
+do, in the case of the attraction of gravity, there might be less ground
+of complaint; but the expression was known to very few at the time Mr.
+Darwin introduced it, and was used with so much ambiguity, and with so
+little to protect the reader from falling into the error of supposing
+that it was the cause of the modifications which we see around us, that
+we had a just right to complain, even in the first instance; much more
+should we do so on the score of the retention of the expression when a
+more accurate one had been found.</p>
+
+<p>If the "survival of the fittest" had been used, to the total excision of
+"natural selection" from every page in Mr. Darwin's book&mdash;it would have
+been easily seen that "the survival of the fittest" is no more a cause
+of modification, and hence can give no more explanation concerning the
+origin of species, than the fact of a number of competitors in a race
+failing to run the whole course, or to run it as quickly as the winner,
+can explain how the winner came to have good legs and lungs. According
+to Lamarck, the winner will have got these by means of sense of need,
+and consequent practice and training, on his own part, and on that of
+his forefathers; according to Mr. Darwin, the "most important means" of
+his getting them is his "happening" to be born with them, coupled, with
+the fact that his uncles and aunts for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span> many generations could not run
+so well as his ancestors in the direct line. But can the fact of his
+uncles and aunts running less well than his fathers and mothers be a
+means of his fathers and mothers coming to run <i>better than they used to
+run</i>?</p>
+
+<p>If the reader will bear in mind the idea of the runners in a race, it
+will help him to see the point at issue between Mr. Darwin and Lamarck.
+Perhaps also the double meaning of the word race, as expressing equally
+a breed and a competition, may not be wholly without significance. What
+we want to be told is, not that a runner will win the prize if he can
+run "ever such a little" faster than his fellows&mdash;we know this&mdash;but by
+what process he comes to be able to run ever such a little faster.</p>
+
+<p>"So, again," continues Mr. Darwin, "it is difficult to avoid
+personifying nature, but I mean by nature only the aggregate action and
+product of many natural laws, and by laws the sequence of events as
+ascertained by us."</p>
+
+<p>This, again, is raising up a dead man in order to knock him down. Nature
+has been personified for more than two thousand years, and every one
+understands that nature is no more really a woman than hope or justice,
+or than God is like the pictures of the medi&aelig;val painters; no one whose
+objection was worth notice could have objected to the personification of
+nature.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Darwin concludes:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"With a little familiarity, such superficial objections will be
+forgotten."<a name="FNanchor_367_367" id="FNanchor_367_367"></a><a href="#Footnote_367_367" class="fnanchor">[367]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span>As a matter of fact, I do not see any greater tendency to acquiesce in
+Mr. Darwin's claim on behalf of natural selection than there was a few
+years ago, but on the contrary, that discontent is daily growing. To say
+nothing of the Rev. J. J. Murphy and Professor Mivart, the late Mr. G.
+H. Lewes did not find the objection a superficial one, nor yet did he
+find it disappear "with a little familiarity"; on the contrary, the more
+familiar he became with it the less he appeared to like it. I may even
+go, without fear, so far as to say that any writer who now uses the
+expression "natural selection," writes himself down thereby as behind
+the age. It is with great pleasure that I observe Mr. Francis Darwin in
+his recent lecture<a name="FNanchor_368_368" id="FNanchor_368_368"></a><a href="#Footnote_368_368" class="fnanchor">[368]</a> to have kept clear of it altogether, and to have
+made use of no expression, and advocated no doctrine to which either Dr.
+Erasmus Darwin or Lamarck would not have readily assented. I think I may
+affirm confidently that a few years ago any such lecture would have
+contained repeated reference to Natural Selection. For my own part I
+know of few passages in any theological writer which please me less than
+the one which I have above followed sentence by sentence. I know of few
+which should better serve to show us the sort of danger we should run if
+we were to let men of science get the upper hand of us.</p>
+
+<p>Natural Selection, then, is only another way of saying "Nature." Mr.
+Darwin seems to be aware of this when he writes, "Nature, if I may be
+allowed to personify the natural preservation or survival of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span>
+fittest." And again, at the bottom of the same page, "It may
+metaphorically be said that <i>natural selection is daily and hourly
+scrutinizing</i> throughout the world the slightest variations."<a name="FNanchor_369_369" id="FNanchor_369_369"></a><a href="#Footnote_369_369" class="fnanchor">[369]</a> It
+may be metaphorically said that <i>Nature</i> is daily and hourly
+scrutinizing, but it cannot be said consistently with any right use of
+words, metaphorical or otherwise, that natural selection scrutinizes,
+unless natural selection is merely a somewhat cumbrous synonym for
+Nature. When, therefore, Mr. Darwin says that natural selection is the
+"most important, but not the exclusive means" whereby any modification
+has been effected, he is really saying that Nature is the most important
+means of modification&mdash;which is only another way of telling us that
+variation causes variations, and is all very true as far as it goes.</p>
+
+<p>I did not read Professor Mivart's 'Lessons from Nature,' until I had
+written all my own criticism on Mr. Darwin's position. From that work,
+however, I now quote the following:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"It cannot then be contested that the far-famed 'Origin of Species,'
+that, namely, by 'Natural Selection,' has been repudiated in fact,
+though not expressly even by its own author. This circumstance, which is
+simply undeniable, might dispense us from any further consideration of
+the hypothesis itself. But the "conspiracy of silence," which has
+accompanied the repudiation tends to lead the unthinking many to suppose
+that the same importance still attaches to it as at first. On this
+account it may be well to ask the question, what, after all, <i>is</i>
+'Natural Selection'?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The answer may seem surprising to some, but it is none the less true,
+that 'Natural Selection' is simply nothing. It is an apparently positive
+name for a really negative effect, and is therefore an eminently
+misleading term. By 'Natural Selection' is meant the result of all the
+destructive agencies of Nature, destructive to individuals and to races
+by destroying their lives or their powers of propagation. Evidently,
+<i>the cause of the distinction of species</i> (supposing such distinction to
+be brought about in natural generation) <i>must be that which causes
+variation, and variation in one determinate direction in at least
+several individuals simultaneously</i>." I should like to have added here
+the words "and during many successive generations," but they will go
+very sufficiently without saying.</p>
+
+<p>"At the same time," continues Professor Mivart, "it is freely conceded
+that the destructive agencies in nature do succeed in preventing the
+perpetuation of monstrous, abortive, and feeble attempts at the
+performance of the evolutionary process, that they rapidly remove
+antecedent forms when new ones are evolved more in harmony with
+surrounding conditions, and that their action results in the formation
+of new characters when these have once attained sufficient completeness
+to be of real utility to their possessor.</p>
+
+<p>"Continued reflection, and five years further pondering over the
+problems of specific origin have more and more convinced me that the
+conception, that the origin of all species 'man included' is due simply
+to conditions which are (to use Mr. Darwin's own words) 'strictly
+accidental,' is a conception utterly irrational."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="subhead2a">. . . . . . . . . . .</p>
+
+<p>"With regard to the conception as now put forward by Mr. Darwin, I
+cannot truly characterize it but by an epithet which I employ only with
+much reluctance. I weigh my words and have present to my mind the many
+distinguished naturalists who have accepted the notion, and yet I cannot
+hesitate to call it a '<i>puerile hypothesis</i>.'"<a name="FNanchor_370_370" id="FNanchor_370_370"></a><a href="#Footnote_370_370" class="fnanchor">[370]</a></p>
+
+<p>I am afraid I cannot go with Professor Mivart farther than this point,
+though I have a strong feeling as though his conclusion is true, that
+"the material universe is always and everywhere sustained and directed
+by an infinite cause, for which to us the word mind is the least
+inadequate and misleading symbol." But I feel that any attempt to deal
+with such a question is going far beyond that sphere in which man's
+powers may be at present employed with advantage: I trust, therefore,
+that I may never try to verify it, and am indifferent whether it is
+correct or not.</p>
+
+<p>Again, I should probably differ from Professor Mivart in finding this
+mind inseparable from the material universe in which we live and move.
+So that I could neither conceive of such a mind influencing and
+directing the universe from a point as it were outside the universe
+itself, nor yet of a universe as existing without there being
+present&mdash;or having been present&mdash;in its every particle something for
+which mind should be the least inadequate and misleading symbol. But the
+subject is far beyond me.</p>
+
+<p>As regards Professor Mivart's denunciations of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span> natural selection, I
+have only one fault to find with them, namely, that they do not speak
+out with sufficient bluntness. The difficulty of showing the fallacy of
+Mr. Darwin's position, is the difficulty of grasping a will-o'-the-wisp.
+A concluding example will put this clearly before the reader, and at the
+same time serve to illustrate the most tangible feature of difference
+between Mr. Darwin and Lamarck.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_365_365" id="Footnote_365_365"></a><a href="#FNanchor_365_365"><span class="label">[365]</span></a> 'Origin of Species,' p. 62.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_366_366" id="Footnote_366_366"></a><a href="#FNanchor_366_366"><span class="label">[366]</span></a> 'Origin of Species,' p. 49.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_367_367" id="Footnote_367_367"></a><a href="#FNanchor_367_367"><span class="label">[367]</span></a> 'Origin of Species,' p. 63.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_368_368" id="Footnote_368_368"></a><a href="#FNanchor_368_368"><span class="label">[368]</span></a> 'Nature,' March 14 and 21, 1878.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_369_369" id="Footnote_369_369"></a><a href="#FNanchor_369_369"><span class="label">[369]</span></a> 'Origin of Species,' p. 65.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_370_370" id="Footnote_370_370"></a><a href="#FNanchor_370_370"><span class="label">[370]</span></a> 'Lessons from Nature,' p. 300.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span></p>
+<p class="subhead1"><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII.</p>
+
+<p class="subhead3">THE CASE OF THE MADEIRA BEETLES AS ILLUSTRATING THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN
+THE EVOLUTION OF LAMARCK AND OF MR. CHARLES DARWIN&mdash;CONCLUSION.</p>
+
+
+<p>An island of no very great extent is surrounded by a sea which cuts it
+off for many miles from the nearest land. It lies a good deal exposed to
+winds, so that the beetles which live upon it are in continual danger of
+being blown out to sea if they fly during the hours and seasons when the
+wind is blowing. It is found that an unusually large proportion of the
+beetles inhabiting this island are either without wings or have their
+wings in a useless and merely rudimentary state; and that a large number
+of kinds which are very common on the nearest mainland, but which are
+compelled to use their wings in seeking their food, are here entirely
+wanting. It is also observed that the beetles on this island generally
+lie much concealed until the wind lulls and the sun shines. These are
+the facts; let us now see how Lamarck would treat them.</p>
+
+<p>Lamarck would say that the beetles once being on this island it became
+one of the conditions of their existence that they should not get blown
+out to sea. For once blown out to sea, they would be quite certain to be
+drowned. Beetles, when they fly, generally fly for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span> some purpose, and do
+not like having that purpose interfered with by something which can
+carry them all-whithers, whether they like it or no. If they are flying
+and find the wind taking them in a wrong direction, or seaward&mdash;which
+they know will be fatal to them&mdash;they stop flying as soon as may be, and
+alight on <i>terra firma</i>. But if the wind is very prevalent the beetles
+can find but little opportunity for flying at all: they will therefore
+lie quiet all day and do as best they can to get their living on foot
+instead of on the wing. There will thus be a long-continued disuse of
+wings, and this will gradually diminish the development of the wings
+themselves, till after a sufficient number of generations these will
+either disappear altogether, or be seen in a rudimentary condition only.
+For each beetle which has made but little use of its wings will be
+liable to leave offspring with a slightly diminished wing, some other
+organ which has been used instead of the wing becoming proportionately
+developed. It is thus seen that the conditions of existence are the
+indirect cause of the wings becoming rudimentary, inasmuch as they
+preclude the beetles from using them; the disuse however on the part of
+the beetles themselves is the direct cause.</p>
+
+<p>Now let us see how Mr. Darwin deals with the same case. He writes:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"In some cases we might easily set down to disuse, modifications of
+structure which are <i>wholly</i> or <i>mainly</i> due to natural selection." Then
+follow the facts about the beetles of Madeira, as I have given them
+above. While we are reading them we naturally make up our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span> minds that
+the winglessness of the beetles will prove due either wholly, or at any
+rate mainly, to natural selection, and that though it would be easy to
+set it down to disuse, yet we must on no account do so. The facts having
+been stated, Mr. Darwin continues:&mdash;"These several considerations make
+me believe that the wingless condition of so many Madeira beetles is
+mainly due to the action of natural selection," and when we go on to the
+words that immediately follow, "combined probably with disuse," we are
+almost surprised at finding that disuse has had anything to do with the
+matter. We feel a languid wish to know exactly how much and in what way
+it has entered into the combination; but we find it difficult to think
+the matter out, and are glad to take it for granted that the part played
+by disuse must be so unimportant that we need not consider it. Mr.
+Darwin continues:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"For during many successive generations each individual beetle which
+flew least, either from its wings having been ever so little less
+perfectly developed, or from indolent habit, will have had the best
+chance of surviving from not having been blown out to sea; and on the
+other hand those beetles which most readily took to flight would
+oftenest be blown out to sea and perish."<a name="FNanchor_371_371" id="FNanchor_371_371"></a><a href="#Footnote_371_371" class="fnanchor">[371]</a></p>
+
+<p>So apt are we to believe what we are told, when it is told us gravely
+and with authority, and when there is no statement at hand to contradict
+it, that we fail to see that Mr. Darwin is all the time really
+attributing the winglessness of the Madeira beetles either to the <i>qu&acirc;</i>
+him <i>unknown causes</i> which have led<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span> to the "ever so little less perfect
+development of wing" on the part of the beetles that leave
+offspring&mdash;that is to say, is admitting that he can give no account of
+the matter&mdash;or else to the "indolent habit" of the parent beetles which
+has led them to disuse their wings, and hence gradually to lose
+them&mdash;which is neither more nor less than the "erroneous grounds of
+opinion," and "well-known doctrine" of Lamarck.</p>
+
+<p>For Mr. Darwin cannot mean that the fact of some beetles being blown out
+to sea is the most important means whereby certain other beetles come to
+have smaller wings&mdash;that the Madeira beetles in fact come to have
+smaller wings mainly because their large winged uncles and aunts&mdash;go
+away.</p>
+
+<p>But if he does not mean this, what becomes of natural selection?</p>
+
+<p>For in this case we are left exactly where Lamarck left us, and must
+hold that such beetles as have smaller wings have them because the
+conditions of life or "circumstances" in which their parents were
+placed, rendered it inconvenient to them to fly, and thus led them to
+leave off using their wings.</p>
+
+<p>Granted, that if there had been nothing to take unmodified beetles away,
+there would have been less room and scope for the modified beetles; also
+that unmodified beetles would have intermixed with the modified, and
+impeded the prevalence of the modification. But anything else than such
+removal of unmodified individuals would be contrary to our hypothesis.
+The very essence of conditions of existence is that there <i>shall be</i>
+something to take away<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span> those which do not comply with the conditions;
+if there is nothing to render such and such a course a <i>sine qu&acirc; non</i>
+for life, there is no condition of existence in respect of this course,
+and no modification according to Lamarck could follow, as there would be
+no changed distribution of use.</p>
+
+<p>I think that if I were to leave this matter here I should have said
+enough to make the reader feel that Lamarck's system is direct,
+intelligible and sufficient&mdash;while Mr. Darwin's is confused and
+confusing. I may however quote Mr. Darwin himself as throwing his theory
+about the Madeira beetles on one side in a later passage, for he
+writes:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"It is probable that <i>disuse has been the main agent in rendering organs
+rudimentary</i>," or in other words that Lamarck was quite right&mdash;nor does
+one see why if disuse is after all the main agent in rendering an organ
+rudimentary, use should not have been the main agent in developing
+it&mdash;but let that pass. "It (disuse) would at first lead," continues Mr.
+Darwin, "by slow steps to the more and more complete reduction of a
+part, until at last it became rudimentary&mdash;as in the case of the eyes of
+animals inhabiting dark caverns, and of the wings of birds inhabiting
+oceanic islands, which have seldom been forced by beasts of prey to take
+flight, and have ultimately lost the power of flying. Again, an organ
+useful under certain conditions, might become injurious under others,
+<i>as with the wings of beetles living on small and exposed
+islands</i>;"<a name="FNanchor_372_372" id="FNanchor_372_372"></a><a href="#Footnote_372_372" class="fnanchor">[372]</a> so that the rudimentary condition of the Madeira
+beetles' wings is here set down<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span> as mainly due to disuse&mdash;while above we
+find it mainly due to natural selection&mdash;I should say that immediately
+after the word "islands" just quoted, Mr. Darwin adds "and in this case
+natural selection will have aided in reducing the organ, until it was
+rendered harmless and rudimentary," but this is Mr. Darwin's manner, and
+must go for what it is worth.</p>
+
+<p>How refreshing to turn to the simple straightforward language of
+Lamarck.</p>
+
+<p>"Long continued disuse," he writes, "in consequence of the habits which
+an animal has contracted, gradually reduces an organ, and leads to its
+final disappearance....</p>
+
+<p>"Eyes placed in the head form an essential part of that plan on which we
+observe all vertebrate organisms to be constructed. Nevertheless the
+mole which uses its vision very little, has eyes which are only very
+small and hardly apparent.</p>
+
+<p>"The <i>aspalax</i> of Olivier, which lives underground like the mole, and
+exposes itself even less than the mole to the light of day, has wholly
+lost the use of its sight, nor does it retain more than mere traces of
+visual organs, these traces again being hidden under the skin and under
+certain other parts which cover them up and leave not even the smallest
+access to the light. The Proteus, an aquatic reptile akin to the
+Salamander and living in deep and obscure cavities under water, has,
+like the aspalax, no longer anything but traces of eyes
+remaining&mdash;traces which are again entirely hidden and covered up.<a name="FNanchor_373_373" id="FNanchor_373_373"></a><a href="#Footnote_373_373" class="fnanchor">[373]</a></p>
+
+<p>"The following consideration should be decisive.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Light cannot penetrate everywhere, and as a consequence, animals which
+live habitually in places which it cannot reach, do not have an
+opportunity of using eyes, even though they have got them; but animals
+which form part of a system of organization which comprises eyes as an
+invariable rule among its organs, must have had eyes originally. Since
+then we find among these animals some which have lost their eyes, and
+which have only concealed traces of these organs, it is evident that the
+impoverishment, and even disappearance of the organs in question, must
+be the effect of long-continued disuse.</p>
+
+<p>"A proof of this is to be found in the fact that the organ of hearing is
+never in like case with that of sight; we always find it in animals of
+whose system of organization hearing is a component part; and for the
+following reason, namely, that sound, which is the effect of vibration
+upon the ear, can penetrate everywhere, and pass even through massive
+intermediate bodies. Any animal, therefore, with an organic system of
+which the ear is an essential part, can always find a use for its ears,
+no matter where it inhabits. We never, therefore, come upon rudimentary
+ears among the vertebrata, and when, going down the scale of life lower
+than the vertebrata, we come to a point at which the ear is no longer to
+be found; we never come upon ears again in any lower class.</p>
+
+<p>"Not so with the organ of sight: we see this organ disappear, reappear,
+and disappear again with the possibility or impossibility of using eyes
+on the part of the creature itself.<a name="FNanchor_374_374" id="FNanchor_374_374"></a><a href="#Footnote_374_374" class="fnanchor">[374]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span>"The great development of mantle in the acephalous molluscs has rendered
+eyes, and even a head, entirely useless to them. These organs, though
+belonging to the type of the organism, and by rights included in it,
+have had to disappear and become annihilated owing to continued default
+of use.</p>
+
+<p class="subhead2a">. . . . . . . . . . .</p>
+
+<p>"Many insects which, by the analogy of their order and even genus,
+should have wings, have nevertheless lost them more or less completely
+through disuse. A number of coleoptera, orthoptera, hymenoptera, and
+hemiptera give us examples, the habits of these animals never leading
+them to use their wings."<a name="FNanchor_375_375" id="FNanchor_375_375"></a><a href="#Footnote_375_375" class="fnanchor">[375]</a></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>I will here bring this present volume to a conclusion, hoping, however,
+to return to the same subject shortly, but to that part of it which
+bears upon longevity and the phenomena of old age. In 'Life and Habit' I
+pointed out that if differentiations of structure and instinct are
+considered as due to the different desires under different circumstances
+of an organism, which must be regarded as a single creature, though its
+development has extended over millions of years, and which is guided
+mainly by habit and memory until some disturbing cause compels
+invention&mdash;then the longevity of each generation or stage of this
+organism should depend upon the lateness of the average age of
+reproduction in each generation; so that an organism (using the word in
+its usual signification) which did not upon the average begin to
+reproduce itself till it was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span> twenty, should be longer lived than one
+that on the average begins to reproduce itself at a year old. I also
+maintained that the phenomena of old age should be referred to failure
+of memory on the part of the organism, which in the embryonic stages,
+infancy, youth, and early manhood, leans upon the memory of what it did
+when it was in the persons of its ancestors; in middle life, carries its
+action onward by means of the impetus, already received, and by the
+force of habit; and in old age becomes puzzled, having no experience of
+any past existence at seventy-five, we will say, to guide it, and
+therefore forgetting itself more and more completely till it dies. I
+hope to extend this, and to bring forward arguments in support of it in
+a future work.</p>
+
+<p>Of the importance of the theory put forward in 'Life and Habit'&mdash;I am
+daily more and more convinced. Unless we admit oneness of personality
+between parents and offspring, memory of the often repeated facts of
+past existences, the latency of that memory until it is rekindled by the
+presence of the associated ideas, or of a sufficient number of them, and
+the far-reaching consequences of the unconsciousness which results from
+habitual action, evolution does not greatly add to our knowledge as to
+how we shall live here to the best advantage. Add these considerations,
+and its value as a guide becomes immediately apparent; a new light is
+poured upon a hundred problems of the greatest delicacy and difficulty.
+Not the least interesting of these is the gradual extension of human
+longevity&mdash;an extension, however, which cannot be effected till many<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span>
+many generations as yet unborn have come and gone. There is nothing,
+however, to prevent man's becoming as long lived as the oak if he will
+persevere for many generations in the steps which can alone lead to this
+result. Another interesting achievement which should be more quickly
+attainable, though still not in our own time, is the earlier maturity of
+those animals whose rapid maturity is an advantage to us, but whose
+longevity is not to our purpose.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The question&mdash;Evolution or Direct Creation of all species?&mdash;has been
+settled in favour of Evolution. A hardly less interesting and important
+battle has now to be fought over the question whether we are to accept
+the evolution of the founders of the theory&mdash;with the adjuncts hinted at
+by Dr. Darwin and Mr. Matthew, and insisted on, so far as I can gather,
+by Professor Hering and myself&mdash;or the evolution of Mr. Darwin, which
+denies the purposiveness or teleology inherent in evolution as first
+propounded. I am assured that such of my readers as I can persuade to
+prefer the old evolution to the new will have but little reason to
+regret their preference.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>P.S.&mdash;As these sheets leave my hands, my attention is called to a review
+of Professor Haeckel's 'Evolution of Man,' by Mr. A. E. Wallace, in the
+'Academy' for April 12, 1879. "Professor Haeckel maintains," says Mr.
+Wallace, "<i>that the struggle for existence in nature evolves new forms
+without design, just as the will of man produces new varieties in
+cultivation with design</i>." I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span> maintain in preference with the older
+evolutionists, that in consequence of change in the conditions of their
+existence, <i>organisms design new forms for themselves, and carry those
+designs out in additions to, and modifications of, their own bodies</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"The science of rudimentary organs," continues Mr. Wallace, "which
+Haeckel terms 'dysteleology, or the doctrine of purposelessness,' is
+here discussed, and a number of interesting examples are given, the
+conclusion being that they prove the mechanical or monistic conception
+of the origin of organisms to be correct, and the idea of any 'all-wise
+creative plan an ancient fable.'" I see no reason to suppose, or again
+not to suppose, an all-wise creative plan. I decline to go into this
+question, believing it to be not yet ripe, nor nearly ripe, for
+consideration. I see purpose, however, in rudimentary organs as much as
+in useful ones, but a spent or extinct purpose&mdash;a purpose which has been
+fulfilled, and is now forgotten&mdash;the rudimentary organ being repeated
+from force of habit, indolence, and dislike of change, so long as it
+does not, to use the words of Buffon, "stand in the way of the fair
+development" of other parts which are found useful and necessary. I
+demur, therefore, to the inference of "purposelessness" which I gather
+that Professor Haeckel draws from these organs.</p>
+
+<p>In the 'Academy' for April 19, 1879, Mr. Wallace quotes Professor
+Haeckel as saying that our "highly purposive and admirably-constituted
+sense-organs have developed without premeditated aim; that they have
+originated by the same mechanical process of Natural<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span> Selection, by the
+same constant interaction of Adaptation and Heredity [what <i>is</i> Heredity
+but another word for unknown causes, unless it is explained in some such
+manner as in 'Life and Habit'?] by which all the other purposive
+contrivances of the animal organization have been slowly and gradually
+evolved during the struggle for existence."</p>
+
+<p>I see no evidence for "premeditated aim" at any modification very far in
+advance of an existing organ, any more than I do for "premeditated aim"
+on man's part at any as yet inconceivable mechanical invention; but as
+in the case of man's inventions, so also in that of the organs of
+animals and plants, modification is due to the accumulation of small,
+well-considered improvements, as found necessary in practice, and the
+conduct of their affairs. Each step having been purposive, the whole
+road has been travelled purposively; nor is the purposiveness of such an
+organ, we will say, as the eye, barred by the fact that invention has
+doubtless been aided by some of those happy accidents which from time to
+time happen to all who keep their wits about them, and know how to turn
+the gifts of Fortune to account.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_371_371" id="Footnote_371_371"></a><a href="#FNanchor_371_371"><span class="label">[371]</span></a> 'Origin of Species,' p. 109.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_372_372" id="Footnote_372_372"></a><a href="#FNanchor_372_372"><span class="label">[372]</span></a> 'Origin of Species, p. 401.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_373_373" id="Footnote_373_373"></a><a href="#FNanchor_373_373"><span class="label">[373]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 242.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_374_374" id="Footnote_374_374"></a><a href="#FNanchor_374_374"><span class="label">[374]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 244.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_375_375" id="Footnote_375_375"></a><a href="#FNanchor_375_375"><span class="label">[375]</span></a> 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 245.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span></p>
+<p class="subhead1"><a name="APPENDIX" id="APPENDIX"></a>APPENDIX.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+<p class="subhead1">CHAPTER I.</p>
+
+<p class="subhead3">REVIEWS OF 'EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW.'</p>
+
+
+<p>Those who have been at the pains to read the foregoing book will,
+perhaps, pardon me if I put before them a short account of the reception
+it has met with: I will not waste time by arguing with my critics at any
+length; it will be enough if I place some of their remarks upon my book
+under the same cover as the book itself, with here and there a word or
+two of comment.</p>
+
+<p>The only reviews which have come under my notice appeared in the
+'Academy' and the 'Examiner,' both of May 17, 1879; the 'Edinburgh Daily
+Review,' May 23, 1879; 'City Press,' May 21, 1879; 'Field,' May 26,
+1879; 'Saturday Review,' May 31, 1879; 'Daily Chronicle,' May 31, 1879;
+'Graphic' and 'Nature,' both June 12, 1879; 'Pall Mall Gazette,' June
+18, 1879; 'Literary World,' June 20, 1879; 'Scotsman,' June 24, 1879;
+'British Journal of Hom&oelig;opathy' and 'Mind,' both July 1, 1879;
+'Journal of Science,' July 18, 1879; 'Westminster Review,' July, 1879;
+'Athen&aelig;um,' July 26, 1879; 'Daily News,' July 29, 1879; 'Manchester
+City<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span> News,' August 16, 1879; 'Nonconformist,' November 26, 1879;
+'Popular Science Review,' Jan. 1, 1880; 'Morning Post,' Jan. 12, 1880.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the most hostile passages in the reviews above referred to are
+as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"From beginning to end, our eccentric author treats us to a dazzling
+flood of epigram, invective, and what appears to be argument; and
+finally leaves us without a single clear idea as to what he has been
+driving at."</p>
+
+<p class="subhead2a">. . . . . . . . . . .</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Butler comes forward, as it were, to proclaim himself a
+professional satirist, and a mystifier who will do his best to leave you
+utterly in the dark with regard to his system of juggling. Is he a
+teleological theologian making fun of evolution? Is he an evolutionist
+making fun of teleology? Is he a man of letters making fun of science?
+Or is he a master of pure irony making fun of all three, and of his
+audience as well? For our part we decline to commit ourselves, and
+prefer to observe, as Mr. Butler observes of Von Hartmann, that if his
+meaning is anything like what he says it is, we can only say that it has
+not been given us to form any definite conception whatever as to what
+that meaning may be."&mdash;'Academy,' May 17, 1879, Signed Grant Allen.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Here is another criticism of "Evolution, Old and New"&mdash;also, I believe I
+am warranted in saying, by Mr. Grant Allen. These two criticisms
+appeared on the same day; how many more Mr. Allen may have written later
+on I do not know.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We find the writer who in the 'Academy' declares that he has been left
+without "a single clear idea" as to what 'Evolution, Old and New,' has
+been driving at saying on the same day in the 'Examiner' that
+'Evolution, Old and New,' "has a more evident purpose than any of its
+predecessors." If so, I am afraid the predecessors must have puzzled Mr.
+Allen very unpleasantly. What the purpose of 'Evolution, Old and New,'
+is, he proceeds to explain:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"As to his (Mr. Butler's) main argument, it comes briefly to this:
+natural selection does not originate favourable varieties, it only
+passively permits them to exist; therefore it is the unknown cause which
+produced the variations, not the natural selection which spared them,
+that ought to count as the mainspring of evolution. That unknown cause
+Mr. Butler boldly declares to be the will of the organism itself. An
+intelligent ascidian wanted a pair of eyes,<a name="FNanchor_376_376" id="FNanchor_376_376"></a><a href="#Footnote_376_376" class="fnanchor">[376]</a> so set to work and made
+itself a pair, exactly as a man makes a microscope; a talented fish
+conceived the idea of walking on dry land, so it developed legs, turned
+its swim bladder into a pair of lungs, and became an amphibian; an
+&aelig;sthetic guinea-fowl admired bright colours, so it bought a paint-box,
+studied Mr. Whistler's ornamental designs, and, painting itself a gilded
+and ocellated tail, was thenceforth a peacock. But how about plants? Mr.
+Butler does not shirk even this difficulty. The theory must be
+maintained at all hazards....<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[Pg 388]</a></span> This is the sort of mystical nonsense
+from which we had hoped Mr. Darwin had for ever saved us."&mdash;'Examiner,'
+May 17, 1879.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>In this last article, Mr. Allen has said that I am a man of genius,
+"with the unmistakable signet-mark upon my forehead." I have been
+subjected to a good deal of obloquy and misrepresentation at one time or
+another, but this passage by Mr. Allen is the only one I have seen that
+has made me seriously uneasy about the prospects of my literary
+reputation.</p>
+
+<p>I see Mr. Allen has been lately writing an article in the 'Fortnightly
+Review' on the decay of criticism. Looking over it somewhat hurriedly,
+my eye was arrested by the following:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Nowadays any man can write, because there are papers enough to give
+employment to everybody. No reflection, no deliberation, no care; all is
+haste, fatal facility, stock phrases, commonplace ideas, and a ready pen
+that can turn itself to any task with equal ease, because supremely
+ignorant of all alike."</p>
+
+<p class="subhead2a">. . . . . . . . . . .</p>
+
+<p>"The writer takes to his craft nowadays, not because he has taste for
+literature, but because he has an incurable faculty for scribbling. He
+has no culture, and he soon loses the power of taking pains, if he ever
+possessed it. But he can talk with glib superficiality and imposing
+confidence about every conceivable subject, from a play or a picture to
+a sermon or a metaphysical essay. It is the utter indifference to
+subject-matter, joined with the vulgar unscrupulousness of pretentious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[Pg 389]</a></span>
+ignorance, that strikes the keynote of our existing criticism. Men write
+without taking the trouble to read or think."<a name="FNanchor_377_377" id="FNanchor_377_377"></a><a href="#Footnote_377_377" class="fnanchor">[377]</a></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The 'Saturday Review' attacked 'Evolution, Old and New,' I may almost
+say savagely. It wrote: "When Mr. Butler's 'Life and Habit' came before
+us, we doubted whether his ambiguously expressed speculations belonged
+to the regions of playful but possibly scientific imagination, or of
+unscientific fancies; and we gave him the benefit of the doubt. In fact,
+we strained a point or two to find a reasonable meaning for him. He has
+now settled the question against himself. Not professing to have any
+particular competence in biology, natural history, or the scientific
+study of evidence in any shape whatever, and, indeed, rather glorying in
+his freedom from any such superfluities, he undertakes to assure the
+overwhelming majority of men of science, and the educated public who
+have followed their lead, that, while they have done well to be
+converted to the doctrine of the evolution and transmutation of species,
+they have been converted on entirely wrong grounds."</p>
+
+<p class="subhead2a">. . . . . . . . . . .</p>
+
+<p>"When a writer who has not given as many weeks to the subject as Mr.
+Darwin has given years [as a matter of fact, it is now twenty years
+since I began to publish on the subject of Evolution] is not content to
+air his own crude, though clever, fallacies, but presumes to criticize
+Mr. Darwin with the superciliousness of a young schoolmaster looking
+over a boy's theme, it is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[Pg 390]</a></span> difficult not to take him more seriously than
+he deserves or perhaps desires. One would think that Mr. Butler was the
+travelled and laborious observer of Nature, and Mr. Darwin the pert
+speculator, who takes all his facts at secondhand."</p>
+
+<p class="subhead2a">. . . . . . . . . . .</p>
+
+<p>"Let us once more consider how matters stood a year or two before the
+'Origin of Species' first appeared. The continuous evolution of animated
+Nature had in its favour the difficulty of drawing fixed lines between
+species and even larger divisions, all the indications of comparative
+anatomy and embryology, and a good deal of general scientific
+presumption. Several well-known writers, and some eminent enough to
+command respect, had expressed their belief in it. One or two far-seeing
+thinkers, among whom the place of honour must be assigned to Mr. Herbert
+Spencer, had done more. They had used their philosophic insight, which,
+to science, is the eye of faith, to descry the promised land almost
+within reach; they knew and announced how rich and spacious the heritage
+would be, if once the entry could be made good. But on that 'if'
+everything hung. Nature was not bound to give up her secret, or was
+bound only in a mocking covenant with an impossible condition: <i>Si c&aelig;lum
+digito tetigeris</i>; if only some fortunate hand could touch the
+inaccessible firmament, and bring down the golden chain to earth! But
+fruition seemed out of sight. Even those who were most willing to
+advance in this direction, could only regret that they saw no road
+clear. There was a tempting vision, but nothing proven&mdash;many would have
+said nothing provable. A few years<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[Pg 391]</a></span> passed, and all this was changed.
+The doubtful speculation had become a firm and connected theory. In the
+room of scattered foragers and scouts, there was an irresistibly
+advancing column. Nature had surrendered her stronghold, and was
+disarmed of her secret. And if we ask who were the men by whom this was
+done, the answer is notorious, and there is but one answer possible: the
+names that are for ever associated with this great triumph are those of
+Charles Darwin and Wallace."<a name="FNanchor_378_378" id="FNanchor_378_378"></a><a href="#Footnote_378_378" class="fnanchor">[378]</a></p>
+
+<p>I gave the lady or gentleman who wrote this an opportunity of
+acknowledging the authorship; but she or he preferred, not I think
+unnaturally, to remain anonymous.</p>
+
+<p>The only other criticism of 'Evolution, Old and New,' to which I would
+call attention, appeared in 'Nature,' in a review of 'Unconscious
+Memory,' by Mr. Romanes, and contained the following passages:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"But to be serious, if in charity we could deem Mr. Butler a lunatic, we
+should not be unprepared for any aberration of common sense that he
+might display.... A certain nobody writes a book ['Evolution, Old and
+New'] accusing the most illustrious man in his generation of burying the
+claims of certain illustrious predecessors out of the sight of all men.
+In the hope of gaining some notoriety by deserving, and perhaps
+receiving a contemptuous refutation from the eminent man in question, he
+publishes this book which, if it deserved serious consideration, would
+be not more of an insult to the particular man of science whom it
+accuses of conscious and wholesale plagiarism [there is no such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[Pg 392]</a></span>
+accusation in 'Evolution, Old and New'] than it would be to men of
+science in general for requiring such elementary instruction on some of
+the most famous literature in science from an upstart ignoramus, who,
+until two or three years ago, considered himself a painter by
+profession."&mdash;'Nature,' Jan. 27, 1881.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>In a subsequent letter to 'Nature,' Mr. Romanes said he had been "acting
+the part of policeman" by writing as he had done. Any unscrupulous
+reviewer may call himself a policeman if he likes, but he must not
+expect those whom he assails to recognize his pretensions. 'Evolution,
+Old and New,' was not written for the kind of people whom Mr. Romanes
+calls men of science; if "men of science" means men like Mr. Romanes, I
+trust they say well who maintain that I am not a man of science; I
+believe the men to whom Mr. Romanes refers to be men, not of that kind
+of science which desires to know, but of that kind whose aim is to
+thrust itself upon the public as actually knowing. 'Evolution, Old and
+New,' could be of no use to these; certainly, it was not intended as an
+insult to them, but if they are insulted by it, I do not know that I am
+sorry, for I value their antipathy and opposition as much as I should
+dislike their approbation: of one thing, however, I am certain&mdash;namely,
+that before 'Evolution, Old and New,' was written, Professors Huxley and
+Tyndall, for example, knew very little of the earlier history of
+Evolution. Professor Huxley, in his article on Evolution in the ninth
+edition of the 'Encyclop&aelig;dia Britannica,' published in 1878, says of the
+two great pioneers of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[Pg 393]</a></span> Evolution, that Buffon "contributed nothing to
+the general doctrine of Evolution,"<a name="FNanchor_379_379" id="FNanchor_379_379"></a><a href="#Footnote_379_379" class="fnanchor">[379]</a> and that Erasmus Darwin "can
+hardly be said to have made any real advance on his predecessors."<a name="FNanchor_380_380" id="FNanchor_380_380"></a><a href="#Footnote_380_380" class="fnanchor">[380]</a></p>
+
+<p>Professor Haeckel evidently knew little of Erasmus Darwin, and still
+less, apparently, about Buffon.<a name="FNanchor_381_381" id="FNanchor_381_381"></a><a href="#Footnote_381_381" class="fnanchor">[381]</a> Professor Tyndall,<a name="FNanchor_382_382" id="FNanchor_382_382"></a><a href="#Footnote_382_382" class="fnanchor">[382]</a> in 1878,
+spoke of Evolution as "Darwin's theory"; and I have just read Mr. Grant
+Allen as saying that Evolutionism "is an almost exclusively English
+impulse."<a name="FNanchor_383_383" id="FNanchor_383_383"></a><a href="#Footnote_383_383" class="fnanchor">[383]</a></p>
+
+<p>Since 'Evolution, Old and New,' was published, I have observed several
+of the so-called men of science&mdash;among them Professor Huxley and Mr.
+Romanes&mdash;airing Buffon; but I never observed any of them do this till
+within the last three years. I maintain that "men of science" were, and
+still are, very ignorant concerning the history of Evolution; but,
+whether they were or were not, I did not write 'Evolution, Old and New,'
+for them; I wrote for the general public, who have been kind enough to
+testify their appreciation of it in a sufficiently practical manner.</p>
+
+<p>The way in which Mr. Charles Darwin met 'Evolution, Old and New,' has
+been so fully dealt with in my book, 'Unconscious Memory;' in the
+'Athen&aelig;um,' Jan. 31, 1880; the 'St. James's Gazette,' Dec. 8, 1880; and
+'Nature,' Feb. 3, 1881, that I need not return to it here, more
+especially as Mr. Darwin has, by his silence, admitted that he has no
+defence to make.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[Pg 394]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I have quoted by no means the moat exceptionable parts of Mr. Romanes'
+article, and have given them a permanence they would not otherwise
+attain, inasmuch as nothing can better show the temper of the kind of
+men who are now&mdash;as I said in the body of the foregoing work&mdash;clamouring
+for endowment, and who would step into the Pope's shoes to-morrow if we
+would only let them.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_376_376" id="Footnote_376_376"></a><a href="#FNanchor_376_376"><span class="label">[376]</span></a> See p. <a href="#Page_44">44</a>,
+and the whole of chap. <a href="#CHAPTER_V">v</a>.,
+where I say of this supposition, that "nothing could be conceived more
+foreign to experience and common sense."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_377_377" id="Footnote_377_377"></a><a href="#FNanchor_377_377"><span class="label">[377]</span></a> 'Fortnightly Review,' March 1, 1882, pp. 344, 345.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_378_378" id="Footnote_378_378"></a><a href="#FNanchor_378_378"><span class="label">[378]</span></a> 'Saturday Review,' May 31, 1879, pp. 682-3.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_379_379" id="Footnote_379_379"></a><a href="#FNanchor_379_379"><span class="label">[379]</span></a> P. 748.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_380_380" id="Footnote_380_380"></a><a href="#FNanchor_380_380"><span class="label">[380]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_381_381" id="Footnote_381_381"></a><a href="#FNanchor_381_381"><span class="label">[381]</span></a> See pp.
+<a href="#Page_71">71-73</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_382_382" id="Footnote_382_382"></a><a href="#FNanchor_382_382"><span class="label">[382]</span></a> 'Nineteenth Century' for November, pp. 360, 361.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_383_383" id="Footnote_383_383"></a><a href="#FNanchor_383_383"><span class="label">[383]</span></a> 'Fortnightly Review,' March, 1882.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[Pg 395]</a></span></p>
+<p class="subhead1">CHAPTER II.</p>
+
+<p class="subhead3">ROME AND PANTHEISM.</p>
+
+
+<p>Evolution would after all be a poor doctrine if it did not affect human
+affairs at every touch and turn. I propose to devote the second chapter
+of this Appendix to the consideration of an aspect of Evolution which
+will always interest a very large number of people&mdash;the development of
+the relation that may exist between religion and science.</p>
+
+<p>If the Church of Rome would only develop some doctrine or, I know not
+how, provide some means by which men like myself, who cannot pretend to
+believe in the miraculous element of Christianity, could yet join her as
+a conservative stronghold, I, for one, should gladly do so. I believe
+the difference between her faith and that of all who can be called
+gentlemen to be one of words rather than things. Our practical working
+ideal is much the same as hers; when we use the word "gentleman" we mean
+the same thing that the Church of Rome does; so that, if we get down
+below the words that formulate her teaching, there are few points upon
+which we should not agree. But, alas! words are often so very important.</p>
+
+<p>How is it possible for myself, for example, to give people to understand
+that I believe in the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception or in the
+Lourdes miracles?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[Pg 396]</a></span> If the Pope could spare time to think about so
+insignificant a person, would he wish me to pretend such beliefs or
+think better of me if I did pretend them? I should be sorry to see him
+turn suddenly round and deny his own faith, and I am persuaded that, in
+like manner, he would have me continue to hold my own in peace;
+nevertheless, the duty of subordinating private judgment to the
+avoidance of schism is so obvious that, if we could see a practicable
+way of bridging the gulf between ourselves and Rome, we should be
+heartily glad to bridge it.</p>
+
+<p>I speak as though the Church of Rome was the only one we can look to. I
+do not see how it is easy to dispute this. Protestantism has been tried
+and failed; it has long ceased to grow, but it has by no means ceased to
+disintegrate. Note the manner in which it is torn asunder by
+dissensions, and the rancour which these dissensions engender&mdash;a rancour
+which finds its way into the political and social life of Europe, with
+incalculable damage to the health and well-being of the world. Who can
+doubt but that there will be a split even in the Church of England ere
+so many years are over? Protestantism is like one of those drops of
+glass which tend to split up into minuter and minuter fragments the
+moment the bond that united them has been removed. It is as though the
+force of gravity had lost its hold, and a universal power of repulsion
+taken the place of attraction. This may, perhaps, come about some day in
+the material as well as in the spiritual and political world, but the
+spirit of the age is as yet one of aggregation;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[Pg 397]</a></span> the spirit of
+Protestantism is one of disintegration. I maintain, therefore, that it
+is not likely to be permanent.</p>
+
+<p>All the great powers of Europe have from numberless distinct tribes
+become first a few kingdoms or dukedoms, then two or three nations, and
+now homogeneous wholes, so that there is no chance of their further
+dismemberment through internal discontent; a process which has been
+going on for so many hundreds of years all over Europe is not likely to
+be arrested without ample warning. True, during the Roman Empire the
+world was practically bonded together, yet broke in pieces again; but
+this, I imagine, was because the bonding was prophetic and superficial
+rather than genuine. Nature very commonly makes one or two false starts,
+and misses her aim a time or two before she hits it. She nearly hit it
+in the time of Alexander the Great, but this was a short-lived success;
+in the case of the Roman Empire she succeeded better and for longer
+together. Where Nature has once or twice hit her mark as near as this
+she will commonly hit it outright eventually; the disruption of the
+Roman Empire, therefore, does not militate against the supposition that
+the normal condition of right-minded people is one which tends towards
+aggregation, or, in other words, towards compromise and the merging of
+much of one's own individuality for the sake of union and concerted
+action.</p>
+
+<p>See, again, how Rome herself, within the limits of Italy, was an
+aggregation, an aggregation which has now within these last few years
+come together again after centuries of disruption; all middle-aged men
+have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[Pg 398]</a></span> seen many small countries come together in their own lifetime,
+while in America a gigantic attempt at disruption has completely failed.
+Success will, of course, sometimes attend disruption, but on the whole
+the balance inclines strongly in favour of aggregation and homogeneity;
+analogy points in the direction of supposing that the great civilized
+nations of Europe, as they are the coalition of subordinate provinces,
+so must coalesce themselves also to form a larger, but single empire.
+Wars will then cease, and surely anything that seems likely to tend
+towards so desirable an end deserves respectful consideration.</p>
+
+<p>The Church of Rome is essentially a unifier. It is a great thing that
+nations should have so much in common as the acknowledgment of the same
+tribunal for the settlement of spiritual and religious questions, and
+there is no head under which Christendom can unite with as little
+disturbance as under Rome. Nothing more tends to keep men apart than
+religious differences; this certainly ought not to be the case, but it
+no less certainly is, and therefore we should strain many points and
+subordinate our private judgment to a very considerable extent if called
+upon to do so. A man, under these circumstances, is right in saying he
+believes in much that he does not believe in. Nevertheless there are
+limits to this, and the Church of Rome requires more of us at present
+than we can by any means bring ourselves into assenting to.</p>
+
+<p>It may be asked, Why have a Church at all? Why not unite in community of
+negation rather than of assertion? When I wrote 'Evolution, Old and
+New,' three<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[Pg 399]</a></span> years ago, I thought, as now, that the only possible Church
+must be a development of the Church of Rome; and seeing no chance of
+agreement between avowed free-thinkers, like myself, and Rome (for I
+believed Rome immovable), I leaned towards absolute negation as the best
+chance for unity among civilized nations; but even then, I expressed
+myself as "having a strong feeling as though Professor Mivart's
+conclusion is true, that 'the material universe is always and everywhere
+sustained and directed by an infinite cause, for which to us the word
+mind is the least inadequate and misleading symbol.'"<a name="FNanchor_384_384" id="FNanchor_384_384"></a><a href="#Footnote_384_384" class="fnanchor">[384]</a></p>
+
+<p>I had hardly finished 'Evolution, Old and New,' before I began to deal
+with this question according to my lights, in a series of articles upon
+God<a name="FNanchor_385_385" id="FNanchor_385_385"></a><a href="#Footnote_385_385" class="fnanchor">[385]</a> which appeared in the 'Examiner' during the summer of 1879, and
+I returned to the same matter more than once in 'Unconscious Memory,' my
+next succeeding work. The articles I intend recasting and rewriting, as
+they go upon a false assumption; but subsequent reflection has only
+confirmed me in the general result I arrived at&mdash;namely, the
+omnipresence of mind in the universe.</p>
+
+<p>I have therefore come to see that we can go farther than negation, and
+in this case&mdash;a positive expression of faith as regards an invisible
+universe of some sort being possible&mdash;a Church of some sort is also
+possible, which shall formulate and express the general convictions as
+regards man's position in respect of this faith. I think<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[Pg 400]</a></span> the instinct
+which has led so many countries towards a double legislative chamber,
+and ourselves, till at any rate quite recently, to a double system of
+jurisprudence, law and equity, was not arrived at without having passed
+through the stages of reason and reflection. There are a variety of
+delicate, almost intangible, questions which belong rather to conscience
+than to law, and for which a Church is a fitter tribunal&mdash;at any rate
+for many ages hence&mdash;than a parliament or law court. There is room,
+therefore, for both a State and a Church, each of which should be
+influenced by the action of the other.</p>
+
+<p>I do not say that I personally should like to see the Church of Rome as
+at present constituted in the position which I should be glad to see
+attained by an ideal Church. If it were in that position I would attack
+it to the utmost of my power; but I have little hesitation in thinking
+that the world with a very possible feasible Church, would be better
+than the world with no Church at all; and, if so, I have still less
+hesitation in concluding, for the reasons already given, that it is to
+Rome we must turn as the source from which the Church of the future is
+to be evolved, if it is to come at all.</p>
+
+<p>For the new, if it is to strike deep root and be permanent, must grow
+out of the old, without too violent a transition. Some violence there
+will always be, even in the kindliest birth; but the less the better,
+and a leap greater than the one from Judaism to Christianity is not
+desirable, even if it were possible. As a free-thinker, therefore, but
+also as one who wishes to take a practical view of the manner in which
+things will, and ought to go, I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[Pg 401]</a></span> neither expect to see the religions of
+the world come once for all to an end with the belief in
+Christianity&mdash;which to me is tantamount to saying with Rome&mdash;nor am I at
+all sure that such a consummation is more desirable than likely to come
+about. The ultimate fight will, I believe, be between Rome and
+Pantheism; and the sooner the two contending parties can be ranged into
+their opposite camps by the extinction of all intermediate creeds, the
+sooner will an issue of some sort be arrived at. This will not happen in
+our time, but we should work towards it.</p>
+
+<p>When it arrives, what is to happen? Is Pantheism to absorb Rome, and, if
+so, what sort of a religious formula is to be the result? or is Rome so
+to modify her dogmas that the Pantheist can join her without doing too
+much violence to his convictions? We who are outside the Church's pale
+are in the habit of thinking that she will make little if any advances
+in our direction. The dream of a Pantheistic Rome seems so wild as
+hardly to be entertained seriously; nevertheless I am much mistaken if I
+do not detect at least one sign as though more were within the bounds of
+possibility than even the most sanguine of us could have hoped for a few
+years back. We do not expect the Church to go our whole length; it is
+the business of some to act as pioneers, but this is the last function a
+Church should assume. A Church should be as the fly-wheel of a
+steam-engine, which conserves, regulates and distributes energy, but
+does not originate it. In all cases it is more moral and safer to be a
+little behind the age than a little in front of it; a Church, therefore,
+ought to cling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[Pg 402]</a></span> to an old-established belief, even though her leaders
+know it to be unfounded, so long as any considerable number of her
+members would be shocked at its abandonment. The question is whether
+there are any signs as though the Church of Rome thought the time had
+come when she might properly move a step forward, and I rejoice to
+think, as I have said above, that at any rate one such sign&mdash;and a very
+important one&mdash;has come under my notice.</p>
+
+<p>In his Encyclical of August 4, 1879, the Pope desires the Bishops and
+Clergy to restore the golden wisdom of St. Thomas Aquinas, and to spread
+it far and wide. "Vos omnes," he writes, "Venerabiles Fratres, quam
+enixe hortamur ut ad Catholic&aelig; fidei tutelam et decus, ad societatis
+bonum, ad scientiarum omnium incrementum auream Sancti Thom&aelig; sapientiam
+restituatis, et quam latissime propagetis." He proceeds then with the
+following remarkable passage: "We say the wisdom of St. Thomas. For
+whatever has been worked out with too much subtleness by the doctors of
+the schools, or handed down inconsiderately, whatever is not consistent
+with the teachings of a later age, or finally, is in any way <span class="smcap">not
+probable</span>, We in no wise intend to propose for acceptance in these
+days."<a name="FNanchor_386_386" id="FNanchor_386_386"></a><a href="#Footnote_386_386" class="fnanchor">[386]</a></p>
+
+<p>It would be almost possible to suppose that these words had been written
+inadvertently, so the Pope practically repeats them thus: "We willingly
+and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[Pg 403]</a></span> gratefully declare that whatsoever can be excepted with advantage,
+is to be excepted, no matter by whom it has been invented."<a name="FNanchor_387_387" id="FNanchor_387_387"></a><a href="#Footnote_387_387" class="fnanchor">[387]</a></p>
+
+<p>The passage just quoted is so pregnant that a few words of comment may
+be very well excused. In the first place, I cannot but admire the
+latitude which the Pope not only tolerates, but enjoins: he defines
+nothing, but declares point blank that if we find anything in St. Thomas
+Aquinas "not consistent with the assured teachings of a later age, or
+finally <span class="smcap">in any way not probable</span>"&mdash;(what is not involved here?)&mdash;we are
+"in no wise to suppose" that it is being proposed for our acceptance.
+But it is a small step from allowing latitude in accepting or rejecting
+the parts of St. Thomas Aquinas which conflict with the assured result
+of later discoveries to allowing a similar latitude in respect, we will
+say, of St. Jude; and if of St. Jude, then of St. James the Less; and if
+of St. James the Less, then surely ere very long of St. James the
+Greater and St. John and St. Paul; nor will the matter stop there. How
+marvellously closely are the two extremes of doctrine approaching to one
+another! We, on the one hand, who begin with <i>tabul&aelig; ras&aelig;</i> having made a
+clean sweep of every shred of doctrine, lay hold of the first thing we
+can grasp with any firmness, and work back from it. We grope our way to
+evolution; through this to purposive evolution; through this to the
+omnipresence of mind and design throughout the universe; what is this
+but God? So that we can say with absolute freedom from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[Pg 404]</a></span> <i>&eacute;quivoque</i> that
+we are what we are through the will of God. The theologian, on the other
+hand, starts with God, and finds himself driven through this to
+evolution, as surely as we found ourselves driven through evolution to
+the omnipresence of God.</p>
+
+<p>Let us look a little more closely at the ground which the Church of Rome
+and the Evolutionist hold in common. St. Paul speaks of there being "one
+body and one spirit," and of one God as being "above all, and through
+all, and in you all."<a name="FNanchor_388_388" id="FNanchor_388_388"></a><a href="#Footnote_388_388" class="fnanchor">[388]</a> Again, he tells us that we are members of
+God's body, "of his flesh and of his bones;"<a name="FNanchor_389_389" id="FNanchor_389_389"></a><a href="#Footnote_389_389" class="fnanchor">[389]</a> in another place he
+writes that God has reconciled us to himself, "in the body of his
+flesh,"<a name="FNanchor_390_390" id="FNanchor_390_390"></a><a href="#Footnote_390_390" class="fnanchor">[390]</a> and in yet another of the Spirit of God "dwelling in
+us."<a name="FNanchor_391_391" id="FNanchor_391_391"></a><a href="#Footnote_391_391" class="fnanchor">[391]</a> St. Paul indeed is continually using language which implies
+the closest physical as well as spiritual union between God and those at
+any rate of mankind who were Christians. Then he speaks of our "being
+builded together for an habitation of God through the spirit,"<a name="FNanchor_392_392" id="FNanchor_392_392"></a><a href="#Footnote_392_392" class="fnanchor">[392]</a> and
+of our being "filled with the fulness of God."<a name="FNanchor_393_393" id="FNanchor_393_393"></a><a href="#Footnote_393_393" class="fnanchor">[393]</a> He calls Christian
+men's bodies "temples of the Holy Spirit,"<a name="FNanchor_394_394" id="FNanchor_394_394"></a><a href="#Footnote_394_394" class="fnanchor">[394]</a> in fact it is not too
+much to say that he regarded Christian men's limbs as the actual living
+organs of God himself, for the expressions quoted above&mdash;and many others
+could be given&mdash;come to no less than this. It follows that since any man
+could unite himself to "the flesh and bones" of God by becoming a
+Christian, Paul had a perception of the unity at any rate of human life;
+and what Paul<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[Pg 405]</a></span> admitted I am persuaded the Church of Rome will not deny.</p>
+
+<p>Granted that Paul's notion of the unity of all mankind in one spirit
+animating, or potentially animating the whole was mystical, I submit
+that the main difference between him and the Evolutionist is that the
+first uses certain expressions more or less prophetically, and without
+perhaps a full perception of their import; while the second uses the
+same expressions literally, and with the ordinary signification attached
+to the words that compose them. It is not so much that we do not hold
+what Paul held, but that we hold it with the greater definiteness and
+comprehension which modern discovery has rendered possible. We not only
+accept his words, but we extend them, and not only accept them as
+articles of faith to be taken on the word of others, but as so
+profoundly entering into our views of the world around us that that
+world loses the greater part of its significance if we may not take such
+sayings as that "we are God's flesh and his bones" as meaning neither
+more nor less than what appears upon the face of them. We believe that
+what we call our life is part of the universal life of the Deity&mdash;which
+is literally and truly made manifest to us in flesh that can be seen and
+handled&mdash;ever changing, but the same yesterday, and to-day, and for
+ever.</p>
+
+<p>So much for the closeness with which we have come together on matters of
+fact, and now for the <i>rapprochement</i> between us in respect of how much
+conformity is required for the sake of avoiding schism. We find
+ourselves driven through considerations of great obviousness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[Pg 406]</a></span> and
+simplicity to the conclusion that a man both may and should keep no
+small part of his opinions to himself, if they are too widely different
+from those of other people for the sake of union and the strength gained
+by concerted action; and we also find the Pope declaring of one of the
+brightest saints and luminaries of the Church that we need not follow
+him when it is plainly impossible for us to do so. Is it so very much to
+hope that ere many years are over the approximation will become closer
+still?</p>
+
+<p>I have sometimes imagined that the doctrine of Papal Infallibility may
+be the beginning of a way out of the difficulty, and that its promoters
+were so eager for it, rather for the facilities it afforded for the
+repealing of old dogmas than for the imposition of new ones. The Pope
+cannot, even now, under any circumstances, declare a dogma of the Church
+to be obsolete or untrue, but I should imagine he can, in council, <i>ex
+cathedra</i>, modify the interpretation to be put upon any dogma, if he
+should find the interpretation commonly received to be prejudicial to
+the good of the Church: and if so, the manner in which Rome can put
+herself more in harmony with the spirit of recent discoveries, without
+putting herself in an illogical position, is not likely to escape eyes
+so keen as those of the Catholic hierarchy. No sensible man will
+hesitate to admit that many an interpretation which was natural to and
+suitable for one age is unnatural to and unsuitable for another; as
+circumstances are always changing, so men's moods and the meanings they
+attach to words, and the state of their knowledge changes; and hence,
+also, the interpretation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[Pg 407]</a></span> of the dogmas in which their conclusions are
+summarized. There is nothing to be ashamed of or that needs explaining
+away in this; nothing can remain changeless under changed conditions;
+and that institution is most likely to be permanent which contains
+provision for such changes as time may prove to be expedient, with the
+least disturbance. I can see nothing, therefore, illogical or that needs
+concealment in the fact of an infallible Pope putting a widely different
+interpretation upon a dogma now, to what a no less infallible Pope put
+upon the same dogma fifteen hundred, or even fifteen years ago; it is
+only right, reasonable, and natural that this should be so. The Church
+of England may have made no provision for the virtual pruning off of
+dogmas that have become rudimentary, but the Encyclical from which I
+have just quoted leads me to think that the Church of Rome has found
+one, and, in her own cautious way, is proceeding to make use of it. If
+so, she may possibly in the end get rid of Protestantism by putting
+herself more in harmony with the spirit of the age than Protestantism
+can do. In this case, the spiritual reunion of Christendom under Rome
+ceases to be impossible, or even, I should think improbable. I heartily
+wish that my conjecture concerning future possibilities is not
+unfounded.</p>
+
+<p>Scientists have been right in preaching evolution, but they have
+preached it in such a way as to make it almost as much of a
+stumbling-block as of an assistance. For though the fact that animals
+and plants are descended from a common stock is accepted by the greater
+and more reasonable part of mankind, these same people<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">[Pg 408]</a></span> feel that the
+evidence in favour of design in the universe is no less strong than that
+in favour of evolution, and our scientists, for the most part, uphold a
+theory of evolution of which the cardinal doctrine is that design and
+evolution have nothing to do with one another; the jar they raise,
+therefore, is as bad as the jar they have allayed.</p>
+
+<p>It has been the object of the foregoing work to show that those who take
+this line are wrong, and that evolution not only tolerates design, but
+cannot get on without it. The unscrupulousness with which I have been
+attacked, together with the support given me by the general public, are
+sufficient proofs that I have not written in vain.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_384_384" id="Footnote_384_384"></a><a href="#FNanchor_384_384"><span class="label">[384]</span></a> P. <a href="#Page_371">371</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_385_385" id="Footnote_385_385"></a><a href="#FNanchor_385_385"><span class="label">[385]</span></a> Published as "God the Known and God the Unknown" in 1909.
+(Fifield.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_386_386" id="Footnote_386_386"></a><a href="#FNanchor_386_386"><span class="label">[386]</span></a> "Sapientiam Sancti Thom&aelig; dicimus: si quid enim est a
+doctoribus scholasticis vel nimia subtilitate qu&aelig;situm, vel parum
+considerate traditum, si quid cum exploratis posterioris &aelig;vi doctrinis
+minus coh&aelig;rens, vel denique quoque modo non probabile, id nullo pacto in
+animo est &aelig;tate nostra ad imitandum proponi."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_387_387" id="Footnote_387_387"></a><a href="#FNanchor_387_387"><span class="label">[387]</span></a> "Edicimus libenti gratoque animo excipiendum esse
+quidquid utiliter fuerit a quopiam inventum atque excogitatum."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_388_388" id="Footnote_388_388"></a><a href="#FNanchor_388_388"><span class="label">[388]</span></a> Eph. iv. 3, 4, 5.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_389_389" id="Footnote_389_389"></a><a href="#FNanchor_389_389"><span class="label">[389]</span></a> Eph. v. 30.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_390_390" id="Footnote_390_390"></a><a href="#FNanchor_390_390"><span class="label">[390]</span></a> Col. i. 22.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_391_391" id="Footnote_391_391"></a><a href="#FNanchor_391_391"><span class="label">[391]</span></a> Rom. viii. 2.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_392_392" id="Footnote_392_392"></a><a href="#FNanchor_392_392"><span class="label">[392]</span></a> Eph. ii. 22.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_393_393" id="Footnote_393_393"></a><a href="#FNanchor_393_393"><span class="label">[393]</span></a> Eph. iii. 19.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_394_394" id="Footnote_394_394"></a><a href="#FNanchor_394_394"><span class="label">[394]</span></a> 1 Cor. vii. 19.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">[Pg 409]</a></span></p>
+<p class="subhead1"><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX"></a>INDEX</p>
+
+
+<p>
+ABORTION, neutralization of working bees an act of, <a href="#Page_250">250</a><br />
+<br />
+Accessory touches, varying Buffon on, <a href="#Page_92">92</a><br />
+<br />
+Accident, many of our best thoughts come thoughtlessly, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; profiting by, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; and discovery of theory connecting meteors with comets, <a href="#Page_53">53</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; shaking the bag to see what will come out, <a href="#Page_53">53</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; effects of, transmitted to offspring, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, <a href="#Page_224">224</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; and design, the line between these hard to draw, <a href="#Page_384">384</a><br />
+<br />
+Accidental variations thrown for as with dice, <a href="#Page_3">3</a><br />
+<br />
+Accumulation of variations, C. Darwin deals with the, and not with the origin of, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>, <a href="#Page_341">341</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; of small divergencies, Buffon on the, <a href="#Page_103">103</a><br />
+<br />
+Accurate, survival of fittest more accurate than Nat. Sel. and <i>sometimes</i> equally convenient, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a>, <a href="#Page_365">365</a><br />
+<br />
+Act of Parliament, Natural Selection compared to a certain kind of, <a href="#Page_358">358</a><br />
+<br />
+Age, old, the phenomena of, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_381">381</a><br />
+<br />
+Aggregation, the spirit of the age tends towards, <a href="#Page_397">397</a>, <a href="#Page_398">398</a><br />
+<br />
+Ahead, no organism sees very far, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a><br />
+<br />
+Aldrovandus, Buffon on the learned, <a href="#Page_93">93</a><br />
+<br />
+Alive, when we must not say that an animal is alive (to be retracted), <a href="#Page_279">279</a><br />
+<br />
+Allen, Grant, on 'Evolution, Old and New,' <a href="#Page_386">386-388</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on the decay of criticism, <a href="#Page_388">388</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; calls Evolutionism "an almost exclusively English impulse," <a href="#Page_393">393</a><br />
+<br />
+Alternations of fat and lean years, Buffon on, <a href="#Page_125">125</a><br />
+<br />
+Am&oelig;ba, the, did not conceive the idea of an eye and work towards it, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a><br />
+<br />
+Analogies, false, all words are apt to turn out to be, <a href="#Page_365">365</a><br />
+<br />
+Animals, contracts among, Dr. E. Darwin on, <a href="#Page_205">205</a><br />
+<br />
+Ape, the, and man, <a href="#Page_90">90</a><br />
+<br />
+Apes and monkeys, Buffon on, <a href="#Page_153">153</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; and children fall on all-fours at the approach of danger, <a href="#Page_312">312</a><br />
+<br />
+Apparentibus, <i>de non</i>, <i>et non existentibus, &amp;c.</i>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a><br />
+<br />
+Appearances, rather superficial, our only guide to classification, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a><br />
+<br />
+Appetency, Paley's argument against the view that structures have been developed through, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a><br />
+<br />
+Aristides, C. Darwin as just as, <a href="#Page_363">363</a><br />
+<br />
+Aristotle denied teleology, <a href="#Page_4">4</a><br />
+<br />
+Artificial and real foot, differences between, <a href="#Page_25">25</a><br />
+<br />
+Asceticism, virtue errs on the side of excess rather than on that of, <a href="#Page_35">35</a><br />
+<br />
+Ass, the, and horse, Buffon's pregnant passage on their relationship, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">[Pg 410]</a></span>Authority, a hard thing to weigh, <a href="#Page_253">253</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+BACON, F., on evolution, <a href="#Page_69">69</a><br />
+<br />
+Balzac, quotation from, on memory and instinct, <a href="#Page_67">67</a><br />
+<br />
+Bark, Erasmus Darwin's theory of, <a href="#Page_208">208</a><br />
+<br />
+Beaver, trowel incorporated into the beaver's organism, <a href="#Page_8">8</a><br />
+<br />
+Bees, neutralization of working, an act of abortion, <a href="#Page_250">250</a><br />
+<br />
+Beetles, Madeira, Lamarck and C. Darwin's views of their winglessness compared, <a href="#Page_373">373</a>, <a href="#Page_380">380</a><br />
+<br />
+Begin, How could the eye <i>begin</i>? <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a><br />
+<br />
+Beginnings, of complex structures, a difficulty in the way of natural selection, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; difficulty of accounting for, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; a matter of conjecture and inference, <a href="#Page_48">48</a><br />
+<br />
+Behind, more moral to be behind the age than in front of it, <a href="#Page_401">401</a><br />
+<br />
+Best, making the best of whatever power one has, <a href="#Page_50">50</a><br />
+<br />
+Bird, how birds became web-footed, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; a, will modify its nest a little, under altered circumstances, <a href="#Page_55">55</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Buffon on, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; nests, Dr. Erasmus Darwin's failure to connect the power to make them with memory, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; aquatic and wading, Lamarck on, <a href="#Page_305">305</a><br />
+<br />
+Bishop, and Ev&ecirc;que, common derivation of, <a href="#Page_355">355</a><br />
+<br />
+Blindfolded, we are so far, that we can see a few steps in front, but no more, <a href="#Page_44">44</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; us, C. Darwin has almost ostentatiously, <a href="#Page_346">346</a><br />
+<br />
+Blindly, forces interacting blindly, <a href="#Page_59">59</a><br />
+<br />
+Body and mind, Lamarck on, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>, <a href="#Page_339">339</a>, <a href="#Page_341">341</a><br />
+<br />
+Brain, Lamarck had brain upon the brain, <a href="#Page_36">36</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Buffon on the, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+Brevity may be the soul of wit, but, &amp;c., <a href="#Page_315">315</a><br />
+<br />
+Breeding, and feeding, <a href="#Page_222">222</a><br />
+<br />
+Brown-S&eacute;quard, his experiments on guinea-pigs' legs, <a href="#Page_303">303</a><br />
+<br />
+Buds, individuality of, Dr. Erasmus Darwin on the, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a><br />
+<br />
+Buffalo, Buffon on the, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+Buffon, profoundly superficial, <a href="#Page_34">34</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; <i>plus il a su, plus il a pu, &amp;c.</i>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; <i>dans l'animal il y a moins de jugement que de sentiment</i>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; ignorance concerning, <a href="#Page_61">61</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; memoir of, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on glory, genius, and style, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; ironical character of his work and method (<i>see</i> Irony), <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, &amp;c., <a href="#Page_171">171</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on the ass, horse, and zebra, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; would not play the part of Rousseau or Voltaire, <a href="#Page_81">81</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Sir W. Jardine on, and the Sorbonne, <a href="#Page_82">82</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; regards all animal and vegetable life as from one common source, <a href="#Page_90">90</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; if a single species has ever been found under domestication, &amp;c., <a href="#Page_91">91</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on plaisanterie, and the learned Aldrovandus, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; his compromise, <a href="#Page_92">92</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; accessory touches, <a href="#Page_92">92</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; "<i>especially</i>" the same, <a href="#Page_96">96</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; fluctuation of opinion an unfounded charge, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, &amp;c., <a href="#Page_164">164</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on the accumulation of small divergencies, <a href="#Page_103">103</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; began preaching evolution almost on his first page, <a href="#Page_104">104</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; chapter on the <i>d&eacute;g&eacute;n&eacute;ration des animaux</i>, equivalent to "on descent with modification," <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; difference of opinion between him and Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, <a href="#Page_105">105</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; probably did not differ from Lamarck, <a href="#Page_105">105</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">[Pg 411]</a></span>&mdash;&mdash; on direct action of changed conditions, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on man and the lower animals, <a href="#Page_108">108</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on classification, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on animals and plants, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on reason and instinct, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on final causes (the pig), <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on hybridism, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; rudimentary organs, <a href="#Page_120">120</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on animals under domestication, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, &amp;c., <a href="#Page_148">148</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; deals with these early, as giving him the best opportunities for illustrating the theory of evolution, <a href="#Page_276">276</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; approaches natural selection in his "by <i>some chance</i> common enough in Nature," <a href="#Page_122">122</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; preaching on the hare when he should have preached on the rabbit out of pure love of mischief, <a href="#Page_123">123</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; resumption of feral characteristics, <a href="#Page_123">123</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on the geometrical ratio of increase, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; alternation of fat and lean years, <a href="#Page_125">125</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; equilibrium of Nature, <a href="#Page_125">125</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; "au r&eacute;el," <a href="#Page_126">126</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on violent death, <a href="#Page_126">126</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on sensation, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on the interaction of organ and sense, <a href="#Page_127">127</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; the carnivora, <a href="#Page_126">126</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; his criterion of what name a thing is to bear, <a href="#Page_127">127</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; his criterion of perception and sensation, <a href="#Page_127">127</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on the unity of the individual, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; satirizes our habit of judging all things by our own standards, <a href="#Page_129">129</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; the diaphragm, <a href="#Page_129">129</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on the stock and the diaphragm, <a href="#Page_130">130</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; distinction between perception and sensation, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on the meninges, <a href="#Page_132">132</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on the brain, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on scientific orthodoxy and mystification, <a href="#Page_138">138</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on the relativity of science, <a href="#Page_140">140</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on nomenclature and knowledge, <a href="#Page_141">141</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on the genus <i>felis</i>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on the lion and the tiger, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on the animals of the old and new world, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on changed geographical distribution of land and water, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on extinct species, <a href="#Page_146">146</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; hates the new world, <a href="#Page_146">146</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on heredity and habit, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; approaches Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, <i>re</i> the Buffalo, Camel, and Llama, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on oneness of personality between parents and offspring, <a href="#Page_151">151</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on the organic and inorganic, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on apes and monkeys, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on the causes or means of the transformation of species, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on generic (as well as specific) differences, <a href="#Page_164">164</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on plants under domestication, <a href="#Page_167">167</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on pigeons and fowls, <a href="#Page_169">169</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on birds, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; the assistance he rendered to Lamarck, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Isidore Geoffroy's failure to understand, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Colonel, <a href="#Page_75">75</a><br />
+<br />
+Bulk, a <i>sine qu&acirc; non</i> for success in literature or science, <a href="#Page_315">315</a><br />
+<br />
+Bull running, Tutbury, and Erasmus Darwin, <a href="#Page_187">187</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+CAMEL, Buffon on the hereditary ills of the, <a href="#Page_161">161</a><br />
+<br />
+Cant, and rudimentary organs, <a href="#Page_38">38</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">[Pg 412]</a></span>Captandum, all good things are done ad, <a href="#Page_85">85</a><br />
+<br />
+Carnivora, Buffon on the, <a href="#Page_126">126</a><br />
+<br />
+Carriage, Dr. Erasmus Darwin's, <a href="#Page_181">181</a><br />
+<br />
+Cat, family, Buffon on the, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; with a mane and long tail, <a href="#Page_143">143</a><br />
+<br />
+Cataclysms, the good cells that get exterminated during the cataclysms of our own development, <a href="#Page_75">75</a><br />
+<br />
+Catastrophes, Lamarck on, <a href="#Page_277">277</a><br />
+<br />
+Causes, or "means," of modification, <a href="#Page_301">301</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; C. Darwin says that Buffon has not entered on the, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; C. Darwin gets us into a fog about, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+Change, under changed circumstances, Mr. Patrick Matthew on, <a href="#Page_318">318</a><br />
+<br />
+Charity, the greatest of these is, <a href="#Page_77">77</a><br />
+<br />
+Church, a, like a second chamber, <a href="#Page_400">400</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; the world better with than without, <a href="#Page_400">400</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; should be like the fly-wheel of a steam engine, <a href="#Page_104">104</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Circonstances</i> (<i>see</i> Conditions of Existence), Lamarck on, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a><br />
+<br />
+Circumstance, suiting power, a, Mr. Patrick Matthew on, <a href="#Page_318">318-321</a><br />
+<br />
+Classification, rather superficial appearances our best guide to, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Buffon on, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a><br />
+<br />
+Clear, an ineradicable tendency to make things, <a href="#Page_92">92</a><br />
+<br />
+Clifford, Professor, on "Design," <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a><br />
+<br />
+Climbing plants, the movements of, Dr. Erasmus Darwin on, <a href="#Page_209">209</a><br />
+<br />
+Coherency, the persistency of ideas the best argument in support of their legitimate connection, <a href="#Page_23">23</a><br />
+<br />
+Coleridge, on "Darwinising," <a href="#Page_21">21</a><br />
+<br />
+Common terms, our, involve the connection between memory and heredity, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; descent, the "hidden bond" of Lamarck, as also of C. Darwin, <a href="#Page_271">271</a><br />
+<br />
+Comparative anatomy, Lamarck on, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+Complex structures, the incipiency of, a difficulty in the way of the natural selection view of evolution, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a><br />
+<br />
+Compromise, Buffon's, <a href="#Page_92">92</a><br />
+<br />
+Conditions of existence, the very essence of condition involves that there shall be penalty in case of non-fulfilment, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>, <a href="#Page_376">376</a>, <a href="#Page_377">377</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; and the winglessness of Madeira beetles, <a href="#Page_373">373</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; according to C. Darwin, "include" and yet "are fully embraced by" natural selection, <a href="#Page_355">355</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; identical with "natural selection," <a href="#Page_351">351-354</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; &Eacute;tienne Geoffroy, and Lamarck on, <a href="#Page_326">326</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Buffon on the, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">difference between Buffon's and Lamarck's view of their action, <a href="#Page_105">105</a></span><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; direct action of changed, Buffon on the, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Lamarck on, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+Continuity in discontinuity, and <i>vice vers&acirc;</i>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a><br />
+<br />
+Contracts of animals, Dr. E. Darwin on the, <a href="#Page_205">205</a><br />
+<br />
+Contrivance, does organism show signs of this? <a href="#Page_2">2</a><br />
+<br />
+Convenient, not only <i>sometimes</i>, but always, more, <a href="#Page_365">365</a><br />
+<br />
+Corkscrew for corks, and lungs for respiration, Prof. Clifford on, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>. See also p. <a href="#Page_58">58</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; we should have grown a, if drawing corks had been important to us, <a href="#Page_7">7</a><br />
+<br />
+Creator, a, who is not an organism, unintelligible, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a><br />
+<br />
+Criticising, difficulty of, without knowing more than the mere facts which are to be criticised, <a href="#Page_172">172</a><br />
+<br />
+Criticism, Miss Seward's, on Dr. Darwin's "Elegy," <a href="#Page_189">189</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">[Pg 413]</a></span>&mdash;&mdash; Grant Allen on the decay of, <a href="#Page_388">388</a><br />
+<br />
+Crux, the, of the early evolutionist, <a href="#Page_35">35</a><br />
+<br />
+Cuttle-fish, natural selection like the secretion of a, <a href="#Page_332">332</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+DAMNATION, praising with faint, <a href="#Page_111">111</a><br />
+<br />
+Darwin, Charles, on the eye, denies design, <a href="#Page_8">8</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; declares variation to be the cause of variation, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_347">347</a>, <a href="#Page_369">369</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; and blind chance working on whither; the accumulation of innumerable lucky accidents, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; our indebtedness to, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_335">335</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; has adopted one half of Isidore Geoffroy's conclusion without verifying either, <a href="#Page_83">83</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on Buffon's fluctuation of opinion, <a href="#Page_97">97</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on Isidore Geoffroy, <a href="#Page_97">97</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; his assertion that Buffon has not entered on the "causes or means" of transformation, <a href="#Page_104">104</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; his meagre notice of his grandfather, <a href="#Page_196">196</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; his treatment of the author of the "Vestiges of Creation," <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; attributes the characteristics of neuter insects to natural selection, <a href="#Page_249">249</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; his treatment of Lamarck, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>, <a href="#Page_376">376</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; "great is the power of steady misrepresentation," <a href="#Page_251">251</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; his "happy simplicity" about animals and plants under domestication, <a href="#Page_276">276</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; his notice of Mr. Patrick Matthew in the imperfect historical sketch which he has prefaced to the "Origin of Species,"
+<a href="#Page_315">315</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; points of agreement between him and Lamarck, <a href="#Page_335">335-337</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; sees no broad principle underlying variation, <a href="#Page_339">339</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; dwells on the accumulation of variations, the origination of which he leaves unaccounted for, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>, <a href="#Page_341">341</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; his variations being due to no general underlying principle, will not tend to appear in definite directions, nor to many individuals at a time, nor to be constant for long together, <a href="#Page_342">342</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; speaks of natural selection as a cause of modification, while declaring it to be a means only, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; his explanation of this, <a href="#Page_384">384</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; his dilemma, as regards the "Origin of Species," <a href="#Page_346">346</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; declares the fact of variation to be the cause of variation, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_347">347</a>, <a href="#Page_369">369</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; if he had told us more of what Buffon, &amp;c., said, and where they were wrong, he would have taken a course, &amp;c., <a href="#Page_357">357</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on the ease with which we can hide our ignorance under a cloud of words, <a href="#Page_358">358</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; apologizes for having underrated the frequency and importance of variation due to spontaneous variability, <a href="#Page_358">358</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; his "Origin of Species" like the opinion of a lawyer who wanted to leave loopholes, or an Act of Parliament full of repealed and inserted clauses, <a href="#Page_358">358</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; accused of confusion and inaccuracy of thought, <a href="#Page_359">359</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; as just as Aristides himself, <a href="#Page_364">364</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; most candid literary opponent in the world, <a href="#Page_364">364</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; declares Nature to be the most important means of modification, and variation to be the cause of variations, <a href="#Page_369">369</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; like a will-o'-the-wisp, <a href="#Page_372">372</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">[Pg 414]</a></span>&mdash;&mdash; disuse, the main agent in reducing wings of Madeira beetles, <a href="#Page_377">377</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; how he and Lamarck treat the winglessness of Madeira beetles respectively, <a href="#Page_373">373-380</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; an example of his "manner," <a href="#Page_378">378</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; the way in which he met "Evolution, Old and New," <a href="#Page_393">393</a><br />
+<br />
+Darwin, Erasmus, never quite recognized design, <a href="#Page_39">39</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; ignorance concerning, <a href="#Page_61">61</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on reason and instinct, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; life of, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; in Nottingham market-place, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; and Dr. Johnson, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; and Tutbury bull running, <a href="#Page_187">187</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; his poetry about the pump, and illustration, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; should have given his evolution theory a book to itself, <a href="#Page_197">197</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; had no wish to see far beyond the obvious, <a href="#Page_197">197</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; must be admitted to have missed detecting Buffon's humour, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; did not attribute instincts and structures to memory pure and simple, <a href="#Page_198">198</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on the reasoning powers of animals, and on instinct, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; his failure to connect memory and instinct, as with birds' nests, <a href="#Page_201">201-203</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; failed to see the four main propositions which I contended for in "Life and Habit," <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on the analogies between animal and vegetable life, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on sensitive plants, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on the individuality of buds, and his theory of bark, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on the movements of climbing plants, <a href="#Page_209">209</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on the oneness of personality between parents and offspring, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">the embryo not a new animal, <a href="#Page_215">215</a></span><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on animals under domestication, <a href="#Page_223">223</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on the effects of accidents transmitted to offspring, <a href="#Page_224">224</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; sees struggle, and hence modification, turn mainly round three great wants, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on desire as a means of modification, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; by a slip approaches the error of his grandson, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on embryonic metamorphoses, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; believed animals and plants to be descended from a common stock, <a href="#Page_233">233</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; and Lamarck compared, <a href="#Page_257">257</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on the struggle of existence, and the survival of the fittest, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a><br />
+<br />
+Darwin, Mrs. Erasmus, death-bed of, <a href="#Page_178">178</a><br />
+<br />
+Darwin, Francis, mentioned, <a href="#Page_109">109</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; his interesting lecture, <a href="#Page_206">206</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; does not use the expression "natural selection," <a href="#Page_368">368</a><br />
+<br />
+Darwinising, Coleridge on, <a href="#Page_21">21</a><br />
+<br />
+Darwinism, the old Darwinism involves desire, invention, and design, <a href="#Page_58">58</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; modern, falling into disfavour, <a href="#Page_60">60</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; and evolution not to be confounded, <a href="#Page_360">360</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a><br />
+<br />
+Day, the portrait of, by Wright of Derby, <a href="#Page_180">180</a><br />
+<br />
+Death, violent, Buffon on, <a href="#Page_126">126</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; of Dr. Erasmus Darwin, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a><br />
+<br />
+Death-bed of Mrs. Erasmus Darwin, <a href="#Page_178">178</a><br />
+<br />
+Deed, illustration drawn from a very intricate, <a href="#Page_28">28</a><br />
+<br />
+Definite, with Lamarck the variations are, <a href="#Page_341">341</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>D&eacute;g&eacute;n&eacute;rations</i>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a><br />
+<br />
+Demand and supply, like power and desire, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">[Pg 415]</a></span>Demonstrative case, "this demonstrative case of neuter insects, &amp;c.," <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a><br />
+<br />
+Descent, with modification, spoken of as though synonymous with natural selection, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_356">356</a><br />
+<br />
+Design, and organism, shall we or shall we not connect these ideas? <a href="#Page_2">2</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Aristotle denied, Plato upheld, Haeckel on, <a href="#Page_4">4</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Prof. Clifford's denial of, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; does certainly involve a designer who has an organism, who can think, and make mistakes, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; a belief in both design and evolution, commonly held to be incompatible, <a href="#Page_9">9</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Sir W. Thomson and Sir J. Herschel on, <a href="#Page_11">11</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Paley on, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; light thrown by embryology on the method of, <a href="#Page_25">25</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; G. H. Lewes opposes, <a href="#Page_26">26</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; the three positions in respect to, taken by Charles Darwin, Paley, and the earlier evolutionists, <a href="#Page_31">31</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; the first evolutionists did not see that their view of evolution involved design, <a href="#Page_34">34</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; from within as much design as from without, <a href="#Page_36">36</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; was equivalent to theological design, with the early evolutionists, <a href="#Page_36">36</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; if each step is taken designedly, the whole is done designedly, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; and accident, the line between them hard to draw; shaking the bag, &amp;c., <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; instinct originated in, <a href="#Page_54">54</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; as much lost sight of with old-established forms of the steam-engine as with birds' nests or the wheel, <a href="#Page_55">55</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Dr. E. Darwin's failure to see that evolution involves design, <a href="#Page_195">195</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; we feel the want of, as much as we do of evolution, <a href="#Page_407">407</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; evolution not only tolerates, but cannot get on without, <a href="#Page_408">408</a><br />
+<br />
+Designer, "I believe in an organic and tangible designer of every complex structure," <a href="#Page_6">6</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; "where is he? show him to us," &amp;c., <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; the, of any organism, the organism itself, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a><br />
+<br />
+Desire and power, interaction of, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; and power, like wealth, <a href="#Page_222">222</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; as a means of modification, Dr. Erasmus Darwin on, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a><br />
+<br />
+Development, the history of organic, the history of a moral struggle, <a href="#Page_45">45</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; always due to making the best of the present, <a href="#Page_50">50</a><br />
+<br />
+Devils, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>,000, dancing a saraband on the point of a needle, <a href="#Page_216">216</a><br />
+<br />
+Dew drop, or lens, the, and Lord Rosse's telescope, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a><br />
+<br />
+Diaphragm, Buffon on the, <a href="#Page_129">129</a><br />
+<br />
+Dice, accidental variations thrown for as with, <a href="#Page_3">3</a><br />
+<br />
+Difference between animal and ordinary mechanism, <a href="#Page_24">24</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; the main, between the manufacture of tools and that of organs, <a href="#Page_39">39</a><br />
+<br />
+Dilemma, C. Darwin's, <a href="#Page_346">346</a><br />
+<br />
+Direct action of changed conditions, Buffon on the, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a><br />
+<br />
+Discontinuity in continuity, <a href="#Page_47">47</a><br />
+<br />
+Disease, accidents followed by, <a href="#Page_303">303</a><br />
+<br />
+Disintegration, Protestantism tends towards, <a href="#Page_397">397</a><br />
+<br />
+Distribution, geographical, changed, Buffon on, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a><br />
+<br />
+Disuse, and the winglessness of Madeira beetles, we are almost surprised to find that they are connected at all, <a href="#Page_375">375</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; the main agent in reducing the wings of Madeira beetles, <a href="#Page_377">377</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">[Pg 416]</a></span>&mdash;&mdash; some examples of the effect of, adduced by Lamarck, <a href="#Page_378">378</a><br />
+<br />
+Dog, Buffon on the, <a href="#Page_120">120</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Lamarck on the various breeds of the, <a href="#Page_297">297</a><br />
+<br />
+Domestication, a single case of a species formed under domestication sufficient to remove the <i>&agrave; priori</i> difficulty from a comprehensive theory of evolution, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; plants under, Buffon on, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Buffon on animals under, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, &amp;c., <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, &amp;c., <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, &amp;c., <a href="#Page_276">276</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; animals under, Dr. Erasmus Darwin on, <a href="#Page_223">223</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; animals under, Buffon on, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, &amp;c., <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_276">276</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; C. Darwin on, <a href="#Page_276">276</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; animals and plants under, Lamarck on, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; animals and plants under, Mr. Patrick Matthew on, <a href="#Page_324">324</a><br />
+<br />
+Door, the doing anything well will open the door for doing something else, <a href="#Page_51">51</a><br />
+<br />
+Ducks, our domesticated, why they cannot fly like wild ones, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>, <a href="#Page_309">309</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+EARN, "you are but doing your best to earn an honest living," <a href="#Page_29">29</a><br />
+<br />
+Ears are never found in a rudimentary condition, <a href="#Page_379">379</a><br />
+<br />
+Eat, or be eaten, <a href="#Page_177">177</a><br />
+<br />
+Effort, Paley's argument that structures have not been developed through, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; too much, as vicious as indolence, <a href="#Page_35">35</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; "neither too much nor too little," <a href="#Page_50">50</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Herculean, condemned, <a href="#Page_197">197</a><br />
+<br />
+Egyptian mummies, Lamarck on, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a><br />
+<br />
+Embryology, the light it throws upon the mode in which organisms have been designed, <a href="#Page_25">25</a><br />
+<br />
+Embryonic metamorphoses, Erasmus Darwin on, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a><br />
+<br />
+Embryonic development, Lamarck on, <a href="#Page_289">289</a><br />
+<br />
+Encyclical, the Pope's, on St. Thomas Aquinas, <a href="#Page_402">402</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+Endeavour, Paley's argument against the view that structures have been developed through, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a><br />
+<br />
+Endowment, the new orthodoxy, which is clamouring for, <a href="#Page_360">360</a><br />
+<br />
+English wines, Dr. Erasmus Darwin's preference for, <a href="#Page_175">175</a><br />
+<br />
+Environment. <i>See</i> Conditions of Existence<br />
+<br />
+Equilibrium, the, of Nature, Buffon on the, <a href="#Page_125">125</a><br />
+<br />
+Err, the power to, rated highly, <a href="#Page_29">29</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; "it is on this margin that we may err or wander," <a href="#Page_50">50</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; virtue ever errs on the side of excess, <a href="#Page_35">35</a><br />
+<br />
+Error, importance of, dependent on the distance, rather than the direction, <a href="#Page_50">50</a><br />
+<br />
+"Especially" the same, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a><br />
+<br />
+Ethiopian, the, can change his skin, if it becomes worth his while to try long enough, <a href="#Page_40">40</a><br />
+<br />
+Ev&ecirc;que and bishop, common derivation of, <a href="#Page_355">355</a><br />
+<br />
+Everlasting, God, how far, <a href="#Page_32">32</a><br />
+<br />
+Evolution, commonly held incompatible with design, <a href="#Page_9">9</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Paley, its first serious opponent in England, <a href="#Page_21">21</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Sir Walter Raleigh on, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; must stand or fall according as it rests on a purposive foundation or no, <a href="#Page_60">60</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; brief summary of its six principal stages, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Bacon on, <a href="#Page_69">69</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; the theory of, as apart from the evidence in support of it, <a href="#Page_332">332</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; C. Darwin and Lamarck are equally intent upon establishing the same theory of evolution, <a href="#Page_335">335-337</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; and Darwinism, not to be confounded, <a href="#Page_360">360</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">[Pg 417]</a></span>&mdash;&mdash; Rome and Pantheism meet in, <a href="#Page_403">403</a><br />
+<br />
+Evolutionists, the early, did not know that they accepted teleology, <a href="#Page_34">34</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; the early, saw design, only as design by the God of theologians, <a href="#Page_36">36</a><br />
+<br />
+Experience and instinct, Mr. Patrick Matthew on, <a href="#Page_322">322</a><br />
+<br />
+Extinct species, Lamarck on, <a href="#Page_277">277</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Buffon on, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a><br />
+<br />
+Eye, no creature that had nothing like an eye ever set itself to conceive one and grow one, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_387">387</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Paley asks "how will our philosopher get an eye?" <a href="#Page_46">46</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; of flat fish, Lamarck on the, <a href="#Page_307">307</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Lamarck on the, of underground and cave-inhabiting animals, <a href="#Page_378">378</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; disappear and reappear in the scale of organism according to the power of using them, <a href="#Page_379">379</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+FAITH, forms of, or faiths of form, &amp;c., <a href="#Page_339">339</a><br />
+<br />
+Familiarity, with a little, such superficial objections will be forgotten, <a href="#Page_367">367</a><br />
+<br />
+Far ahead, no organism ever saw an improvement a long way off and made towards it, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a><br />
+<br />
+Father, the man who could be father of such a son and retain his affection, &amp;c., <a href="#Page_76">76</a><br />
+<br />
+Factors, there have been two, of modification, one producing and the other accumulating variations, <a href="#Page_227">227</a><br />
+<br />
+Fecundity, alternate years of, Buffon on, <a href="#Page_125">125</a><br />
+<br />
+Feeding and breeding, <a href="#Page_222">222</a><br />
+<br />
+Feel, if plants and animals look as if they feel, let us say they feel, <a href="#Page_198">198</a><br />
+<br />
+Feeling, there is more feeling than reason in animals, <a href="#Page_51">51</a><br />
+<br />
+Feral characteristics, resumption of, Buffon on, <a href="#Page_123">123</a><br />
+<br />
+Final causes, the doctrine of, as commonly held in the time of the early evolutionists, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Buffon on, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+Fitness, the cause of, more important than the fact that fitness is commonly fit, and therefore successful, <a href="#Page_351">351</a><br />
+<br />
+Flat fish, Lamarck on the eyes of, <a href="#Page_307">307</a><br />
+<br />
+Fluctuation of opinion, C. Darwin on Buffon's, the charge refuted, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, &amp;c., <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a><br />
+<br />
+Fontenelle, on theories, <a href="#Page_22">22</a><br />
+<br />
+Foot, and model of foot, differences between, <a href="#Page_24">24</a><br />
+<br />
+Forms of faith, or faiths of form, &amp;c., <a href="#Page_339">339</a><br />
+<br />
+Four main points which the early evolutionists failed to see in their connection and bearing on each other, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><br />
+<br />
+Four main principles, the, which I contended for in "Life and Habit," <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_380">380</a>, <a href="#Page_381">381</a><br />
+<br />
+Fowls and pigeons, Buffon on, <a href="#Page_169">169</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+GARNETT, Mr. R., and "Darwinising," <a href="#Page_21">21</a><br />
+<br />
+Genius, Mr. Allen says I am a, <a href="#Page_388">388</a><br />
+<br />
+Gentleman, the Church of Rome means the same by the word as we do, <a href="#Page_395">395</a><br />
+<br />
+Geoffroy, &Eacute;tienne, how small a way he goes, <a href="#Page_196">196</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; and Isidore, trimmers, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on Buffon, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on conditions of existence, <a href="#Page_326">326</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; declares against Lamarck's hypothesis, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; his position, <a href="#Page_325">325-328</a><br />
+<br />
+Geoffroy, Isidore, on evolution and final causes, <a href="#Page_9">9</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on Buffon's fluctuation of opinion, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, &amp;c., <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; points out the difference between the views of Buffon and Lamarck, <a href="#Page_105">105</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">[Pg 418]</a></span>&mdash;&mdash; statement that Buffon's opinions fluctuated again refuted, <a href="#Page_166">166</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; and Lamarck's hypothesis, <a href="#Page_244">244-246</a>, <a href="#Page_329">329</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on Buffon, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; his position, <a href="#Page_329">329</a><br />
+<br />
+Genealogical order, Lamarck on, <a href="#Page_264">264</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; C. Darwin on, <a href="#Page_265">265</a><br />
+<br />
+Generation more remarkable than reason, Hume on, <a href="#Page_233">233</a><br />
+<br />
+Generic differences (as well as specific), Buffon on, <a href="#Page_164">164</a><br />
+<br />
+Genius, a supreme capacity for taking pains, <a href="#Page_76">76</a><br />
+<br />
+Geographical distribution, changed, Buffon on, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, &amp;c., <a href="#Page_164">164</a><br />
+<br />
+Geometrical ratio of increase, Buffon on, <a href="#Page_123">123</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Lamarck, on, <a href="#Page_280">280</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Patrick Matthew on, <a href="#Page_320">320</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a><br />
+<br />
+Germ of oak indistinguishable from that of a man, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+Germans, Buffon on the, <a href="#Page_93">93</a><br />
+<br />
+Glory "comes after labour if she can," &amp;c., <a href="#Page_76">76</a><br />
+<br />
+Go away, because their uncles, aunts, <a href="#Page_376">376</a><br />
+<br />
+God, embodied in living forms, and dwelling in them, <a href="#Page_31">31</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; how far everlasting, invisible, imperishable, omnipotent, &amp;c., <a href="#Page_32">32</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; the unseen parts of, are as a deep-buried history, <a href="#Page_33">33</a><br />
+<br />
+Goethe, as an evolutionist, <a href="#Page_71">71</a><br />
+<br />
+Gradations infinitely subtle, <a href="#Page_87">87</a><br />
+<br />
+Grant Allen, on "Evolution, Old and New," <a href="#Page_386">386-388</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on the decay of criticism, <a href="#Page_388">388</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; says that "Evolutionism is an almost exclusively English impulse," <a href="#Page_393">393</a><br />
+<br />
+Greyhound or racehorse, the well-adapted form of the, <a href="#Page_359">359</a><br />
+<br />
+Growth attended at each step by a felicitous tempering of two antagonistic principles, <a href="#Page_35">35</a><br />
+<br />
+Gueneau de Montbeillard, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+HABIT," "Life and. <i>See</i> "Life and Habit."<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; rudimentary organs repeated through mere force of, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Buffon on, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; a second Nature, Lamarck on, <a href="#Page_300">300</a><br />
+<br />
+Habits, or use, and organ, Lamarck on the interaction of, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a><br />
+<br />
+Haeckel, on design, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on Goethe as an evolutionist, <a href="#Page_71">71</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; does not appear to know of Buffon as an evolutionist, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_393">393</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; his surprising statement concerning Lamarck, <a href="#Page_73">73</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; his ignorance concerning Erasmus Darwin, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_393">393</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on Lamarck, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; A. R. Wallace's review of his "Evolution of Man," <a href="#Page_382">382</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a><br />
+<br />
+Hamlet, the "Origin of Species" like "Hamlet" without Hamlet, <a href="#Page_363">363</a><br />
+<br />
+Handiest, a man should do whatever comes handiest, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a><br />
+<br />
+Hare, Buffon on the, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+Hartmann's philosophy of the unconscious, and "Life and Habit," <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a><br />
+<br />
+Hearing, when we once reach animals so low as to have no organ of, we lose this organ for good and all, <a href="#Page_379">379</a><br />
+<br />
+Heredity and habit, Buffon on, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; only another term for unknown causes, unless the "Life and Habit" theory be adopted, <a href="#Page_384">384</a><br />
+<br />
+Hering, Professor, referred to, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; his theory as given in "Nature" by Ray Lankester, <a href="#Page_198">198-200</a><br />
+<br />
+Herschel, Sir John, compares natural selection to the Laputan method of making books, <a href="#Page_10">10</a><br />
+<br />
+Higgling and haggling of the market, <a href="#Page_50">50</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">[Pg 419]</a></span>History of the universe, each organism is a, from its own point of view, <a href="#Page_31">31</a><br />
+<br />
+Horse and ass, Buffon's most pregnant passage on the, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; and man, skeleton of the, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; and zebra, Buffon on the, example of irony, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a><br />
+<br />
+Hume, his saying that generation is more remarkable than reason, <a href="#Page_233">233</a><br />
+<br />
+Huxley, Professor, referred to, <a href="#Page_93">93</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; pointed out to Professor Mivart the difficulty in the way of natural selection, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; his ignorance concerning the earlier history of evolution, <a href="#Page_392">392</a>, <a href="#Page_393">393</a><br />
+<br />
+Hybridism, Buffon on, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a><br />
+<br />
+Hybrids, sterility of, Lamarck on, and C. Darwin on, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+IDEAS, the bond or nexus of our, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a><br />
+<br />
+Ignorance, the prevailing, concerning the earlier evolutionists, <a href="#Page_61">61</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; it is easy to hide our, under such expressions as "plan of creation," or natural selection, <a href="#Page_358">358</a><br />
+<br />
+Imitation, instinct not referable to, as maintained by Erasmus Darwin, <a href="#Page_202">202</a><br />
+<br />
+Immutability of species and design commonly accepted together, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a><br />
+<br />
+Improvements, small successive, in man's inventions, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a><br />
+<br />
+Inaccuracy of thought, C. Darwin accused of, <a href="#Page_359">359</a><br />
+<br />
+Incipiency, of complex structures, a difficulty in the way of the Natural selection view of evolution, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a><br />
+<br />
+Incorporate, the designer is, with the organism, <a href="#Page_30">30</a><br />
+<br />
+Increase, geometrical ratio of Buffon on the, <a href="#Page_123">123</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Lamarck on, <a href="#Page_280">280</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Patrick Matthew on, <a href="#Page_320">320</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a><br />
+<br />
+Indefinite, with C. Darwin the variations are, <a href="#Page_342">342</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+Indifference, I say I am more indifferent than I think I am, whether mind is or is not the least misleading symbol for the cause that sustains the universe, <a href="#Page_371">371</a><br />
+<br />
+Indirect action of conditions of existence according to Lamarck, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>. (<i>See</i> "Conditions of Existence")<br />
+<br />
+Individuality, Buffon on, <a href="#Page_128">128</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; of buds, Erasmus Darwin on the, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; our, a <i>consensus</i>, or full-flowing river, <a href="#Page_318">318</a><br />
+<br />
+Infallibility, possible results of the doctrine of Papal, <a href="#Page_406">406</a><br />
+<br />
+Insectivorous plants, Erasmus Darwin on, <a href="#Page_206">206</a><br />
+<br />
+Instep, ligament that binds the tendons of the, Paley on the, <a href="#Page_22">22</a><br />
+<br />
+Instinct, present, does not bar its having arisen in reason and reflection, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; returns to its earlier phase, <i>i. e.</i> to reason on the presence of the unfamiliar, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; and reason, Buffon on, <a href="#Page_110">110-116</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Darwin, Erasmus, on, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; not referable to imitation, as maintained by Erasmus Darwin, <a href="#Page_202">202</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; is reason become habitual, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; reason perfected and got by rote, <a href="#Page_256">256</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; and reason, Lamarck on, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; referred to experience and memory, by Patrick Matthew, <a href="#Page_322">322</a><br />
+<br />
+Insult, "Evolution, Old and New," not intended as an insult to men of science, <a href="#Page_392">392</a><br />
+<br />
+Interaction of want and power, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; of body and mind, Lamarck on the, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>, <a href="#Page_339">339</a>, <a href="#Page_341">341</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">[Pg 420]</a></span>Interesting, the more interesting the animal the more evolution Buffon puts into his account of it, <a href="#Page_84">84</a><br />
+<br />
+Intermediate forms, Lamarck on, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; C. Darwin, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a><br />
+<br />
+Inventions, small successive improvements in man's, and development of, analogous to that of organism, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a><br />
+<br />
+Irony, good-natured and the reverse, <a href="#Page_91">91</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; an apology for, and explanation how far it is legitimate, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Buffon's, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, &amp;c., <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+JARDINE, Sir W., on Buffon's character, <a href="#Page_82">82</a><br />
+<br />
+Johnson, Dr., and Erasmus Darwin, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a><br />
+<br />
+Joints, Paley on the human, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a><br />
+<br />
+Juggle, Paley's argument a juggle, unless man has had a <i>bon&acirc; fide</i> personal, and therefore organic designer, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+KNEE-PAN, Paley on the human, <a href="#Page_18">18</a><br />
+<br />
+Knowledge, nomenclature mistaken for, <a href="#Page_141">141</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+LABOUR, glory comes after, if she can, <a href="#Page_76">76</a><br />
+<br />
+Lamarck, had brain upon the brain, <a href="#Page_36">36</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; never quite recognized design, <a href="#Page_39">39</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Haeckel's surprising statement concerning, <a href="#Page_73">73</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; wherein he mainly differs from Buffon, <a href="#Page_105">105</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; memoir of, <a href="#Page_235">235</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; his connection with Buffon, as tutor to his son, &amp;c., <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; his daughters, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; his poverty and blindness, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Isidore Geoffroy on, bad caricature of his teaching, <a href="#Page_244">244-246</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Haeckel on, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; never seriously discussed, <a href="#Page_247">247</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; "the well-known doctrine of," C. Darwin's reference to, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>, <a href="#Page_376">376</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on the opposition his theory met with, <a href="#Page_252">252</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; too old to have begun his unequal contest, <a href="#Page_253">253</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on the feeling of animals, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; too theory-ridden, <a href="#Page_254">254</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; misled by Buffon (query), <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; took from Buffon without sufficient acknowledgment, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; as compared with Dr. Erasmus Darwin, <a href="#Page_257">257</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; like Dr. E. Darwin, sees struggle and modification turn mainly round three great wants, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_309">309</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; when and how he came over to the side of mutability, <a href="#Page_258">258</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; and the French translation of the "Loves of the Plant," <a href="#Page_259">259</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on comparative anatomy, <a href="#Page_266">266</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on species, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on conditions of existence (<i>circonstances</i>), <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on instinct, <a href="#Page_274">274</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on animals and plants under domestication, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on extinct species, <a href="#Page_277">277</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; anticipated Lyell in rejecting catastrophes, <a href="#Page_277">277</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on the geometrical ratio of increase and struggle for existence, <a href="#Page_280">280-282</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on embryonic development, <a href="#Page_289">289</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; the main principles which he supposes to underlie variations, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>, <a href="#Page_339">339</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; his contention that plants have neither actions nor habits, <a href="#Page_295">295</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on use and disuse, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307-309</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on the various breeds of the dog, <a href="#Page_297">297</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">[Pg 421]</a></span>&mdash;&mdash; habit a second nature, <a href="#Page_300">300</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; like Erasmus Darwin and Buffon, understood the survival of the fittest, <a href="#Page_301">301</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on the way in which serpents have lost their legs, <a href="#Page_303">303</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on wading and aquatic birds, <a href="#Page_305">305</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on the eyes of flat fish, <a href="#Page_307">307</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on man, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on a single instance of considerable variation under domestication, <a href="#Page_311">311</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on speech, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on the upright position of man and certain apes, <a href="#Page_313">313</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; his, and &Eacute;tienne Geoffroy's views on conditions of existence, <a href="#Page_326">326</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; his hypothesis, and Isidore Geoffroy, <a href="#Page_329">329</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Herbert Spencer on, <a href="#Page_330">330</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; desired to discover the law underlying variations, <a href="#Page_337">337</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; the extent to which he and C. Darwin take common ground, <a href="#Page_335">335-337</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on body and mind, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>, <a href="#Page_339">339</a>, <a href="#Page_341">341</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on his theory variations will be definite, will appear in large numbers of individuals at the same time, for long periods together, <a href="#Page_341">341</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; how he and C. Darwin treat the winglessness of Madeira beetles respectively, <a href="#Page_373">373-380</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on the eyes and ears of cave-inhabiting animals, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>, <a href="#Page_379">379</a><br />
+<br />
+Laputan method of making books, the, and natural selection, <a href="#Page_11">11</a><br />
+<br />
+Lawyer's deed, if we come across a very intricate, &amp;c., <a href="#Page_27">27</a><br />
+<br />
+Leopard, the, can change his spots if it becomes worth his while to try long enough, <a href="#Page_40">40</a><br />
+<br />
+Lewes, G. H., on embryology, <a href="#Page_25">25</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; his objection to the tentativeness with which the same errors are repeated generation after generation, <a href="#Page_26">26</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; his objection to C. Darwin's language concerning natural selection, <a href="#Page_346">346</a><br />
+<br />
+Lewes, G. H., on natural selection, <a href="#Page_348">348</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a>, <a href="#Page_359">359</a><br />
+<br />
+Life, some remarks about the criterion of, that I must retract, <a href="#Page_279">279</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; one Proteus principal of, <a href="#Page_320">320</a><br />
+<br />
+"Life and Habit," what I believe to have been its most important features, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; recapitulation of the main principle insisted on, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_380">380</a>, <a href="#Page_381">381</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; and Hartmann's philosophy of the unconscious, German review, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a><br />
+<br />
+Lifetime, considerable modifications effected during a single, <a href="#Page_304">304</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; the changes undergone by organisms during a single, Herbert Spencer, on, <a href="#Page_332">332-334</a><br />
+<br />
+Ligament, the, which binds down the tendons of the instep, <a href="#Page_21">21</a><br />
+<br />
+Living, Paley is but doing his best to earn an honest, <a href="#Page_29">29</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; forms of faith, or faiths of form, <a href="#Page_339">339</a><br />
+<br />
+Lines, no sharp can be drawn, <a href="#Page_47">47</a><br />
+<br />
+Lion and tiger, Buffon on the, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a><br />
+<br />
+Llama, Buffon on the hereditary ills of the, <a href="#Page_161">161</a><br />
+<br />
+Longevity, the principle underlying, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_380">380</a>, <a href="#Page_381">381</a><br />
+<br />
+Loopholes for escape, the "Origin of Species" full of, <a href="#Page_358">358</a><br />
+<br />
+"Loves of the Plants," French translation of the, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a><br />
+<br />
+Lungs for respiration, and corkscrew for corks, Professor Clifford on, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>. (<i>See</i> also p. <a href="#Page_58">58</a>)<br />
+<br />
+Lyell, Sir C., and Lamarck, <a href="#Page_277">277</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on the similarity between Lamarck's theory and Mr. Darwin's, <a href="#Page_336">336</a>, <a href="#Page_337">337</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+MACHINE, Paley declares animals to be neither wholly machines nor wholly not machines, <a href="#Page_14">14</a><br />
+<br />
+Madeira beetles, the ways in which Lamarck and C. Darwin would treat their winglessness, <a href="#Page_373">373-380</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">[Pg 422]</a></span>Maillet, de, referred to, <a href="#Page_70">70</a><br />
+<br />
+Mainspring, the true, of our existence lies not in these muscles, &amp;c., <a href="#Page_32">32</a><br />
+<br />
+Man, the designer of man, <a href="#Page_30">30</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; and horse, skeleton of the, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; and the ape, <a href="#Page_90">90</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; and the lower animals, Buffon on, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Lamarck on, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+Manner, the, is the man himself, <a href="#Page_77">77</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; "but this is Mr. Darwin's", <a href="#Page_378">378</a><br />
+<br />
+Manufacture, the, of tools and of organs, two species of the same genus, <a href="#Page_39">39</a><br />
+<br />
+Margin, there is a margin in every organic structure, &amp;c., <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on the margin of the self-evident the greatest purchase is obtainable, <a href="#Page_197">197</a><br />
+<br />
+Market, the higgling and haggling of the, <a href="#Page_50">50</a><br />
+<br />
+Martins, M., his life of Lamarck, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+Matter less important than the manner, <a href="#Page_77">77</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; and mind, inseparable, <a href="#Page_371">371</a><br />
+<br />
+Matthew, Mr. Patrick, his work on naval timber and arboriculture, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; extracts from, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Mr. C. Darwin on, <a href="#Page_315">315</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on animals and plants under domestication, <a href="#Page_324">324</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on will as influencing organism, <a href="#Page_320">320</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on the struggle for existence with survival of the fittest, <a href="#Page_320">320</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; and natural selection, <a href="#Page_323">323</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on instinct and memory, and on the continued personality of parents in offspring, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a><br />
+<br />
+Means, C. Darwin's dangerous use of this word, <a href="#Page_345">345</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; one <i>sine qu&acirc; non</i> for a thing is as much a means of that thing's coming about as anything else is, <a href="#Page_349">349</a><br />
+<br />
+Mechanism of animals, Paley on the, <a href="#Page_14">14</a><br />
+<br />
+Mechanism of animals, evidence of design in any ordinary, <a href="#Page_15">15</a><br />
+<br />
+Memory, and life and heredity, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198-203</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>, <a href="#Page_380">380</a>, <a href="#Page_381">381</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Professor Hering on, <a href="#Page_198">198-200</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Patrick Matthew on, <a href="#Page_322">322</a><br />
+<br />
+Meteoric, both want and power are, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a><br />
+<br />
+Meninges, Buffon on the, <a href="#Page_132">132</a><br />
+<br />
+Microcosm, each organism a history of the universe from its own point of view, <a href="#Page_31">31</a><br />
+<br />
+Microscope, illustration from successive improvements in the, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a><br />
+<br />
+Mind, "the least inadequate and misleading symbol," for the power that has designed organism, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_371">371</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; and body, Lamarck on, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>, <a href="#Page_339">339</a>, <a href="#Page_341">341</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; and matter inseparable, <a href="#Page_371">371</a><br />
+<br />
+Misfortune, take advantage of, <a href="#Page_51">51</a><br />
+<br />
+Misrepresentation, "great is the power of steady," <a href="#Page_251">251</a><br />
+<br />
+Missionaries should avoid trying to effect sudden modifications, <a href="#Page_183">183</a><br />
+<br />
+Mistake, the power to make, rated highly, <a href="#Page_29">29</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; importance of, depends on magnitude rather than on the direction, <a href="#Page_50">50</a><br />
+<br />
+Mivart, Professor, says that, "Mind is the least adequate and misleading symbol," &amp;c., <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_371">371</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; referred to, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; admits that his objection does not tell against the Lamarckian theory of evolution, <a href="#Page_343">343</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; points out that the admission of a principle underlying variations is fatal to C. Darwin's theory concerning natural selection, <a href="#Page_343">343</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on C. Darwin's "haphazard, indefinite variations," <a href="#Page_343">343</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; how Professor Huxley pointed out to him the objection to C. Darwin's theory concerning natural selection, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">[Pg 423]</a></span>&mdash;&mdash; asks what is natural selection? and declares it to be repudiated by its propounder, <a href="#Page_369">369</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; declares it to be "nothing," and a puerile hypothesis, <a href="#Page_370">370</a>, <a href="#Page_371">371</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; declares the causes of variation to be the causes of the distinction of species, <a href="#Page_370">370</a><br />
+<br />
+Model, artificial, of a foot, and true foot, difference between, <a href="#Page_24">24</a><br />
+<br />
+Modification. It is only on modification that reason reasserts itself, <a href="#Page_55">55</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; there have been two factors of, one producing variations, and the other accumulating them, <a href="#Page_227">227</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; arrived at by struggle round three great wants, Erasmus Darwin on, <a href="#Page_226">226-229</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Lamarck on the same, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; the cause of survival, not survival the cause of modification, <a href="#Page_302">302</a><br />
+<br />
+Moral, an organism is most, when looking a little ahead, but not too far, <a href="#Page_44">44</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; struggle, the history of organic development, the history of a, <a href="#Page_45">45</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; more, and safer, to be behind the age than in front of it, <a href="#Page_401">401</a><br />
+<br />
+Movement, Buffon's great criterion of sensation, <a href="#Page_127">127</a><br />
+<br />
+Mummies, Egyptian, Lamarck on, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a><br />
+<br />
+Murphy, Rev. J. J., mentioned, <a href="#Page_22">22</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; referred to, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a><br />
+<br />
+Mutability of species commonly held to be incompatible with a belief in design, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a><br />
+<br />
+Mystery-mongering, that Buffon wished to protest against, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a><br />
+<br />
+Mystification, scientific, and orthodoxy, Buffon on, <a href="#Page_138">138</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+NAIVELY, as Mr. Darwin naively adds, "<i>sometimes</i> equally convenient," <a href="#Page_354">354</a><br />
+<br />
+Natural selection, the essence of the theory is that the variations shall have been mainly accidental, <a href="#Page_7">7</a><br />
+<br />
+Natural selection, the unerring skill of, <a href="#Page_9">9</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Sir William Thomson and Sir John Herschel on, <a href="#Page_10">10</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Button, and, "by <i>some chance</i> common enough with Nature," <a href="#Page_122">122</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; spoken of as though synonymous with descent with modification, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_356">356</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; C. Darwin attributes the instincts of neuter insects to, <a href="#Page_249">249</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Mr. Patrick Matthew and, <a href="#Page_323">323</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; like the secretion of a cuttle-fish, <a href="#Page_332">332</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; G. H. Lewes's objection to C. Darwin's language concerning, <a href="#Page_346">346</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; if this is declared to be a cause, the fact of variation is declared to be the cause of variation, <a href="#Page_347">347</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; declared by C. Darwin to be a means of variation, <a href="#Page_347">347</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; treated as a cause, <a href="#Page_348">348</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; G. H. Lewes on, <a href="#Page_348">348</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; identity with "conditions of existence," <a href="#Page_351">351-354</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; according to C. Darwin, "fully embraces" and yet "is included in" conditions of existence, <a href="#Page_355">355</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; a cloak for want of precision of thought, and of substantial difference from Lamarck, <a href="#Page_358">358</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; "some have even imagined that it induces variability;" and small wonder, considering C. Darwin's language concerning it, <a href="#Page_362">362</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; C. Darwin's reply to those who have objected to the term, <a href="#Page_362">362-368</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; a cloak of difference from C. Darwin's predecessors, under which there lurks a concealed identity of opinion as to main facts, <a href="#Page_362">362</a>, <a href="#Page_363">363</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">[Pg 424]</a></span>&mdash;&mdash; "implies only the preservation of such variations as arise," &amp;c., <a href="#Page_363">363</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; admitted by C. Darwin to be a false term, <a href="#Page_364">364</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; the complaint is that the expression has been retained when an avowedly more accurate one is to hand, <a href="#Page_365">365</a>, <a href="#Page_366">366</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; only another way of saying Nature, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>, <a href="#Page_369">369</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; the dislike of it is increasing, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>, <a href="#Page_369">369</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Francis Darwin does not use the expression, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>, <a href="#Page_369">369</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; daily and hourly scrutinizing throughout the world, &amp;c., <a href="#Page_369">369</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; practically repudiated by C. Darwin himself, <a href="#Page_369">369</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Professor Mivart declares it to be "simply nothing," <a href="#Page_370">370</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; a "puerile hypothesis," 371<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; and not disuse, the true main cause of the winglessness of Madeira beetles, according to C. Darwin, <a href="#Page_374">374</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; <i>not</i> the main cause of the winglessness of Madeira beetles, according to C. Darwin, <a href="#Page_377">377</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; "combined probably with disuse," will account, according to C. Darwin, for the winglessness of Madeira beetles, <a href="#Page_375">375</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Naturalistes</i>, <i>le peuple des</i>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a><br />
+<br />
+Nature, the personification of comparatively venial, <a href="#Page_367">367</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; and natural selection the same thing, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>, <a href="#Page_369">369</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; the most important means of modification, and variation the cause of variation, <a href="#Page_369">369</a><br />
+<br />
+Neck, Paley on the human, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a><br />
+<br />
+Need, sense of, the main idea in connection with evolution that is left with the reader by the "Zoonomia," or "Philosophie Zoologique,"
+<a href="#Page_363">363</a><br />
+<br />
+Needle, 20,000 devils dancing a saraband on the point of a, <a href="#Page_216">216</a><br />
+<br />
+Nest, a bird will alter its nest a little, to meet altered circumstances, <a href="#Page_55">55</a><br />
+<br />
+Nests, birds', Dr. E. Darwin on, <a href="#Page_201">201</a><br />
+<br />
+Neuter insects, "the demonstrative case of neuter insects," &amp;c., <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a><br />
+<br />
+New countries, Buffon a hater of, <a href="#Page_146">146</a><br />
+<br />
+Nomenclature, mistaken for knowledge, <a href="#Page_141">141</a><br />
+<br />
+Nottingham market-place, Erasmus Darwin in, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+OAK and man, the germs of, indistinguishable, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; man may become as long-lived as the, <a href="#Page_382">382</a><br />
+<br />
+Obvious, Erasmus Darwin had no wish to see far beyond the, <a href="#Page_197">197</a><br />
+<br />
+Oken, alluded to, <a href="#Page_72">72</a><br />
+<br />
+Old age, the phenomena of, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_381">381</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; and new worlds, Buffon on the fauna of, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+One source for all life, Buffon on, <a href="#Page_91">91</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Erasmus Darwin on, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a><br />
+<br />
+Oneness of personality between parents and offspring, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Buffon on the, <a href="#Page_151">151</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Erasmus Darwin and Professor Hering on the, <a href="#Page_198">198-200</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Dr. E. Darwin's failure to grasp the whole facts in connection with this, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Dr. E. Darwin on, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Patrick Matthew on, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; mentioned, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>, <a href="#Page_380">380</a>, <a href="#Page_381">381</a><br />
+<br />
+Orang-outang, Buffon on the, <a href="#Page_156">156-159</a><br />
+<br />
+Organ and use. <i>See</i> "Use."<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; and sense, interaction of the, Buffon on, <a href="#Page_127">127</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; and faculty, Lamarck on, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br />
+<br />
+Organs are living tools, <a href="#Page_2">2</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; the manufacture of, and that of tools, two species of the same genus, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; are the expressions of mental phases, <a href="#Page_339">339</a>, <a href="#Page_341">341</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">[Pg 425]</a></span>Organic structures have a margin, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a><br />
+<br />
+Organic strictures and inorganic, Buffon on the, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+Organisms, have been developed as man's inventions have, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a><br />
+<br />
+"Origin of Species," the, cannot take permanent rank in the literature of evolution, <a href="#Page_62">62</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; has no <i>raison d'&ecirc;tre</i>, if natural selection is not a cause of variation, <a href="#Page_346">346</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; a piece of intellectual sleight of hand, <a href="#Page_346">346</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; compared to the advice of a lawyer who wanted to leave plenty of loopholes, or to a cobbled Act of Parliament, <a href="#Page_358">358</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; is "Hamlet" with the part of Hamlet cut out, <a href="#Page_363">363</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; most readers would say that it advocated natural selection as the most important cause of variation, <a href="#Page_363">363</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; and the "Zoonomia," or the "Philosophie Zoologique"; the one upholds natural selection, the other, sense of need, <a href="#Page_363">363</a><br />
+<br />
+Orthodoxy, scientific, and mystification, Buffon on, <a href="#Page_138">138</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; scientific, clamouring for endowment, <a href="#Page_360">360</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; dangers of, <a href="#Page_368">368</a><br />
+<br />
+Overseeing tends to oversight, <a href="#Page_197">197</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+PAINS, genius a supreme capacity for taking, <a href="#Page_76">76</a><br />
+<br />
+Painting, a man should do <i>something</i>, no matter what, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a><br />
+<br />
+Paley, quotations from, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; his argument a juggle, unless some one designed man, much as man designed the watch, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on ordinary mechanism, as showing design, <a href="#Page_15">15</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on the human neck, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on the patella, <a href="#Page_18">18</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on the joints, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; as a writer against evolution, <a href="#Page_21">21</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; on the ligament that binds the tendons of the instep, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; opposes the view that structures have been formed through appetency, endeavour or effort, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; we turn on him and say, Show us your designer, <a href="#Page_29">29</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; asks, How will our philosopher get an eye? 46<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; his "Natural Theology" written throughout at the "Zoonomia," <a href="#Page_195">195</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; never gives a reference when quoting an opponent, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a><br />
+<br />
+Pantheism and Rome will in the end be the two sole combatants, <a href="#Page_401">401</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; common ground held by Rome and Pantheism, <a href="#Page_403">403-405</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; of Paul, <a href="#Page_404">404</a><br />
+<br />
+Parents and offspring, oneness of personality between (<i>see</i> "Personality")<br />
+<br />
+Passions, of like passions, men of science are, with other pastors and prophets, <a href="#Page_253">253</a><br />
+<br />
+Patella, or knee-pan, Paley on the, <a href="#Page_18">18</a><br />
+<br />
+Paul, St., his pantheistic tendencies, <a href="#Page_404">404</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; we want to accept him literally, <a href="#Page_405">405</a><br />
+<br />
+Peace, the, that passeth understanding, <a href="#Page_35">35</a><br />
+<br />
+Perception and sensation, Buffon on the difference between, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a><br />
+<br />
+Personality, oneness of, between parents and offspring, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Buffon on the, <a href="#Page_151">151</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Erasmus Darwin and Professor Hering on the, <a href="#Page_198">198-200</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Erasmus Darwin's failure to grasp the whole conception, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Erasmus Darwin on the, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Patrick Matthew on the, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; mentioned, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>, <a href="#Page_380">380</a>, <a href="#Page_381">381</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">[Pg 426]</a></span>Personification, the, of Nature, comparatively venial, <a href="#Page_367">367</a><br />
+<br />
+Pessimism: "Which is the pessimist I or Mr. Darwin?" <a href="#Page_59">59</a><br />
+<br />
+Peuple des Naturalistes, le, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a><br />
+<br />
+"Philosophie Zoologique," summary of, <a href="#Page_261">261-314</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; the, leaves "sense of need" on the reader's mind; the "Origin of Species," natural selection, <a href="#Page_363">363</a><br />
+<br />
+Pig, Buffon on the, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+Pigeons and fowls, Buffon on, <a href="#Page_169">169</a><br />
+<br />
+Plaisanterie, Button's disclaimer of, <a href="#Page_93">93</a><br />
+<br />
+Planted upside down, the vertebrata regarded as vegetables, <a href="#Page_137">137</a><br />
+<br />
+Plants under domestication, Buffon on, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Dr. Erasmus Darwin, on the life of, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Lamarck's assertion that they have no action nor habits, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a><br />
+<br />
+Plato upheld teleology, <a href="#Page_4">4</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Plus il a su</i>, &amp;c., <a href="#Page_44">44</a><br />
+<br />
+Poem, a, by Dr. Erasmus Darwin, <a href="#Page_189">189</a><br />
+<br />
+Poetry, Dr. Erasmus Darwin's, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a><br />
+<br />
+Pope's shoes, scientists would step into the, if we would let them, <a href="#Page_360">360</a>, <a href="#Page_394">394</a><br />
+<br />
+Portrait of Mr. Day, author of "Sandford and Merton," <a href="#Page_180">180</a><br />
+<br />
+Potto, the missing forefinger of the, <a href="#Page_303">303</a><br />
+<br />
+Power and desire, interaction of, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a><br />
+<br />
+Praising, with faint damnation, <a href="#Page_111">111</a><br />
+<br />
+Prescience, need not extend over more than the next step, and yet the whole road may have been travelled presciently, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a><br />
+<br />
+Present, development due to a wise use of the, <a href="#Page_50">50-52</a><br />
+<br />
+Probable, whatever in the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas is not probable is to be rejected, <a href="#Page_402">402</a>, <a href="#Page_403">403</a><br />
+<br />
+Proficiency is due to design if each step was taken designedly, though the end was not far foreseen, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a><br />
+<br />
+Protestantism tends towards disintegration, <a href="#Page_396">396</a><br />
+<br />
+Proteus principle of life, one, <a href="#Page_320">320</a><br />
+<br />
+Pump, Erasmus Darwin's poetry about the, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a><br />
+<br />
+Purpose, instinctive actions were once done with a, <a href="#Page_54">54</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; spent or extinct, and rudimentary organs, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_383">383</a><br />
+<br />
+Purposive, if each step is purposive, the whole is purposive, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a><br />
+<br />
+Purposiveness: I maintain the lungs to be as purposive us the corkscrew, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+RACE, the runners in a, and natural selection, <a href="#Page_366">366</a>, <a href="#Page_367">367</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; significance of the words being used for a breed and a competition, <a href="#Page_366">366</a>, <a href="#Page_367">367</a><br />
+<br />
+Racehorse or greyhound, "the well-adapted forms of the," <a href="#Page_359">359</a><br />
+<br />
+Ranunculus aquatilis, Lamarck's passage on, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a><br />
+<br />
+Raleigh, Sir Walter, and evolution, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a><br />
+<br />
+Ray Lankester, Professor, on Hering's theory connecting memory and heredity, <a href="#Page_198">198-200</a><br />
+<br />
+Reason, there is less reason than feeling in animals, Buffon, <a href="#Page_51">51</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; perfected becomes instinct, but reasserts itself when the circumstances alter, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; and instinct, Buffon on, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Erasmus Darwin on, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201-205</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; a less remarkable faculty than generation, Hume on, <a href="#Page_233">233</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; and instinct, Lamarck on, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; declared to be incipient instinct, <a href="#Page_256">256</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>R&eacute;el</i>, <i>au</i>, Buffon's use of these words, <a href="#Page_126">126</a><br />
+<br />
+Relativity of the sciences, Buffon on the, <a href="#Page_140">140</a><br />
+<br />
+Religion, Buffon's appeals to, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">[Pg 427]</a></span>Reopen settled questions, animals cannot, serpents must have no more than four legs, <a href="#Page_303">303</a><br />
+<br />
+Resume earlier habits, the tendency to, on the approach of a difficulty, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a><br />
+<br />
+Retrogressive, Mr. Darwin's views of evolution retrogressive, <a href="#Page_66">66</a><br />
+<br />
+Revelation, Buffon's appeals to, against evolution, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a><br />
+<br />
+Reviews of "Evolution, Old and New," 385, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+Riches, the normal growth of, and evolution, <a href="#Page_222">222</a><br />
+<br />
+Roman Empire, the, prophetic, <a href="#Page_397">397</a><br />
+<br />
+Romanes, G. R., on "Evolution, Old and New," <a href="#Page_391">391-393</a><br />
+<br />
+Rome, Church of, means the same by "gentleman" as we do, <a href="#Page_395">395</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; I would join, if I could, <a href="#Page_395">395</a>, <a href="#Page_396">396</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; a unifier, <a href="#Page_398">398</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; the only source from which a church can come, <a href="#Page_398">398-401</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; and Pantheism, the ultimate fight will be between, <a href="#Page_401">401</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; points of agreement between Rome and Pantheists, <a href="#Page_403">403-405</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; may, and should get rid of Protestantism by outbidding it, <a href="#Page_407">407</a><br />
+<br />
+Rousseau, Buffon would not play part of, <a href="#Page_81">81</a><br />
+<br />
+Rudimentary organs, the crux of the early evolutionist in respect of design, <a href="#Page_34">34</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; are now mere cant formul&aelig;, force of habit, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_383">383</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; like the protuberance at the bottom of a tobacco-pipe, <a href="#Page_38">38</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Buffon would not accept them as designed, <a href="#Page_83">83</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Buffon on, <a href="#Page_120">120</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Professor Haeckel on, <a href="#Page_383">383</a><br />
+<br />
+Run, how did the winner come to be able to run ever such a little faster than his fellows, <a href="#Page_367">367</a><br />
+<br />
+Runners in a race and natural selection, <a href="#Page_366">366</a>, <a href="#Page_367">367</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+"SANDFORD and Merton," Miss Seward on the author of, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a><br />
+<br />
+Saints will commonly strain a point or two in their own favour, <a href="#Page_253">253</a><br />
+<br />
+<i>Saturday Review</i> on "Evolution, Old and New," <a href="#Page_389">389-391</a><br />
+<br />
+Savery, Captain, <a href="#Page_54">54</a><br />
+<br />
+Science, men of, of like passions with other priests and prophets, <a href="#Page_253">253</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; not a kingdom into which a poor man can enter easily, <a href="#Page_253">253</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; the leaders of will generally burke new-born wit unless, &amp;c., <a href="#Page_315">315</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; not of that kind which desires to know, <a href="#Page_392">392</a><br />
+<br />
+Scientific orthodoxy and mystification, Buffon on, <a href="#Page_138">138</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; danger of, <a href="#Page_360">360</a>, <a href="#Page_368">368</a><br />
+<br />
+Scramble, birds learned to swim through scrambling, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a><br />
+<br />
+Self-indulgence, virtue has ever erred rather on the side of, than on that of asceticism, <a href="#Page_35">35</a><br />
+<br />
+Sensation, Buffon on, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a><br />
+<br />
+Sense, "in one sense," 355<br />
+<br />
+Sensitive plants, Dr. E. Darwin on, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a><br />
+<br />
+Seriously, Buffon speaking, <a href="#Page_126">126</a><br />
+<br />
+Serpents, how it is that they have lost their legs, <a href="#Page_302">302</a><br />
+<br />
+Seward, Miss, her life of Erasmus Darwin, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+Shakspeare and Handel address the many as well as the few, <a href="#Page_81">81</a><br />
+<br />
+Shortest day, and shortest day but one, no difference perceptible between, <a href="#Page_48">48</a><br />
+<br />
+Skeletons, the, of man and of the horse, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+Skill, the unerring, of natural selection, <a href="#Page_9">9</a><br />
+<br />
+Siamese twins, desire and power compared to, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a><br />
+<br />
+Simplicity, happy, an example of, <a href="#Page_276">276</a><br />
+<br />
+Sisters, "his, and his cousins and his aunts," <a href="#Page_253">253</a><br />
+<br />
+Slit, a slit in one tendon to let another pass through, <a href="#Page_20">20</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">[Pg 428]</a></span>Something a man should do, no matter what, <a href="#Page_51">51</a><br />
+<br />
+Sometimes, "equally convenient" ("the survival of the fittest" with natural selection), <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a>, <a href="#Page_365">365</a><br />
+<br />
+Son, the people who can get good sons and retain their affection are the only ones worth studying from, <a href="#Page_76">76</a><br />
+<br />
+Sorbonne, the, and Buffon, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a><br />
+<br />
+Sorbonnes, never do like people who write in this way, <a href="#Page_143">143</a><br />
+<br />
+Specialists, embryos are, <a href="#Page_28">28</a><br />
+<br />
+Species, Buffon on the causes or means of transformation, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Lamarck on, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; clusters of, Lamarck on, <a href="#Page_288">288</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; C. Darwin on, <a href="#Page_289">289</a><br />
+<br />
+Specific characteristics vary more than generic, Lamarck on, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; C. Darwin on, <a href="#Page_288">288</a><br />
+<br />
+Speech, Lamarck on, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a><br />
+<br />
+Spencer, Herbert, on Lamarck's hypothesis, <a href="#Page_330">330</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; a follower of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, <a href="#Page_332">332</a><br />
+<br />
+Spent, or extinct purpose, and rudimentary organs, <a href="#Page_383">383</a><br />
+<br />
+Spontaneous: C. Darwin uses this word in connection with variability, <a href="#Page_358">358</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; variability (or unknown causes), C. Darwin, on what it will account for, or make known, <a href="#Page_358">358</a><br />
+<br />
+Steam engine, latest development of, not foreseen, though each immediate step in advance was so, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; design lost sight of in the most common patterns, as with a bird's-nest, or the wheel, <a href="#Page_55">55</a><br />
+<br />
+Step, if each step is purposive, the whole road has been travelled purposively, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; only the few nearest are taken definitely, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a><br />
+<br />
+Sterility of hybrids, Lamarck on, <a href="#Page_272">272</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; C. Darwin on, <a href="#Page_273">273</a><br />
+<br />
+Stock, Buffon on the, and the diaphragm, <a href="#Page_130">130</a><br />
+<br />
+Stronger, the, succeed, and the weaker fail, <a href="#Page_320">320</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a><br />
+<br />
+Strongest, the, eat the weaker, <a href="#Page_282">282</a><br />
+<br />
+Struggle for existence, Buffon on the, <a href="#Page_123">123</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; and hence modification, according to Dr. Erasmus Darwin, mainly conversant about three wants, <a href="#Page_226">226-229</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; comparison between Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck's views on the foregoing, <a href="#Page_257">257</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Lamarck on the foregoing, <a href="#Page_279">279</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; and survival of the fittest, Lamarck on the, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_282">282</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Patrick Matthew on, <a href="#Page_321">321</a><br />
+<br />
+Style, Buffon on, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a><br />
+<br />
+Sudden, the question what is too, to be settled by higgling and haggling, <a href="#Page_50">50</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; modifications, missionaries should avoid trying to effect, <a href="#Page_183">183</a><br />
+<br />
+Superficial, philosophy of the, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a><br />
+<br />
+Supply and demand, and desire and power, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a><br />
+<br />
+Survival of the fittest, a synonym for natural selection, <a href="#Page_9">9</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Dr. Erasmus Darwin on the, <a href="#Page_227">227</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; in the struggle for existence, Lamarck on the, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_282">282</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; understood and admitted by Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck, <a href="#Page_301">301</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; subsequent to modification, and therefore not the cause of it, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Patrick Matthew on, <a href="#Page_321">321</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; this is not a theory, but a fact, <a href="#Page_356">356</a>, <a href="#Page_357">357</a><br />
+<br />
+Swimming, no shore bird ever set itself to learn, of malice prepense, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+TAIL, the beaver's, has become an incarnate trowel, <a href="#Page_8">8</a><br />
+<br />
+Teething, the pain an infant feels is the death-cry of many a good cell, <a href="#Page_75">75</a><br />
+<br />
+Teleological, failure of the early evolutionists to see their position as, <a href="#Page_34">34</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">[Pg 429]</a></span>Teleology, statement of the question, <a href="#Page_1">1</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Aristotle denied, Plato upheld, <a href="#Page_4">4</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; the, of Paley and the theologians, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; internal as much teleology as external, <a href="#Page_36">36</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; <i>See</i> also "Design."<br />
+<br />
+Telescope, Lord Rosse's, and dew-drop, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a><br />
+<br />
+Tempering, the felicitous, of two great contradictory principles, <a href="#Page_35">35</a><br />
+<br />
+Tendon, a slit in one, to let another pass through, <a href="#Page_20">20</a><br />
+<br />
+Terminology of botany harder than botany, <a href="#Page_108">108</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Buffon on, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a><br />
+<br />
+Test, Buffon's, as to the name an object is to bear, <a href="#Page_115">115</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; of perception and sensation, Buffon's, <a href="#Page_127">127</a><br />
+<br />
+Theological writer, few passages in any, displease me more, &amp;c., <a href="#Page_368">368</a><br />
+<br />
+Theory, the survival of the fittest is a fact, not a theory, <a href="#Page_356">356</a>, <a href="#Page_357">357</a><br />
+<br />
+Theories, true, Fontenelle on, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; to be ordered out of court if troublesome, <a href="#Page_35">35</a><br />
+<br />
+This: "I can no more believe in this," &amp;c., <a href="#Page_359">359</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; "it is impossible to attribute to this cause," <a href="#Page_358">358</a><br />
+<br />
+Thomas, St., Aquinas, Papal encyclical on, <a href="#Page_402">402</a>, <a href="#Page_403">403</a><br />
+<br />
+Thomson, Sir W., natural selection and design, <a href="#Page_10">10</a><br />
+<br />
+Thought is expressed in organ, <a href="#Page_339">339</a>, <a href="#Page_341">341</a><br />
+<br />
+Time, Buffon on, <a href="#Page_103">103</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Lamarck on, <a href="#Page_241">241</a><br />
+<br />
+Tobacco-pipe, a rudimentary organ on a, <a href="#Page_38">38</a><br />
+<br />
+Toes, a man who plays the violin with his, <a href="#Page_50">50</a><br />
+<br />
+Tools, organs are living tools, <a href="#Page_2">2</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; the manufacture of, and that of organs, two species of the same genus, <a href="#Page_39">39</a><br />
+<br />
+Touch, all senses modifications of the sense of touch, <a href="#Page_47">47</a><br />
+<br />
+Transformation of species, Buffon on the causes or means of, <a href="#Page_159">159</a><br />
+<br />
+Translation of the "Loves of the Plants" into French, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a><br />
+<br />
+Translation of the "Zoonomia" into German, <a href="#Page_71">71</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; of Dr. E. Darwin's other works, <a href="#Page_195">195</a><br />
+<br />
+Trapa Natans, Erasmus Darwin's note on, <a href="#Page_260">260</a><br />
+<br />
+Treviranus alluded to, <a href="#Page_72">72</a><br />
+<br />
+Tree, life seen as a tree, by Lamarck, <a href="#Page_269">269</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; by C. Darwin, <a href="#Page_270">270</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; nature compared to a, by Buffon, <a href="#Page_171">171</a><br />
+<br />
+Trees, the blind man who saw men as trees walking, <a href="#Page_137">137</a><br />
+<br />
+Trowel, the beaver has an incarnate trowel, <a href="#Page_8">8</a><br />
+<br />
+True, vitally, <a href="#Page_227">227</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; all very, as far as it goes (that Nature is the most important means of modification), <a href="#Page_369">369</a><br />
+<br />
+Truism, the survival of the fittest, a, <a href="#Page_351">351</a><br />
+<br />
+Tutbury bull running, <a href="#Page_187">187</a><br />
+<br />
+Tyndall, Professor, a rhapsody about C. Darwin, <a href="#Page_41">41</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; calls evolution C. Darwin's theory, <a href="#Page_360">360</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+UNCLES and aunts do not beget their nephews and nieces, <a href="#Page_367">367</a>, <a href="#Page_376">376</a><br />
+<br />
+Unconscious, our acquired habits come to be done as unconsciously as though instinctive, on repetition, <a href="#Page_56">56</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; difference between my view of the, and Von Hartmann's, <a href="#Page_58">58</a><br />
+<br />
+Unconsciousness, the, with which habitual actions come to be performed, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56-58</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>, <a href="#Page_381">381</a><br />
+<br />
+Understanding, the peace of mind that passeth, <a href="#Page_35">35</a><br />
+<br />
+Unity of the individual, Buffon on the, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>. (<i>See</i> "Oneness")<br />
+<br />
+"Unknown causes," according to Mr. Darwin, can do so much, but not so much more, <a href="#Page_359">359</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; their identity with spontaneous variability, <a href="#Page_359">359</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">[Pg 430]</a></span>&mdash;&mdash; heredity only another name for, unless the "Life and Habit" theory be adopted, <a href="#Page_384">384</a><br />
+<br />
+Upright position in man and certain apes, and children, Lamarck on, <a href="#Page_312">312</a><br />
+<br />
+Upside down, the vertebrata are perambulating vegetables planted, <a href="#Page_137">137</a><br />
+<br />
+Use and organ, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307-309</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+VACUUM, an omniscient and omnipotent, <a href="#Page_28">28</a><br />
+<br />
+Vague, efforts and desires are vague in the outset, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a><br />
+<br />
+Variation, C. Darwin declares the fact of variation to be the cause of variation, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_347">347</a>, <a href="#Page_369">369</a><br />
+<br />
+Variations, one factor of modification provides, the other accumulates, <a href="#Page_227">227</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Lamarck strove to discover the law underlying, <a href="#Page_337">337</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; C. Darwin sees no cause underlying them, <a href="#Page_339">339</a>, <a href="#Page_340">340</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; according to Lamarck, they will tend to appear in definite directions in large numbers of individuals, for long periods together; according to C. Darwin they will not do thus, <a href="#Page_341">341</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; must appear before they can be preserved, <a href="#Page_346">346</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; the cause of variations is the cause of species (Professor Mivart on this), <a href="#Page_370">370</a><br />
+<br />
+Vary, man cannot vary his practices much more than animals can, <a href="#Page_55">55</a><br />
+<br />
+"Vestiges of Creation," the, <a href="#Page_65">65</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; C. Darwin on the, <a href="#Page_65">65</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; the author of, on Lamarck, <a href="#Page_247">247</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Darwin's treatment of, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a><br />
+<br />
+Virtue has ever erred on the side of excess than on that of asceticism, <a href="#Page_35">35</a><br />
+<br />
+Violin, a man who plays the, with his toes, <a href="#Page_50">50</a><br />
+<br />
+Vitally true, <a href="#Page_227">227</a><br />
+<br />
+Volition. (<i>See</i> "Will")<br />
+<br />
+Voltaire, Buffon would not play the part of, <a href="#Page_81">81</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+WALLACE, A. R., his review of Professor Haeckel's "Evolution of Man," <a href="#Page_382">382-384</a><br />
+<br />
+Want and power, interaction of, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a><br />
+<br />
+Wasp, cutting a fly in half, Dr. Erasmus Darwin on, <a href="#Page_205">205</a><br />
+<br />
+Watch, Paley's argument from the, <a href="#Page_13">13</a><br />
+<br />
+Weaker, the strongest eat the, <a href="#Page_282">282</a><br />
+<br />
+Wealth, the normal growth of, and evolution, <a href="#Page_222">222</a><br />
+<br />
+Web-footed, how birds, became, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; development of, birds, Lamarck on, <a href="#Page_305">305</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Paley on, <a href="#Page_305">305</a><br />
+<br />
+Wedge, Buffon let in the thin end of the wedge, by saying that changed habits modify form, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a><br />
+<br />
+Whisky, God keep you from&mdash;if he can, <a href="#Page_176">176</a><br />
+<br />
+Will, Patrick Matthew on, as influencing organism, <a href="#Page_320">320-322</a>. (<i>See</i> also "Desire," "Design," "Want," "Wish")<br />
+<br />
+Will-o'-the-wisp, C. Darwin like a, <a href="#Page_372">372</a><br />
+<br />
+Wish and power, their interaction, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a><br />
+<br />
+Wit, brevity may be its soul, but the leaders of science, &amp;c., <a href="#Page_315">315</a><br />
+<br />
+Worcester, the Marquis of, <a href="#Page_54">54</a><br />
+<br />
+Words are apt to turn out compendious false analogies, <a href="#Page_365">365</a><br />
+<br />
+Worms, reasonable creatures, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br />
+<br />
+Worth, nothing worth looking at or doing, except at a fair price, <a href="#Page_35">35</a><br />
+<br />
+Wright, of Derby, his portrait of Mr. Day, <a href="#Page_180">180</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+ZEBRA and horse, Buffon on the, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a><br />
+<br />
+"Zoonomia," German translation of the, <a href="#Page_71">71</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Paley's "Natural Theology" written at the, <a href="#Page_195">195</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; fuller quotations from the, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, &amp;c.<br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; the, and the "Origin of Species," the different ideas that an average reader would carry away with him from these two works ("Sense of Need" and "Natural Selection"), <a href="#Page_363">363</a><br />
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">[Pg 431]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><i>The Mayflower Press, Plymouth, England.</i> William Brendon &amp; Son, Ltd.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Evolution, Old & New, by Samuel Butler
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+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Evolution, Old & New, by Samuel Butler
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Evolution, Old & New
+       Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck,
+       as compared with that of Charles Darwin
+
+Author: Samuel Butler
+
+Release Date: November 9, 2007 [EBook #23427]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EVOLUTION, OLD & NEW ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Stacy Brown, Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Evolution, Old & New
+
+
+    "The want of a practical acquaintance with Natural History leads the
+    author to take an erroneous view of the bearing of his own theories
+    on those of Mr. Darwin.--_Review of 'Life and Habit,' by Mr. A. R.
+    Wallace, in 'Nature,' March 27, 1879._
+
+    "Neither lastly would our observer be driven out of his conclusion,
+    or from his confidence in its truth, by being told that he knows
+    nothing at all about the matter. He knows enough for his argument;
+    he knows the utility of the end; he knows the subserviency and
+    adaptation of the means to the end. These points being known, his
+    ignorance concerning other points, his doubts concerning other
+    points, affect not the certainty of his reasoning. The consciousness
+    of knowing little need not beget a distrust of that which he does
+    know."
+
+    Paley's '_Natural Theology_,' chap. i.
+
+
+
+
+Evolution, Old & New
+
+Or the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck,
+as compared with that of Charles Darwin
+
+_by_
+
+Samuel Butler
+
+
+  New York
+  E. P. Dutton & Company
+  681 Fifth Avenue
+
+
+
+
+_Made and printed in Great Britain_
+
+
+
+
+NOTE
+
+
+    The demand for a new edition of "Evolution, Old and New," gives me
+    an opportunity of publishing Butler's latest revision of his work.
+    The second edition of "Evolution, Old and New," which was published
+    in 1882 and re-issued with a new title-page in 1890, was merely a
+    re-issue of the first edition with a new preface, an appendix, and
+    an index. At a later date, though I cannot say precisely when,
+    Butler revised the text of the book in view of a future edition. The
+    corrections that he made are mainly verbal and do not, I think,
+    affect the argument to any considerable extent. Butler, however,
+    attached sufficient importance to them to incur the expense of
+    having the stereos of more than fifty pages cancelled and new
+    stereos substituted. I have also added a few entries to the index,
+    which are taken from a copy of the book, now in my possession, in
+    which Butler made a few manuscript notes.
+
+    R. A. STREATFEILD.
+
+    _October, 1911._
+
+
+
+
+AUTHOR'S PREFACE
+
+TO
+
+THE SECOND EDITION
+
+
+Since the proof-sheets of the Appendix to this book left my hands,
+finally corrected, and too late for me to be able to recast the first of
+the two chapters that compose it, I hear, with the most profound regret,
+of the death of Mr. Charles Darwin.
+
+It being still possible for me to refer to this event in a preface, I
+hasten to say how much it grates upon me to appear to renew my attack
+upon Mr. Darwin under the present circumstances.
+
+I have insisted in each of my three books on Evolution upon the
+immensity of the service which Mr. Darwin rendered to that
+transcendently important theory. In "Life and Habit," I said: "To the
+end of time, if the question be asked, 'Who taught people to believe in
+Evolution?' the answer must be that it was Mr. Darwin." This is true;
+and it is hard to see what palm of higher praise can be awarded to any
+philosopher.
+
+I have always admitted myself to be under the deepest obligations to Mr.
+Darwin's works; and it was with the greatest reluctance, not to say
+repugnance, that I became one of his opponents. I have partaken of his
+hospitality, and have had too much experience of the charming simplicity
+of his manner not to be among the readiest to at once admire and envy
+it. It is unfortunately true that I believe Mr. Darwin to have behaved
+badly to me; this is too notorious to be denied; but at the same time I
+cannot be blind to the fact that no man can be judge in his own case,
+and that after all Mr. Darwin may have been right, and I wrong.
+
+At the present moment, let me impress this latter alternative upon my
+mind as far as possible, and dwell only upon that side of Mr. Darwin's
+work and character, about which there is no difference of opinion among
+either his admirers or his opponents.
+
+_April 21, 1882._
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+Contrary to the advice of my friends, who caution me to avoid all
+appearance of singularity, I venture upon introducing a practice, the
+expediency of which I will submit to the judgment of the reader. It is
+one which has been adopted by musicians for more than a century--to the
+great convenience of all who are fond of music--and I observe that
+within the last few years two such distinguished painters as Mr.
+Alma-Tadema and Mr. Hubert Herkomer have taken to it. It is a matter for
+regret that the practice should not have been general at an earlier
+date, not only among painters and musicians, but also among the people
+who write books. It consists in signifying the number of a piece of
+music, picture, or book by the abbreviation "Op." and the number
+whatever it may happen to be.
+
+No work can be judged intelligently unless not only the author's
+relations to his surroundings, but also the relation in which the work
+stands to the life and other works of the author, is understood and
+borne in mind; nor do I know any way of conveying this information at a
+glance, comparable to that which I now borrow from musicians. When we
+see the number against a work of Beethoven, we need ask no further to be
+informed concerning the general character of the music. The same holds
+good more or less with all composers. Handel's works were not
+numbered--not at least his operas and oratorios. Had they been so, the
+significance of the numbers on Susanna and Theodora would have been at
+once apparent, connected as they would have been with the number on
+Jephthah, Handel's next and last work, in which he emphatically
+repudiates the influence which, perhaps in a time of self-distrust, he
+had allowed contemporary German music to exert over him. Many painters
+have dated their works, but still more have neglected doing so, and some
+of these have been not a little misconceived in consequence. As for
+authors, it is unnecessary to go farther back than Lord Beaconsfield,
+Thackeray, Dickens, and Scott, to feel how much obliged we should have
+been to any custom that should have compelled them to number their works
+in the order in which they were written. When we think of Shakespeare,
+any doubt which might remain as to the advantage of the proposed
+innovation is felt to disappear.
+
+My friends, to whom I urged all the above, and more, met me by saying
+that the practice was doubtless a very good one in the abstract, but
+that no one was particularly likely to want to know in what order my
+books had been written. To which I answered that even a bad book which
+introduced so good a custom would not be without value, though the value
+might lie in the custom, and not in the book itself; whereon, seeing
+that I was obstinate, they left me, and interpreting their doing so into
+at any rate a modified approbation of my design, I have carried it into
+practice.
+
+The edition of the 'Philosophie Zoologique' referred to in the following
+volume, is that edited by M. Chas. Martins, Paris, Librairie F. Savy,
+24, Rue de Hautefeuille, 1873.
+
+The edition of the 'Origin of Species' is that of 1876, unless another
+edition be especially named.
+
+The italics throughout the book are generally mine, except in the
+quotations from Miss Seward, where they are all her own.
+
+I am anxious also to take the present opportunity of acknowledging the
+obligations I am under to my friend Mr. H. F. Jones, and to other
+friends (who will not allow me to mention their names, lest more errors
+should be discovered than they or I yet know of), for the invaluable
+assistance they have given me while this work was going through the
+press. If I am able to let it go before the public with any comfort or
+peace of mind, I owe it entirely to the carefulness of their
+supervision.
+
+I am also greatly indebted to Mr. Garnett, of the British Museum, for
+having called my attention to many works and passages of which otherwise
+I should have known nothing.
+
+_March 31, 1879._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+  Statement of the Question--Current Opinion adverse to
+  Teleology                                                          1
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+  The Teleology of Paley and the Theologians                        12
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+  Impotence of Paley's Conclusion--The Teleology of the
+  Evolutionist                                                      24
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+  Failure of the First Evolutionists to see their Position
+  as Teleological                                                   34
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+  The Teleological Evolution of Organism--The Philosophy
+  of the Unconscious                                                43
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+  Scheme of the Remainder of the Work--Historical Sketch
+  of the Theory of Evolution                                        60
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+  Pre-Buffonian Evolution, and some German Writers                  68
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+  Buffon--Memoir                                                    74
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+  Buffon's Method--The Ironical Character of his Work               78
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+  Supposed Fluctuations of Opinion--Causes or Means of
+  the Transformation of Species                                     97
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+  Buffon--Puller Quotations                                        107
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+  Sketch of Dr. Erasmus Darwin's Life                              173
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+  Philosophy of Dr. Erasmus Darwin                                 195
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+  Fuller Quotations from the 'Zoonomia'                            214
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+  Memoir of Lamarck                                                235
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+  General Misconception concerning Lamarck--His
+  Philosophical Position                                           244
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+  Summary of the 'Philosophie Zoologique'                          261
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+  Mr. Patrick Matthew, MM. Etienne and Isidore Geoffroy
+  St. Hilaire, and Mr. Herbert Spencer                             315
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+  Main Points of Agreement and of Difference between the
+  Old and New Theories of Evolution                                335
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+  Natural Selection considered as a Means of Modification--The
+  Confusion which this Expression occasions                        345
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+  Mr. Darwin's Defence of the Expression, Natural
+  Selection--Professor Mivart and Natural Selection                362
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+  The Case of the Madeira Beetles as illustrating the
+  Difference between the Evolution of Lamarck and
+  of Mr. Charles Darwin--Conclusion                                373
+
+APPENDIX                                                           385
+
+INDEX                                                              409
+
+
+
+
+EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+STATEMENT OF THE QUESTION. CURRENT OPINION ADVERSE TO TELEOLOGY.
+
+
+Of all the questions now engaging the attention of those whose destiny
+has commanded them to take more or less exercise of mind, I know of none
+more interesting than that which deals with what is called
+teleology--that is to say, with design or purpose, as evidenced by the
+different parts of animals and plants.
+
+The question may be briefly stated thus:--
+
+Can we or can we not see signs in the structure of animals and plants,
+of something which carries with it the idea of contrivance so strongly
+that it is impossible for us to think of the structure, without at the
+same time thinking of contrivance, or design, in connection with it?
+
+It is my object in the present work to answer this question in the
+affirmative, and to lead my reader to agree with me, perhaps mainly, by
+following the history of that opinion which is now supposed to be fatal
+to a purposive view of animal and vegetable organs. I refer to the
+theory of evolution or descent with modification.
+
+Let me state the question more at large.
+
+When we see organs, or living tools--for there is no well-developed
+organ of any living being which is not used by its possessor as an
+instrument or tool for the effecting of some purpose which he considers
+or has considered for his advantage--when we see living tools which are
+as admirably fitted for the work required of them, as is the carpenter's
+plane for planing, or the blacksmith's hammer and anvil for the
+hammering of iron, or the tailor's needle for sewing, what conclusion
+shall we adopt concerning them?
+
+Shall we hold that they must have been designed or contrived, not
+perhaps by mental processes indistinguishable from those by which the
+carpenter's saw or the watch has been designed, but still by processes
+so closely resembling these that no word can be found to express the
+facts of the case so nearly as the word "design"? That is to say, shall
+we imagine that they were arrived at by a living mind as the result of
+scheming and contriving, and thinking (not without occasional mistakes)
+which of the courses open to it seemed best fitted for the occasion, or
+are we to regard the apparent connection between such an organ, we will
+say, as the eye, and the sight which is affected by it, as in no way due
+to the design or plan of a living intelligent being, but as caused
+simply by the accumulation, one upon another, of an almost infinite
+series of small pieces of good fortune?
+
+In other words, shall we see something for which, as Professor Mivart
+has well said, "to us the word 'mind' is the least inadequate and
+misleading symbol," as having given to the eagle an eyesight which can
+pierce the sun, but which, in the night is powerless; while to the owl
+it has given eyes which shun even the full moon, but find a soft
+brilliancy in darkness? Or shall we deny that there has been any purpose
+or design in the fashioning of these different kinds of eyes, and see
+nothing to make us believe that any living being made the eagle's eye
+out of something which was not an eye nor anything like one, or that
+this living being implanted this particular eye of all others in the
+eagle's head, as being most in accordance with the habits of the
+creature, and as therefore most likely to enable it to live contentedly
+and leave plenitude of offspring? And shall we then go on to maintain
+that the eagle's eye was formed little by little by a series of
+accidental variations, each one of which was thrown for, as it were,
+with dice?
+
+We shall most of us feel that there must have been a little cheating
+somewhere with these accidental variations before the eagle could have
+become so great a winner.
+
+I believe I have now stated the question at issue so plainly that there
+can be no mistake about its nature, I will therefore proceed to show as
+briefly as possible what have been the positions taken in regard to it
+by our forefathers, by the leaders of opinion now living, and what I
+believe will be the next conclusion that will be adopted for any length
+of time by any considerable number of people.
+
+In the times of the ancients the preponderance of opinion was in favour
+of teleology, though impugners were not wanting. Aristotle[1] leant
+towards a denial of purpose, while Plato[2] was a firm believer in
+design. From the days of Plato to our own times, there have been but few
+objectors to the teleological or purposive view of nature. If an animal
+had an eye, that eye was regarded as something which had been designed
+in order to enable its owner to see after such fashion as should be most
+to its advantage.
+
+This, however, is now no longer the prevailing opinion either in this
+country or in Germany.
+
+Professor Haeckel holds a high place among the leaders of German
+philosophy at the present day. He declares a belief in evolution and in
+purposiveness to be incompatible, and denies purpose in language which
+holds out little prospect of a compromise.
+
+"As soon, in fact," he writes, "as we acknowledge the exclusive activity
+of the physico-chemical causes in living (organic) bodies as well as in
+so-called inanimate (inorganic) nature,"--and this is what Professor
+Haeckel holds we are bound to do if we accept the theory of descent with
+modification--"we concede exclusive dominion to that view of the
+universe, which we may designate as _mechanical_, and which is opposed
+to the teleological conception. If we compare all the ideas of the
+universe prevalent among different nations at different times, we can
+divide them all into two sharply contrasted groups--a _causal_ or
+_mechanical_, and a _teleological_ or _vitalistic_. The latter has
+prevailed generally in biology until now, and accordingly the animal and
+vegetable kingdoms have been considered as the products of a creative
+power, acting for a definite purpose. In the contemplation of every
+organism, the unavoidable conviction seemed to press itself upon us,
+that such a wonderful machine, so complicated an apparatus for motion as
+exists in the organism, could only be produced by a power analogous to,
+but infinitely more powerful than the power of man in the construction
+of his machines."[3]
+
+A little lower down he continues:--
+
+"_I maintain with regard to_" this "_much talked of 'purpose in nature'
+that it has no existence but for those persons who observe phenomena in
+plants and animals in the most superficial manner_. Without going more
+deeply into the matter, we can see at once that the rudimentary organs
+are a formidable obstacle to this theory. And, indeed, anyone who makes
+a really close study of the organization and mode of life of the various
+animals and plants, ... must necessarily come to the conclusion, that
+this 'purposiveness' no more exists than the much talked of
+'beneficence' of the Creator."[4]
+
+Professor Haeckel justly sees no alternative between, upon the one hand,
+the creation of independent species by a Personal God--by a "Creator,"
+in fact, who "becomes an organism, who designs a plan, reflects upon and
+varies this plan, and finally forms creatures according to it, as a
+human architect would construct his building,"[5]--and the denial of all
+plan or purpose whatever. There can be no question but that he is right
+here. To talk of a "designer" who has no tangible existence, no organism
+with which to think, no bodily mechanism with which to carry his
+purposes into effect; whose design is not design inasmuch as it has to
+contend with no impediments from ignorance or impotence, and who thus
+contrives but by a sort of make-believe in which there is no
+contrivance; who has a familiar name, but nothing beyond a name which
+any human sense has ever been able to perceive--this is an abuse of
+words--an attempt to palm off a shadow upon our understandings as though
+it were a substance. It is plain therefore that there must either be a
+designer who "becomes an organism, designs a plan, &c.," or that there
+can be no designer at all and hence no design.
+
+We have seen which of these alternatives Professor Haeckel has adopted.
+He holds that those who accept evolution are bound to reject all
+"purposiveness." And here, as I have intimated, I differ from him, for
+reasons which will appear presently. I believe in an organic and
+tangible designer of every complex structure, for so long a time past,
+as that reasonable people will be incurious about all that occurred at
+any earlier time.
+
+Professor Clifford, again, is a fair representative of opinions which
+are finding favour with the majority of our own thinkers. He writes:--
+
+"There are here some words, however, which require careful definition.
+And first the word purpose. A thing serves a purpose when it is adapted
+for some end; thus a corkscrew is adapted to the end of extracting corks
+from bottles, and our lungs are adapted to the end of respiration. We
+may say that the extraction of corks is the purpose of the corkscrew,
+and that respiration is the purpose of the lungs, but here we shall have
+used the word in two different senses. A man made the corkscrew with a
+purpose in his mind, and he knew and intended that it should be used for
+pulling out corks. _But nobody made our lungs with a purpose in his mind
+and intended that they should be used for breathing._ The respiratory
+apparatus was adapted to its purpose by natural selection, namely, by
+the gradual preservation of better and better adaptations, and by the
+killing-off of the worse and imperfect adaptations."[6]
+
+No denial of anything like design could be more explicit. For Professor
+Clifford is well aware that the very essence of the "Natural Selection"
+theory, is that the variations shall have been mainly accidental and
+without design of any sort, but that the adaptations of structure to
+need shall have come about by the accumulation, through natural
+selection, of any variation that _happened_ to be favourable.
+
+It will be my business on a later page not only to show that the lungs
+are as purposive as the corkscrew, but furthermore that if drawing corks
+had been a matter of as much importance to us as breathing is, the list
+of our organs would have been found to comprise one corkscrew at the
+least, and possibly two, twenty, or ten thousand; even as we see that
+the trowel without which the beaver cannot plaster its habitation in
+such fashion as alone satisfies it, is incorporate into the beaver's own
+body by way of a tail, the like of which is to be found in no other
+animal.
+
+To take a name which carries with it a far greater authority, that of
+Mr. Charles Darwin. He writes:--
+
+"It is scarcely possible to avoid comparing the eye with a telescope. We
+know that this instrument has been perfected by the long-continued
+efforts of the highest human intellects; and we naturally infer that the
+eye has been formed by a somewhat analogous process. But may not this
+inference be presumptuous? Have we any right to declare that the Creator
+works by intellectual powers like those of man?"[7]
+
+Here purposiveness is not indeed denied point-blank, but the intention
+of the author is unmistakable, it is to refer the wonderful result to
+the gradual accumulation of small accidental improvements which were not
+due as a rule, if at all, to anything "analogous" to design.
+
+"Variation," he says, "will cause the slight alterations;" that is to
+say, the slight successive variations whose accumulation results in such
+a marvellous structure as the eye, are caused by--variation; or in other
+words, they are indefinite, due to nothing that we can lay our hands
+upon, and therefore certainly not due to design. "Generation," continues
+Mr. Darwin, "will multiply them almost infinitely, and natural selection
+will pick out with unerring skill each improvement. Let this process go
+on for millions of years, and during each year on millions of
+individuals of many kinds; and may we not believe that a living optical
+instrument might be thus formed as superior to one of glass, as the
+works of the Creator are to those of man?"[8]
+
+The reader will observe that the only skill--and this involves
+design--supposed by Mr. Darwin to be exercised in the foregoing process,
+is the "unerring skill" of natural selection. Natural selection,
+however, is, as he himself tells us, a synonym for the survival of the
+fittest, which last he declares to be the "more accurate" expression,
+and to be "sometimes" equally convenient.[9] It is clear then that he
+only speaks metaphorically when he here assigns "unerring skill" to the
+fact that the fittest individuals commonly live longest and transmit
+most offspring, and that he sees no evidence of design in the numerous
+slight successive "alterations"--or variations--which are "caused by
+variation."
+
+It were easy to multiply quotations which should prove that the denial
+of "purposiveness" is commonly conceived to be the inevitable
+accompaniment of a belief in evolution. I will, however, content myself
+with but one more--from Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire.
+
+"Whoever," says this author, "holds the doctrine of final causes, will,
+if he is consistent, hold also that of the immutability of species; and
+again, the opponent of the one doctrine will oppose the other also."[10]
+
+Nothing can be plainer; I believe, however, that even without quotation
+the reader would have recognized the accuracy of my contention that a
+belief in the purposiveness or design of animal and vegetable organs is
+commonly held to be incompatible with the belief that they have all been
+evolved from one, or at any rate, from not many original, and low, forms
+of life. Generally, however, as this incompatibility is accepted, it is
+not unchallenged. From time to time a voice is uplifted in protest,
+whose tones cannot be disregarded.
+
+"I have always felt," says Sir William Thomson, in his address to the
+British Association, 1871, "that this hypothesis" (natural selection)
+"does not contain the true theory of evolution, if indeed evolution
+there has been, in biology. Sir John Herschel, in expressing a
+favourable judgment on the hypothesis of zoological evolution (with
+however some reservation in respect to the origin of man), objected to
+the doctrine of natural selection on the ground that it was too like the
+Laputan method of making books, and that it did not sufficiently take
+into account a continually guiding and controlling intelligence. This
+seems to me a most valuable and instructive criticism. _I feel
+profoundly convinced that the argument of design has been greatly too
+much lost sight of in recent zoological speculations._ Reaction against
+the frivolities of teleology such as are to be found in the notes of the
+learned commentators on Paley's 'Natural Theology,' has, I believe, had
+a temporary effect in turning attention from the solid and irrefragable
+argument so well put forward in that excellent old book. But
+overpoweringly strong proofs of intelligent and benevolent design lie
+all around us,"[11] &c. Sir William Thomson goes on to infer that all
+living beings depend on an ever-acting Creator and Ruler--meaning, I am
+afraid, a Creator who is not an organism. Here I cannot follow him, but
+while gladly accepting his testimony to the omnipresence of intelligent
+design in almost every structure, whether of animal or plant, I shall
+content myself with observing the manner in which plants and animals act
+and with the consequences that are legitimately deducible from their
+action.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] See note to Mr. Darwin, Historical Sketch, &c., 'Origin of Species,
+p. xiii. ed. 1876, and Arist. 'Physicae Auscultationes,' lib. ii. cap.
+viii. s. 2.
+
+[2] See Phaedo and Timaeus.
+
+[3] 'History of Creation,' vol. i. p. 18 (H. S. King and Co., 1876).
+
+[4] Ibid. p. 19.
+
+[5] 'History of Creation,' vol. i. p. 73 (H. S. King and Co., 1876).
+
+[6] 'Fortnightly Review,' new series, vol. xviii. p. 795.
+
+[7] 'Origin of Species,' p. 146, ed. 1876.
+
+[8] 'Origin of Species,' p. 146, ed. 1876.
+
+[9] Page 49.
+
+[10] 'Vie et Doctrine scientifique d'Etienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire,' by
+Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire. Paris, 1847, p. 344.
+
+[11] Address to the British Association, 1871.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE TELEOLOGY OF PALEY AND THE THEOLOGIANS.
+
+
+Let us turn for a while to Paley, to whom Sir W. Thomson has referred
+us. His work should be so well known that an apology is almost due for
+quoting it, yet I think it likely that at least nine out of ten of my
+readers will (like myself till reminded of it by Sir W. Thomson's
+address) have forgotten its existence.
+
+"In crossing a heath," says Paley, "suppose I pitched my foot against a
+stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly
+answer that for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there for
+ever; nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this
+answer. But suppose I had found a _watch_ upon the ground, and it should
+be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly
+think of the answer I had before given--that for anything I knew the
+watch might have been always there. Yet, why should not this answer
+serve for the watch as well as for the stone? Why is it not as
+admissible in the second case as in the first? For this reason, and for
+no other, viz. that when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive (what
+we could not discover in the stone) that its several parts are framed
+and put together for a purpose, e. g. that they are so formed and
+adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point
+out the hour of the day: that if the different parts had been
+differently shaped from what they are, of a different size from what
+they are, or placed after any other manner, or in any other order, than
+that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been
+carried on in the machine, or none that would have answered the use
+which is now served by it. To reckon up a few of the plainest of these
+parts, and of their offices all tending to one result: we see a
+cylindrical box containing a coiled elastic spring, which, by its
+endeavours to relax itself, turns round the box. We next observe a
+flexible chain (artificially wrought for the sake of flexure)
+communicating the action of the spring from the box to the fusee. We
+then find a series of wheels the teeth of which catch in, and apply to
+each other, conducting the motion from the fusee to the balance, and
+from the balance to the pointer; and at the same time by the size and
+shape of those wheels so regulating the motion as to terminate in
+causing an index, by an equable and measured progression, to pass over a
+given space in a given time. We take notice that the wheels are made of
+brass in order to keep them from rust; the springs of steel, no other
+metal being so elastic; that over the face of the watch there is placed
+a glass, a material employed on no other part of the work, but in the
+room of which if there had been any other than a transparent substance,
+the hour could not have been observed without opening the case. This
+mechanism being observed, ... the inference, we think, is inevitable
+that the watch must have had a maker; that there must have existed, at
+_some time, and at some place or other, an artificer_ or artificers who
+formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who
+comprehended its construction and designed its use."[12]
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"That an animal is a machine, is a proposition neither correctly true
+nor wholly false.... I contend that there is a mechanism in animals;
+that this mechanism is as properly such, as it is in machines made by
+art; that this mechanism is intelligible and certain; that it is not the
+less so because it often begins and terminates with something which is
+not mechanical; that wherever it is intelligible and certain, it
+demonstrates intention and contrivance, as well in the works of nature
+as in those of art; and that it is the best demonstration which either
+can afford."[13]
+
+There is only one legitimate inference deducible from these premises if
+they are admitted as sound, namely, that there must have existed "_at
+some time, and in some place, an artificer_" who formed the animal
+mechanism after much the same mental processes of observation,
+endeavour, successful contrivance, and after a not wholly unlike
+succession of bodily actions, as those with which a watchmaker has made
+a watch. Otherwise the conclusion is impotent, and the whole argument
+becomes a mere juggle of words.
+
+"Now, supposing or admitting," continues Paley, "that we know nothing of
+the proper internal constitution of a gland, or of the mode of its
+acting upon the blood; then our situation is precisely like that of an
+unmechanical looker-on who stands by a stocking loom, a corn mill, a
+carding machine, or a threshing machine, at work, the fabric and
+mechanism of which, as well as all that passes within, is hidden from
+his sight by the outside case; or if seen, would be too complicated for
+his uninformed, uninstructed understanding to comprehend. And what is
+that situation? This spectator, ignorant as he is, sees at one end a
+material enter the machine, as unground grain the mill, raw cotton the
+carding machine, sheaves of unthreshed corn the threshing machine, and
+when he casts his eye to the other end of the apparatus, he sees the
+material issuing from it in a new state and what is more, a state
+manifestly adapted for its future uses: the grain in meal fit for the
+making of bread, the wool in rovings fit for the spinning into threads,
+the sheaf in corn fit for the mill. Is it necessary that this man, in
+order to be convinced that design, that intention, that contrivance has
+been employed about the machine, should be allowed to pull it to pieces,
+should be enabled to examine the parts separately, explore their action
+upon one another, or their operation, whether simultaneous or
+successive, upon the material which is presented to them? He may long to
+do this to satisfy his curiosity; he may desire to do it to improve his
+theoretic knowledge; ... but for the purpose of ascertaining the
+existence of counsel and design in the formation of the machine, he
+wants no such intromission or privity. The effect upon the material, the
+change produced in it, the utility of the change for future
+applications, abundantly testify, be the concealed part of the machine,
+or of its construction, what it will, _the hand and agency of a
+contriver_."[14]
+
+This is admirably put, but it will apply to the mechanism of animal and
+vegetable bodies only, if it is used to show that they too must have had
+a contriver who has a hand, or something tantamount to one; who does
+act; who, being a contriver, has what all other contrivers must have, if
+they are to be called contrivers--a body which can suffer more or less
+pain or chagrin if the contrivance is unsuccessful. If this is what
+Paley means, his argument is indeed irrefragable; but if he does not
+intend this, his words are frivolous, as so clear and acute a reasoner
+must have perfectly well known.
+
+Whether Paley's argument will prove a source of lasting strength to
+himself or no, is a point which my readers will decide presently; but I
+am very clear about its usefulness to my own position. I know few
+writers whom I would willingly quote more largely, or from whom I find
+it harder to leave off quoting when I have once begun. A few more
+passages, however, must suffice.
+
+"I challenge any man to produce in the joints and pivots of the most
+complicated or the most flexible machine that ever was contrived, a
+construction _more artificial_" (here we have it again), "or more
+evidently artificial than the human neck. Two things were to be done.
+The head was to have the power of bending forward and backward as in the
+act of nodding, stooping, looking upwards or downwards; and at the same
+time of turning itself round upon the body to a certain extent, the
+quadrant, we will say, or rather perhaps a hundred and twenty degrees of
+a circle. For these two purposes two distinct contrivances are employed.
+First the head rests immediately upon the uppermost part of the
+vertebra, and is united to it by a hinge-joint; upon this joint the head
+plays freely backward and forward as far either way as is necessary or
+as the ligaments allow, which was the first thing required.
+
+"But then the rotatory motion is thus unprovided for; therefore,
+secondly, to make the head capable of this a further mechanism is
+introduced, not between the head and the uppermost bone of the neck,
+where the hinge is, but between that bone and the next underneath it. It
+is a mechanism resembling a tenon and mortise. This second or uppermost
+bone but one has what the anatomists call a process, viz. a projection
+somewhat similar in size and shape to a tooth, which tooth, entering a
+corresponding hollow socket in the bone above it, forms a pivot or axle,
+upon which that upper bone, together with the head which it supports,
+turns freely in a circle, and as far in the circle as the attached
+muscles permit the head to turn. Thus are both motions perfect without
+interfering with each other. When we nod the head we use the
+hinge-joint, which lies between the head and the first bone of the neck.
+When we turn the head round, we use the tenon and mortise, which runs
+between the first bone of the neck and the second. We see the same
+contrivance and the same principle employed in the frame or mounting of
+a telescope. It is occasionally requisite that the object end of the
+instrument be moved up and down as well as horizontally or equatorially.
+For the vertical motion there is a hinge upon which the telescope plays,
+for the horizontal or equatorial motion, an axis upon which the
+telescope and the hinge turn round together. And this is exactly the
+mechanism which is applied to the action of the head, nor will anyone
+here doubt of the existence of counsel and design, except it be by that
+debility of mind which can trust to its own reasonings in nothing."[15]
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"The patella, or knee-pan, is a curious little bone; in its form and
+office unlike any other bone in the body. It is circular, the size of a
+crown-piece, pretty thick, a little convex on both sides, and covered
+with a smooth cartilage. It lies upon the front of the knee, and the
+powerful tendons by which the leg is brought forward pass through it (or
+rather make it a part of their continuation) from their origin in the
+thigh to their insertion in the tibia. It protects both the tendon and
+the joint from any injury which either might suffer by the rubbing of
+one against the other, or by the pressure of unequal surfaces. It also
+gives to the tendons a very considerable mechanical advantage by
+altering the line of their direction, and by advancing it farther out of
+the centre of motion; and this upon the principles of the resolution of
+force, upon which all machinery is founded. These are its uses. But what
+is most observable in it is that it appears to be supplemental, as it
+were, to the frame; added, as it should almost seem, afterwards; not
+quite necessary, but very convenient. It is separate from the other
+bones; that is, it is not connected with any other bones by the common
+mode of union. It is soft, or hardly formed in infancy; and is produced
+by an ossification, of the inception or progress of which no account can
+be given from the structure or exercise of the part."[16]
+
+It is positively painful to me to pass over Paley's description of the
+joints, but I must content myself with a single passage from this
+admirable chapter.
+
+"The joints, or rather the ends of the bones which form them, display
+also in their configuration another use. The nerves, blood-vessels, and
+tendons which are necessary to the life, or for the motion of the limbs,
+must, it is evident in their way from the trunk of the body to the place
+of their destination, travel over the moveable joints; and it is no less
+evident that in this part of their course they will have from sudden
+motions, and from abrupt changes of curvature, to encounter the danger
+of compression, attrition, or laceration. To guard fibres so tender
+against consequences so injurious, their path is in those parts
+protected with peculiar care; and that by a provision in the figure of
+the bones themselves. The nerves which supply the fore arm, especially
+the inferior cubital nerves, are at the elbow conducted by a kind of
+covered way, between the condyle, or rather under the inner
+extuberances, of the bone which composes the upper part of the arm. At
+the knee the extremity of the thigh-bone is divided by a sinus or cliff
+into two heads or protuberances; and these heads on the back part stand
+out beyond the cylinder of the bone. Through the hollow which lies
+between the hind parts of these two heads, that is to say, under the
+ham, between the ham strings, and within the concave recess of the bone
+formed by the extuberances on either side; in a word, along a defile
+between rocks pass the great vessels and nerves which go to the leg. Who
+led these vessels by a road so defended and secured? In the joint at the
+shoulder, in the edge of the cup which receives the head of the bone, is
+a notch which is covered at the top with a ligament. Through this hole
+thus guarded the blood-vessels steal to their destination in the arm
+instead of mounting over the edge of the concavity."[17]
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"What contrivance can be more mechanical than the following, viz.: a
+slit in one tendon to let another tendon pass through it? This structure
+is found in the tendons which move the toes and fingers. The long
+tendon, as it is called in the foot, which bends the first joint of the
+toe, passes through the short tendon which bends the second joint; which
+course allows to the sinews more liberty and a more commodious action
+than it would otherwise have been capable of exerting. There is nothing,
+I believe, in a silk or cotton mill, in the belts or straps or ropes by
+which the motion is communicated from one part of the machine to another
+that is more artificial, or more evidently so, than this perforation.
+
+"The next circumstance which I shall mention under this head of
+muscular arrangement, is so decidedly a mark of intention, that it
+always appeared to me to supersede in some measure the necessity of
+seeking for any other observation upon the subject; and that
+circumstance is the tendons which pass from the leg to the foot being
+bound down by a ligament at the ankle, the foot is placed at a
+considerable angle with the leg. It is manifest, therefore, that
+flexible strings passing along the interior of the angle, if left to
+themselves, would, when stretched, start from it. The obvious" (and it
+must not be forgotten that the preventive _was_ obvious) "preventive is
+to tie them down. And this is done in fact. Across the instep, or rather
+just above it, the anatomist finds a strong ligament, under which the
+tendons pass to the foot. The effect of the ligament as a bandage can be
+made evident to the senses, for if it be cut the tendons start up. The
+simplicity, yet the clearness of this contrivance, its exact resemblance
+to established resources of art, place it amongst the most indubitable
+manifestations of design with which we are acquainted."
+
+Then follows a passage which is interesting, as being the earliest
+attempt I know of to bring forward an argument against evolution, which
+was, even in Paley's day, called "Darwinism," after Dr. Erasmus Darwin
+its propounder.[18] The argument, I mean, which is drawn from the
+difficulty of accounting for the incipiency of complex structures. This
+has been used with greater force by the Rev. J. J. Murphy, Professor
+Mivart, and others, against that (as I believe) erroneous view of
+evolution which is now generally received as Darwinism.
+
+"There is also a further use," says Paley, "to be made of this present
+example, and that is as it precisely contradicts the opinion, that the
+parts of animals may have been all formed by what is called appetency,
+i. e. endeavour, perpetuated and imperceptibly working its effect
+through an incalculable series of generations. We have here no
+endeavour, but the reverse of it; a constant resistency and reluctance.
+The endeavour is all the other way. The pressure of the ligament
+constrains the tendons; the tendons react upon the pressure of the
+ligament. It is impossible that the ligament should ever have been
+generated by the exercise of the tendons, or in the course of that
+exercise, forasmuch as the force of the tendon perpendicularly resists
+the fibre which confines it, and is constantly endeavouring not to form
+but to rupture and displace the threads of which the ligament is
+composed."[19]
+
+This must suffice.
+
+"True theories," says M. Flourens, inspired by a passage from
+Fontenelle, which he proceeds to quote, "true theories make themselves,"
+they are not made, but are born and grow; they cannot be stopped from
+insisting upon their vitality by anything short of intellectual
+violence, nor will a little violence only suffice to kill them. "True
+theories," he continues, "are but the spontaneous mental coming
+together of facts, which have combined with one another by virtue only
+of their own natural affinity."[20]
+
+When a number of isolated facts, says Fontenelle, take form, group
+themselves together coherently, and present the mind so vividly with an
+idea of their interdependence and mutual bearing upon each other, that
+no matter how violently we tear them asunder they insist on coming
+together again; then, and not till then, have we a theory.
+
+Now I submit that there is hardly one of my readers who can be
+considered as free from bias or prejudice, who will not feel that the
+idea of design--or perception by an intelligent living being, of ends to
+be obtained and of the means of obtaining them--and the idea of the
+tendons of the foot and of the ligament which binds them down, come
+together so forcibly, that no matter how strongly Professors Haeckel and
+Clifford and Mr. Darwin may try to separate them, they are no sooner
+pulled asunder than they straightway fly together again of themselves.
+
+I shall argue, therefore, no further upon this head, but shall assume it
+as settled, and shall proceed at once to the consideration that next
+suggests itself.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[12] 'Natural Theology,' ch. i. Sec. 1.
+
+[13] Ch. vii.
+
+[14] Ch. vii.
+
+[15] 'Natural Theology.' ch. viii.
+
+[16] 'Natural Theology,' ch. viii.
+
+[17] 'Natural Theology,' ch. viii.
+
+[18] "What!" says Coleridge, in a note on Stillingfleet, to which Mr.
+Garnett, of the British Museum, has kindly called my attention, "Did Sir
+Walter Raleigh believe that a male and female ounce (and if so why not
+two tigers and lions, &c.?) would have produced in course of generations
+a cat, or a cat a lion? This is Darwinising with a vengeance."--See
+'Athenaeum,' March 27, 1875, p. 423.
+
+[19] 'Natural Theology,' ch. ix.
+
+[20] "La vraie theorie n'est que l'enchainement naturel des faits, qui
+des qu'ils sont assez nombreux, se touchent, et se lient, les uns aux
+autres par leur seule vertu propre."--Flourens, 'Buffon, Hist. de ses
+Travaux.' Paris, 1844, p. 82.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+IMPOTENCE OF PALEY'S CONCLUSION. THE TELEOLOGY OF THE EVOLUTIONIST.
+
+
+Though the ideas of design, and of the foot, have come together in our
+minds with sufficient spontaneity, we yet feel that there is a
+difference--and a wide difference if we could only lay our hands upon
+it--between the design and manufacture of the ligament and tendons of
+the foot on the one hand, and on the other the design, manufacture, and
+combination of artificial strings, pieces of wood, and bandages, whereby
+a model of the foot might be constructed.
+
+If we conceive of ourselves as looking simultaneously upon a real foot,
+and upon an admirably constructed artificial one, placed by the side of
+it, the idea of design, and design by an intelligent living being with a
+body and soul (without which, as has been already insisted on, the use
+of the word design is delusive), will present itself strongly to our
+minds in connection both with the true foot, and with the model; but we
+find another idea asserting itself with even greater strength, namely,
+that the design of the true foot is far more intricate, and yet is
+carried into execution in far more masterly manner than that of the
+model. We not only feel that there is a wider difference between the
+ability, time, and care which have been lavished on the real foot and
+upon the model, than there is between the skill and the time taken to
+produce Westminster Abbey, and that bestowed upon a gingerbread cake
+stuck with sugar plums so as to represent it, but also that these two
+objects must have been manufactured on different principles. We do not
+for a moment doubt that the real foot was designed, but we are so
+astonished at the dexterity of the designer that we are at a loss for
+some time to think who could have designed it, where he can live, in
+what manner he studied, for how long, and by what processes he carried
+out his design, when matured, into actual practice. Until recently it
+was thought that there was no answer to many of these questions, more
+especially to those which bear upon the mode of manufacture. For the
+last hundred years, however, the importance of a study has been
+recognized which does actually reveal to us in no small degree the
+processes by which the human foot is manufactured, so that in the
+endeavour to lay our hands upon the points of difference between the
+kind of design with which the foot itself is designed, and the design of
+the model, we turn naturally to the guidance of those who have made this
+study their specialty; and a very wide difference does this study,
+embryology, at once reveal to us.
+
+Writing of the successive changes through which each embryo is forced to
+pass, the late Mr. G. H. Lewes says that "none of these phases have any
+adaptation to the future state of the animal, but are in positive
+contradiction to it or are simply purposeless; whereas all show stamped
+on them the unmistakable characters of _ancestral_ adaptation, and the
+progressions of organic evolution. What does the fact imply? There is
+not a single known example of a complex organism which is not developed
+out of simpler forms. Before it can attain the complex structure which
+distinguishes it, there must be an evolution of forms similar to those
+which distinguish the structure of organisms lower in the series. On the
+hypothesis of a plan which prearranged the organic world, nothing could
+be more unworthy of a supreme intelligence than this inability to
+construct an organism at once, without making several previous tentative
+efforts, undoing to-day what was so carefully done yesterday, and
+_repeating for centuries the same tentatives in the same succession_. Do
+not let us blink this consideration. There is a traditional phrase much
+in vogue among the anthropomorphists, which arose naturally enough from
+a tendency to take human methods as an explanation of the Divine--a
+phrase which becomes a sort of argument--'The Great Architect.' But if
+we are to admit the human point of view, a glance at the facts of
+embryology must produce very uncomfortable reflections. For what should
+we say to an architect who was unable, or being able was obstinately
+unwilling, to erect a palace except by first using his materials in the
+shape of a hut, then pulling them down and rebuilding them as a cottage,
+then adding story to story and room to room, _not_ with any reference to
+the ultimate purposes of the palace, but wholly with reference to the
+way in which houses were constructed in ancient times? What should we
+say to the architect who could not form a museum out of bricks and
+mortar, but was forced to begin as if going to construct a mansion, and
+after proceeding some way in this direction, altered his plan into a
+palace, and that again into a museum? Yet this is the sort of succession
+on which organisms are constructed. The fact has long been familiar; how
+has it been reconciled with infinite wisdom? Let the following passage
+answer for a thousand:--'The embryo is nothing like the miniature of the
+adult. For a long while the body in its entirety and in its details,
+presents the strangest of spectacles. Day by day and hour by hour, the
+aspect of the scene changes, and this instability is exhibited by the
+most essential parts no less than by the accessory parts. One would say
+that nature feels her way, and only reaches the goal after many times
+missing the path' (on dirait que la nature tatonne et ne conduit son
+oeuvre a bon fin, qu'apres s'etre souvent trompee)."[21]
+
+The above passage does not, I think, affect the evidence for design
+which we adduced in the preceding chapter. However strange the process
+of manufacture may appear, when the work comes to be turned out the
+design is too manifest to be doubted.
+
+If the reader were to come upon some lawyer's deed which dealt with
+matters of such unspeakable intricacy, that it baffled his imagination
+to conceive how it could ever have been drafted, and if in spite of this
+he were to find the intricacy of the provisions to be made, exceeded
+only by the ease and simplicity with which the deed providing for them
+was found to work in practice; and after this, if he were to discover
+that the deed, by whomsoever drawn, had nevertheless been drafted upon
+principles which at first seemed very foreign to any according to which
+he was in the habit of drafting deeds himself, as for example, that the
+draftsman had begun to draft a will as a marriage settlement, and so
+forth--yet an observer would not, I take it, do either of two things. He
+would not in the face of the result deny the design, making himself
+judge rather of the method of procedure than of the achievement. Nor yet
+after insisting in the manner of Paley, on the wonderful proofs of
+intention and on the exquisite provisions which were to be found in
+every syllable--thus leading us up to the highest pitch of
+expectation--would he present us with such an impotent conclusion as
+that the designer, though a living person and a true designer, was yet
+immaterial and intangible, a something, in fact, which proves to be a
+nothing: an omniscient and omnipotent vacuum.
+
+Our observer would feel he need not have been at such pains to establish
+his design if this was to be the upshot of his reasoning. He would
+therefore admit the design, and by consequence the designer, but would
+probably ask a little time for reflection before he ventured to say who,
+or what, or where the designer was. Then gaining some insight into the
+manner in which the deed had been drawn, he would conclude that the
+draftsman was a specialist who had had long practice in this particular
+kind of work, but who now worked almost as it might be said
+automatically and without consciousness, and found it difficult to
+depart from a habitual method of procedure.
+
+We turn, then, on Paley, and say to him: "We have admitted your design
+and your designer. Where is he? Show him to us. If you cannot show him
+to us as flesh and blood, show him as flesh and sap; show him as a
+living cell; show him as protoplasm. Lower than this we should not
+fairly go; it is not in the bond or _nexus_ of our ideas that something
+utterly inanimate and inorganic should scheme, design, contrive, and
+elaborate structures which can make mistakes: it may elaborate low
+unerring things, like crystals, but it cannot elaborate those which have
+the power to err. Nevertheless, we will commit such abuse with our
+understandings as to waive this point, and we will ask you to show him
+to us as air which, if it cannot be seen, yet can be felt, weighed,
+handled, transferred from place to place, be judged by its effects, and
+so forth; or if this may not be, give us half a grain of hydrogen,
+diffused through all space and invested with some of the minor
+attributes of matter; or if you cannot do this, give us an imponderable
+like electricity, or even the higher mathematics, but give us something
+or throw off the mask and tell us fairly out that it is your paid
+profession to hoodwink us on this matter if you can, and that you are
+but doing your best to earn an honest living."
+
+We may fancy Paley as turning the tables upon us and as saying: "But you
+too have admitted a designer--you too then must mean a designer with a
+body and soul, who must be somewhere to be found in space, and who must
+live in time. Where is this your designer? Can you show him more than I
+can? Can you lay your finger on him and demonstrate him so that a child
+shall see him and know him, and find what was heretofore an isolated
+idea concerning him, combine itself instantaneously with the idea of the
+designer, we will say, of the human foot, so that no power on earth
+shall henceforth tear those two ideas asunder? Surely if you cannot do
+this, you too are trifling with words, and abusing your own mind and
+that of your reader. Where, then, is your designer of man? Who made him?
+And where, again, is your designer of beasts and birds, of fishes, and
+of plants?"
+
+Our answer is simple enough; it is that we can and do point to a living
+tangible person with flesh, blood, eyes, nose, ears, organs, senses,
+dimensions, who did of his own cunning after infinite proof of every
+kind of hazard and experiment scheme out, and fashion each organ of the
+human body. This is the person whom we claim as the designer and
+artificer of that body, and he is the one of all others the best fitted
+for the task by his antecedents, and his practical knowledge of the
+requirements of the case--for he is man himself.
+
+Not man, the individual of any given generation, but man in the entirety
+of his existence from the dawn of life onwards to the present moment. In
+like manner we say that the designer of all organisms is so incorporate
+with the organisms themselves--so lives, moves, and has its being in
+those organisms, and is so one with them--they in it, and it in
+them--that it is more consistent with reason and the common use of
+words to see the designer of each living form in the living form itself,
+than to look for its designer in some other place or person.
+
+Thus we have a third alternative presented to us.
+
+Mr. Charles Darwin and his followers deny design, as having any
+appreciable share in the formation of organism at all.
+
+Paley and the theologians insist on design, but upon a designer outside
+the universe and the organism.
+
+The third opinion is that suggested in the first instance, and carried
+out to a very high degree of development by Buffon. It was improved,
+and, indeed, made almost perfect by Dr. Erasmus Darwin, but too much
+neglected by him after he had put it forward. It was borrowed, as I
+think we may say with some confidence, from Dr. Darwin by Lamarck, and
+was followed up by him ardently thenceforth, during the remainder of his
+life, though somewhat less perfectly comprehended by him than it had
+been by Dr. Darwin. It is that the design which has designed organisms,
+has resided within, and been embodied in, the organisms themselves.
+
+With but a very little change in the present signification of words, the
+question resolves itself into this.
+
+Shall we see God henceforth as embodied in all living forms; as dwelling
+in them; as being that power in them whereby they have learnt to fashion
+themselves, each one according to its ideas of its own convenience, and
+to make itself not only a microcosm, or little world, but a little
+unwritten history of the universe from its own point of view into the
+bargain? From everlasting, in time past, only in so far as life has
+lasted; invisible, only in so far as the ultimate connection between the
+will to do and the thing which does is invisible; imperishable, only in
+so far as life as a whole is imperishable; omniscient and omnipotent,
+within the limits only of a very long and large experience, but ignorant
+and impotent in respect of all else--limited in all the above respects,
+yet even so incalculably vaster than anything that we can conceive?
+
+Or shall we see God as we were taught to say we saw him when we were
+children--as an artificial and violent attempt to combine ideas which
+fly asunder and asunder, no matter how often we try to force them into
+combination?
+
+"The true mainspring of our existence," says Buffon, "lies not in those
+muscles, veins, arteries, and nerves, which have been described with so
+much minuteness, it is to be found in the more hidden forces which are
+not bounden by the gross mechanical laws which we would fain set over
+them. Instead of trying to know these forces by their effects, we have
+endeavoured to uproot even their very idea, so as to banish them utterly
+from philosophy. But they return to us and with renewed vigour; they
+return to us in gravitation, in chemical affinity, in the phenomena of
+electricity, &c. Their existence rests upon the clearest evidence; the
+omnipresence of their action is indisputable, but that action is hidden
+away from our eyes, and is a matter of inference only; we cannot
+actually see them, therefore we find difficulty in admitting that they
+exist; we wish to judge of everything by its exterior; we imagine that
+the exterior is the whole, and deeming that it is not permitted us to
+go beyond it, we neglect all that may enable us to do so."[22]
+
+Or may we not say that the unseen parts of God are those deep buried
+histories, the antiquity and the repeatedness of which go as far beyond
+that of any habit handed down to us from our earliest protoplasmic
+ancestor, as the distance of the remotest star in space transcends our
+distance from the sun?
+
+By vivisection and painful introspection we can rediscover many a long
+buried history--rekindling that sense of novelty in respect of its
+action, whereby we can alone become aware of it. But there are other
+remoter histories, and more repeated thoughts and actions, before which
+we feel so powerless to reawaken fresh interest concerning them, that we
+give up the attempt in despair, and bow our heads, overpowered by the
+sense of their immensity. Thus our inability to comprehend God is
+coextensive with our difficulty in going back upon the past--and our
+sense of him is a dim perception of our own vast and now inconceivably
+remote history.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[21] Quatrefages, 'Metamorphoses de l'Homme et des Animaux,' 1862, p.
+42; G. H. Lewes, 'Physical Basis of Mind,' 1877, p. 83.
+
+[22] Tom. ii. p. 486, 1794.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+FAILURE OF THE FIRST EVOLUTIONISTS TO SEE THEIR POSITION AS
+TELEOLOGICAL.
+
+
+It follows necessarily from the doctrine of Dr. Erasmus Darwin and
+Lamarck, if not from that of Buffon himself, that the greater number of
+organs are as purposive to the evolutionist as to the theologian, and
+far more intelligibly so. Circumstances, however, prevented these
+writers from acknowledging this fact to the world, and perhaps even to
+themselves. Their _crux_ was, as it still is to so many evolutionists,
+the presence of rudimentary organs, and the processes of embryological
+development. They would not admit that rudimentary and therefore useless
+organs were designed by a Creator to take their place once and for ever
+as part of a scheme whose main idea was, that every animal structure was
+to serve some useful end in connection with its possessor.
+
+This was the doctrine of final causes as then commonly held; in the face
+of rudimentary organs it was absurd. Buffon was above all things else a
+plain matter of fact thinker, who refused to go far beyond the obvious.
+Like all other profound writers, he was, if I may say so, profoundly
+superficial. He felt that the aim of research does not consist in the
+knowing this or that, but in the easing of the desire to know or
+understand more completely--in the peace of mind which passeth all
+understanding. His was the perfection of a healthy mental organism by
+which over effort is felt instinctively to be as vicious and
+contemptible as indolence. He knew this too well to know the grounds of
+his knowledge, but we smaller people who know it less completely, can
+see that such felicitous instinctive tempering together of the two great
+contradictory principles, love of effort and love of ease, has underlain
+every step of all healthy growth through all conceivable time. Nothing
+is worth looking at which is seen either too obviously or with too much
+difficulty. Nothing is worth doing or well done which is not done fairly
+easily, and some little deficiency of effort is more pardonable than any
+very perceptible excess; for virtue has ever erred rather on the side of
+self-indulgence than of asceticism, and well-being has ever advanced
+through the pleasures rather than through austerity.
+
+According to Buffon, then--as also according to Dr. Darwin, who was just
+such another practical and genial thinker, and who was distinctly a
+pupil of Buffon, though a most intelligent and original one--if an organ
+after a reasonable amount of inspection appeared to be useless, it was
+to be called useless without more ado, and theories were to be ordered
+out of court if they were troublesome. In like manner, if animals bred
+freely _inter se_ before our eyes, as for example the horse and ass, the
+fact was to be noted, but no animals were to be classed as capable of
+interbreeding until they had asserted their right to such classification
+by breeding with tolerable certainty. If, again, an animal looked as if
+it felt, that is to say, if it moved about pretty quickly or made a
+noise, it must be held to feel; if it did neither of these things, it
+did not look as if it felt and therefore it must be said not to feel.
+_De non apparentibus et non existentibus eadem est lex_ was one of the
+chief axioms of their philosophy; no writers have had a greater horror
+of mystery or of ideas that have not become so mastered as to be, or to
+have been, superficial. Lamarck was one of those men of whom I believe
+it has been said that they have brain upon the brain. He had his theory
+that an animal could not feel unless it had a nervous system, and at
+least a spinal marrow--and that it could not think at all without a
+brain--all his facts, therefore, have to be made to square with this.
+With Buffon and Dr. Darwin we feel safe that however wrong they may
+sometimes be, their conclusions have always been arrived at on that
+fairly superficial view of things in which, as I have elsewhere said,
+our nature alone permits us to be comforted.
+
+To these writers, then, the doctrine of final causes for rudimentary
+organs was a piece of mystification and an absurdity; no less fatal to
+any such doctrine were the processes of embryological development. It
+was plain that the commonly received teleology must be given up; but the
+idea of design or purpose was so associated in their minds with
+theological design that they avoided it altogether. They seem to have
+forgotten that an internal teleology is as much teleology as an external
+one; hence, unfortunately, though their whole theory of development is
+intensely purposive, it is the fact rather than the name of teleology
+which has hitherto been insisted upon, even by the greatest writers on
+evolution--the name having been denied even by those who were most
+insisting on the thing itself.
+
+It is easy to understand the difficulty felt by the fathers of evolution
+when we remember how much had to be seen before the facts could lie well
+before them. It was necessary to attain, firstly, to a perception of the
+unity of person between parents and offspring in successive generations;
+secondly, it must be seen that an organism's memory goes back for
+generations beyond its birth, to the first beginnings in fact, of which
+we know anything whatever; thirdly, the latency of that memory, as of
+memory generally till the associated ideas are reproduced, must be
+brought to bear upon the facts of heredity; and lastly, the
+unconsciousness with which habitual actions come to be performed, must
+be assigned as the explanation of the unconsciousness with which we grow
+and discharge most of our natural functions.
+
+Buffon was too busy with the fact that animals descended with
+modification at all, to go beyond the development and illustration of
+this great truth. I doubt whether he ever saw more than the first, and
+that dimly, of the four considerations above stated.
+
+Dr. Darwin was the first to point out the first two considerations with
+some clearness, but he can hardly be said to have understood their full
+importance: the two latter ideas do not appear to have occurred to him.
+
+Lamarck had little if any perception of any one of the four. When,
+however, they are firmly seized and brought into their due bearings one
+upon another, the facts of heredity become as simple as those of a man
+making a tobacco pipe, and rudimentary organs are seen to be essentially
+of the same character as the little rudimentary protuberance at the
+bottom of the pipe to which I referred in 'Erewhon.'[23]
+
+These organs are now no longer useful, but they once were so, and were
+therefore once purposive, though not so now. They are the expressions of
+a bygone usefulness; sayings, as it were, about which there was at one
+time infinite wrangling, as to what both the meaning and the expression
+should best be, so that they then had living significance in the mouths
+of those who used them, though they have become such mere shibboleths
+and cant formulae to ourselves that we think no more of their meaning
+than we do of Julius Caesar in the month of July. They continue to be
+reproduced through the force of habit, and through indisposition to get
+out of any familiar groove of action until it becomes too unpleasant for
+us to remain in it any longer. It has long been felt that embryology and
+rudimentary structures indicated community of descent. Dr. Darwin and
+Lamarck insisted on this, as have all subsequent writers on evolution;
+but the explanation of why and how the structures come to be
+repeated--namely, that they are simply examples of the force of
+habit--can only be perceived intelligently by those who admit so much
+unity between parents and offspring that the self-development of the
+latter can be properly called habitual (as being a repetition of an act
+by one and the same individual), and can only be fully sympathized with
+by those who recognize that if habit be admitted as the key to the fact
+at all, the unconscious manner in which the habit comes to be repeated
+is only of a piece with all our other observations concerning habit. For
+the fuller development of the foregoing, I must refer the reader to my
+work 'Life and Habit.'
+
+The purposiveness, which even Dr. Darwin, and Lamarck still less, seem
+never to have quite recognized in spite of their having insisted so much
+on what amounts to the same thing, now comes into full view. It is seen
+that the organs external to the body, and those internal to it are, the
+second as much as the first, things which we have made for our own
+convenience, and with a prevision that we shall have need of them; the
+main difference between the manufacture of these two classes of organs
+being, that we have made the one kind so often that we can no longer
+follow the processes whereby we make them, while the others are new
+things which we must make introspectively or not at all, and which are
+not yet so incorporate with our vitality as that we should think they
+grow instead of being manufactured. The manufacture of the tool, and the
+manufacture of the living organ prove therefore to be but two species of
+the same genus, which, though widely differentiated, have descended as
+it were from one common filament of desire and inventive faculty. The
+greater or less complexity of the organs goes for very little. It is
+only a question of the amount of intelligence and voluntary
+self-adaptation which we must admit, and this must be settled rather by
+an appeal to what we find in organism, and observe concerning it, than
+by what we may have imagined _a priori_.
+
+Given a small speck of jelly with some kind of circumstance-suiting
+power, some power of slightly varying its actions in accordance with
+slightly varying circumstances and desires--given such a jelly-speck
+with a power of assimilating other matter, and thus, of reproducing
+itself, given also that it should be possessed of a memory, and we can
+show how the whole animal world can have descended it may be from an
+amoeba without interference from without, and how every organ in every
+creature is designed at first roughly and tentatively but finally
+fashioned with the most consummate perfection, by the creature which has
+had need of that organ, which best knew what it wanted, and was never
+satisfied till it had got that which was the best suited to its varying
+circumstances in their entirety. We can even show how, if it becomes
+worth the Ethiopian's while to try and change his skin, or the leopard's
+to change his spots, they can assuredly change them within a not
+unreasonable time and adapt their covering to their own will and
+convenience, and to that of none other; thus what is commonly conceived
+of as direct creation by God is moved back to a time and space
+inconceivable in their remoteness, while the aim and design so obvious
+in nature are shown to be still at work around us, growing ever busier
+and busier, and advancing from day to day both in knowledge and power.
+
+It was reserved for Mr. Darwin and for those who have too rashly
+followed him to deny purpose as having had any share in the development
+of animal and vegetable organs; to see no evidence of design in those
+wonderful provisions which have been the marvel and delight of observers
+in all ages. The one who has drawn our attention more than perhaps any
+other living writer to those very marvels of coadaptation, is the
+foremost to maintain that they are the result not of desire and design,
+either within the creature or without it, but of blind chance, working
+no whither, and due but to the accumulation of innumerable lucky
+accidents.
+
+"There are men," writes Professor Tyndall in the 'Nineteenth Century,'
+for last November, "and by no means the minority, who, however wealthy
+in regard to facts, can never rise into the region of principles; and
+they are sometimes intolerant of those that can. They are formed to plod
+meritoriously on in the lower levels of thought; unpossessed of the
+pinions necessary to reach the heights, they cannot realize the mental
+act--the act of inspiration it might well be called--by which a man of
+genius, after long pondering and proving, reaches a theoretic conception
+which unravels and illuminates the tangle of centuries of observation
+and experiment. There are minds, it may be said in passing, who, at the
+present moment, stand in this relation to Mr. Darwin."
+
+The more rhapsodical parts of the above must go for what they are worth,
+but I should be sorry to think that what remains conveyed a censure
+which might fall justly on myself. As I read the earlier part of the
+passage I confess that I imagined the conclusion was going to be very
+different from what it proved to be. Fresh from the study of the older
+men and also of Mr. Darwin himself, I failed to see that Mr. Darwin had
+"unravelled and illuminated" a tangled skein, but believed him, on the
+contrary, to have tangled and obscured what his predecessors had made in
+great part, if not wholly, plain. With the older writers, I had felt as
+though in the hands of men who wished to understand themselves and to
+make their reader understand them with the smallest possible exertion.
+The older men, if not in full daylight, at any rate saw in what quarter
+of the sky the dawn was breaking, and were looking steadily towards it.
+It is not they who have put their hands over their own eyes and ours,
+and who are crying out that there is no light, but chance and blindness
+everywhere.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[23] Page 210, first edition.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE TELEOLOGICAL EVOLUTION OF ORGANISM--THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE
+UNCONSCIOUS.
+
+
+I have stated the foregoing in what I take to be an extreme logical
+development, in order that the reader may more easily perceive the
+consequences of those premises which I am endeavouring to re-establish.
+But it must not be supposed that an animal or plant has ever conceived
+the idea of some organ widely different from any it was yet possessed
+of, and has set itself to design it in detail and grow towards it.
+
+The small jelly-speck, which we call the amoeba, has no organs save
+what it can extemporize as occasion arises. If it wants to get at
+anything, it thrusts out part of its jelly, which thus serves it as an
+arm or hand: when the arm has served its purpose, it is absorbed into
+the rest of the jelly, and has now to do the duty of a stomach by
+helping to wrap up what it has just purveyed. The small round
+jelly-speck spreads itself out and envelops its food, so that the whole
+creature is now a stomach, and nothing but a stomach. Having digested
+its food, it again becomes a jelly-speck, and is again ready to turn
+part of itself into hand or foot as its next convenience may dictate. It
+is not to be believed that such a creature as this, which is probably
+just sensitive to light and nothing more, should be able to form a
+conception of an eye and set itself to work to grow one, any more than
+it is believable that he who first observed the magnifying power of a
+dew drop, or even he who first constructed a rude lens, should have had
+any idea in his mind of Lord Rosse's telescope with all its parts and
+appliances. Nothing could be well conceived more foreign to experience
+and common sense. Animals and plants have travelled to their present
+forms as man has travelled to any one of his own most complicated
+inventions. Slowly, step by step, through many blunders and mischances
+which have worked together for good to those that have persevered in
+elasticity. They have travelled as man has travelled, with but little
+perception of a want till there was also some perception of a power, and
+with but little perception of a power till there was a dim sense of
+want; want stimulating power, and power stimulating want; and both so
+based upon each other that no one can say which is the true foundation,
+but rather that they must be both baseless and, as it were, meteoric in
+mid air. They have seen very little ahead of a present power or need,
+and have been then most moral, when most inclined to pierce a little
+into futurity, but also when most obstinately declining to pierce too
+far, and busy mainly with the present. They have been so far blindfolded
+that they could see but for a few steps in front of them, yet so far
+free to see that those steps were taken with aim and definitely, and not
+in the dark.
+
+"Plus il a su," says Buffon, speaking of man, "plus il a pu, mais aussi
+moins il a fait, moins il a su." This holds good wherever life holds
+good. Wherever there is life there is a moral government of rewards and
+punishments understood by the amoeba neither better nor worse than by
+man. The history of organic development is the history of a moral
+struggle.
+
+We know nothing as yet about the origin of a creature able to feel want
+and power, nor yet what want and power spring from. It does not seem
+worth while to go into these questions until an understanding has been
+come to as to whether the interaction of want and power in some low form
+or forms of life which could assimilate matter, reproduce themselves,
+vary their actions, and be capable of remembering, will or will not
+suffice to explain the development of the varied organs and desires
+which we see in the higher vertebrates and man. When this question has
+been settled, then it will be time to push our inquiries farther back.
+
+But given such a low form of life as here postulated, and there is no
+force in Paley's pretended objection to the Darwinism of his time.
+
+"Give our philosopher," he says, "appetencies; give him a portion of
+living irritable matter (a nerve or the clipping of a nerve) to work
+upon; give also to his incipient or progressive forms the power of
+propagating their like in every stage of their alteration; and if he is
+to be believed, he could replenish the world with all the vegetable and
+animal productions which we now see in it."[24]
+
+After meeting this theory with answers which need not detain us, he
+continues:--
+
+"The senses of animals appear to me quite incapable of receiving the
+explanation of their origin which this theory affords. Including under
+the word 'sense' the organ and the perception, we have no account of
+either. How will our philosopher get at vision or make an eye? Or,
+suppose the eye formed, would the perception follow? The same of the
+other senses. And this objection holds its force, ascribe what you will
+to the hand of time, to the power of habit, to changes too slow to be
+observed by man, or brought within any comparison which he is able to
+make of past things with the present. Concede what you please to these
+arbitrary and unattested superstitions, how will they help you? Here is
+no inception. No laws, no course, no powers of nature which prevail at
+present, nor any analogous to these would give commencement to a new
+sense; and it is in vain to inquire how that might proceed which would
+never _begin_."
+
+In answer to this, let us suppose that some inhabitants of another world
+were to see a modern philosopher so using a microscope that they should
+believe it to be a part of the philosopher's own person, which he could
+cut off from and join again to himself at pleasure, and suppose there
+were a controversy as to how this microscope had originated, and that
+one party maintained the man had made it little by little because he
+wanted it, while the other declared this to be absurd and impossible; I
+ask, would this latter party be justified in arguing that microscopes
+could never have been perfected by degrees through the preservation of
+and accumulation of small successive improvements, inasmuch as men
+could not have begun to want to use microscopes until they had had a
+microscope which should show them that such an instrument would be
+useful to them, and that hence there is nothing to account for the
+_beginning_ of microscopes, which might indeed make some progress when
+once originated, but which could never originate?
+
+It might be pointed out to such a reasoner, firstly, that as regards any
+acquired power the various stages in the acquisition of which he might
+be supposed able to remember, he would find that, logic notwithstanding,
+the wish did originate the power, and yet was originated by it, both
+coming up gradually out of something which was not recognisable as
+either power or wish, and advancing through vain beating of the air, to
+a vague effort, and from this to definite effort with failure, and from
+this to definite effort with success, and from this to success with
+little consciousness of effort, and from this to success with such
+complete absence of effort that he now acts unconsciously and without
+power of introspection, and that, do what he will, he can rarely or
+never draw a sharp dividing line whereat anything shall be said to
+begin, though none less certain that there has been a continuity in
+discontinuity, and a discontinuity in continuity between it and certain
+other past things; moreover, that his opponents postulated so much
+beginning of the microscope as that there should be a dew drop, even as
+our evolutionists start with a sense of touch, of which sense all the
+others are modifications, so that not one of them but is resolvable into
+touch by more or less easy stages; and secondly, that the question is
+one of fact and of the more evident deductions therefrom, and should not
+be carried back to those remote beginnings where the nature of the facts
+is so purely a matter of conjecture and inference.
+
+No plant or animal, then, according to our view, would be able to
+conceive more than a very slight improvement on its organization at a
+given time, so clearly as to make the efforts towards it that would
+result in growth of the required modification; nor would these efforts
+be made with any far-sighted perception of what next and next and after,
+but only of what next; while many of the happiest thoughts would come
+like all other happy thoughts--thoughtlessly; by a chain of reasoning
+too swift and subtle for conscious analysis by the individual, as will
+be more fully insisted on hereafter. Some of these modifications would
+be noticeable, but the majority would involve no more noticeable
+difference than can be detected between the length of the shortest day,
+and that of the shortest but one.
+
+Thus a bird whose toes were not webbed, but who had under force of
+circumstances little by little in the course of many generations learned
+to swim, either from having lived near a lake, and having learnt the art
+owing to its fishing habits, or from wading about in shallow pools by
+the sea-side at low water, and finding itself sometimes a little out of
+its depth and just managing to scramble over the intermediate yard or so
+between it and safety--such a bird did not probably conceive the idea of
+swimming on the water and set itself to learn to do so, and then
+conceive the idea of webbed feet and set itself to get webbed feet. The
+bird found itself in some small difficulty, out of which it either saw,
+or at any rate found that it could extricate itself by striking out
+vigorously with its feet and extending its toes as far as ever it could;
+it thus began to learn the art of swimming and conceived the idea of
+swimming synchronously, or nearly so; or perhaps wishing to get over a
+yard or two of deep water, and trying to do so without being at the
+trouble of rising to fly, it would splash and struggle its way over the
+water, and thus practically swim, though without much perception of what
+it had been doing. Finding that no harm had come to it, the bird would
+do the same again, and again; it would thus presently lose fear, and
+would be able to act more calmly; then it would begin to find out that
+it could swim a little, and if its food lay much in the water so that it
+would be of great advantage to it to be able to alight and rest without
+being forced to return to land, it would begin to make a practice of
+swimming. It would now discover that it could swim the more easily
+according as its feet presented a more extended surface to the water; it
+would therefore keep its toes extended whenever it swam, and as far as
+in it lay, would make the most of whatever skin was already at the base
+of its toes. After very many generations it would become web-footed, if
+doing as above described should have been found continuously convenient,
+so that the bird should have continuously used the skin about its toes
+as much as possible in this direction.
+
+For there is a margin in every organic structure (and perhaps more than
+we imagine in things inorganic also), which will admit of references,
+as it were, side notes, and glosses upon the original text. It is on
+this margin that we may err or wander--the greatness of a mistake
+depending rather upon the extent of the departure from the original
+text, than on the direction that the departure takes. A little error on
+the bad side is more pardonable, and less likely to hurt the organism
+than a too great departure upon the right one. This is a fundamental
+proposition in any true system of ethics, the question what is too much
+or too sudden being decided by much the same higgling as settles the
+price of butter in a country market, and being as invisible as the link
+which connects the last moment of desire with the first of power and
+performance, and with the material result achieved.
+
+It is on this margin that the fulcrum is to be found, whereby we obtain
+the little purchase over our structure, that enables us to achieve great
+results if we use it steadily, with judgment, and with neither too
+little effort nor too much. It is by employing this that those who have
+a fancy to move their ears or toes without moving other organs learn to
+do so. There is a man at the Agricultural Hall now playing the violin
+with his toes, and playing it, as I am told, sufficiently well. The eye
+of the sailor, the wrist of the conjuror, the toe of the professional
+medium, are all found capable of development to an astonishing degree,
+even in a single lifetime; but in every case success has been attained
+by the simple process of making the best of whatever power a man has had
+at any given time, and by being on the look out to take advantage of
+accident, and even of misfortune. If a man would learn to paint, he must
+not theorize concerning art, nor think much what he would do beforehand,
+but he must do _something_--it does not matter what, except that it
+should be whatever at the moment will come handiest and easiest to him;
+and he must do that something as well as he can. This will presently
+open the door for something else, and a way will show itself which no
+conceivable amount of searching would have discovered, but which yet
+could never have been discovered by sitting still and taking no pains at
+all. "Dans l'animal," says Buffon, "il y a moins de jugement que de
+sentiment."[25]
+
+It may appear as though this were blowing hot and cold with the same
+breath, inasmuch as I am insisting that important modifications of
+structure have been always purposive; and at the same time am denying
+that the creature modified has had any purpose in the greater part of
+all those actions which have at length modified both structure and
+instinct. Thus I say that a bird learns to swim without having any
+purpose of learning to swim before it set itself to make those movements
+which have resulted in its being able to do so. At the same time I
+maintain that it has only learned to swim by trying to swim, and this
+involves the very purpose which I have just denied. The reconciliation
+of these two apparently irreconcilable contentions must be found in the
+consideration that the bird was not the less trying to swim, merely
+because it did not know the name we have chosen to give to the art
+which it was trying to master, nor yet how great were the resources of
+that art. A person, who knew all about swimming, if from some bank he
+could watch our supposed bird's first attempt to scramble over a short
+space of deep water, would at once declare that the bird was trying to
+swim--if not actually swimming. Provided then that there is a very
+little perception of, and prescience concerning, the means whereby the
+next desired end may be attained, it matters not how little in advance
+that end may be of present desires or faculties; it is still reached
+through purpose, and must be called purposive. Again, no matter how many
+of these small steps be taken, nor how absolute was the want of purpose
+or prescience concerning any but the one being actually taken at any
+given moment, this does not bar the result from having been arrived at
+through design and purpose. If each one of the small steps is purposive
+the result is purposive, though there was never purpose extended over
+more than one, two, or perhaps at most three, steps at a time.
+
+Returning to the art of painting for an example, are we to say that the
+proficiency which such a student as was supposed above will certainly
+attain, is not due to design, merely because it was not until he had
+already become three parts excellent that he knew the full purport of
+all that he had been doing? When he began he had but vague notions of
+what he would do. He had a wish to learn to represent nature, but the
+line into which he has settled down has probably proved very different
+from that which he proposed to himself originally. Because he has taken
+advantage of his accidents, is it, therefore, one whit the less true
+that his success is the result of his desires and his design? The
+'Times' pointed out not long ago that the theory which now associates
+meteors and comets in the most unmistakable manner, was suggested by one
+accident, and confirmed by another. But the writer added well that "such
+accidents happen only to the zealous student of nature's secrets." In
+the same way the bird that is taking to the habit of swimming, and of
+making the most of whatever skin it already has between its toes, will
+have doubtless to thank accidents for no small part of its progress; but
+they will be such accidents as could never have happened to, or been
+taken advantage of by any creature which was not zealously trying to
+make the most of itself--and between such accidents as this, and design,
+the line is hard to draw; for if we go deep enough we shall find that
+most of our design resolves itself into as it were a shaking of the bag
+to see what will come out that will suit our purpose, and yet at the
+same time that most of our shaking of the bag resolves itself into a
+design that the bag shall contain only such and such things, or
+thereabouts.
+
+Again, the fact that animals are no longer conscious of
+design and purpose in much that they do, but act unreflectingly,
+and as we sometimes say concerning ourselves "automatically" or
+"mechanically"--that they have no idea whatever of the steps whereby
+they have travelled to their present state, and show no sign of doubt
+about what must have been at one time the subject of all manner of
+doubts, difficulties, and discussions--that whatever sign of reflection
+they now exhibit is to be found only in case of some novel feature or
+difficulty presenting itself; these facts do not bar that the results
+achieved should be attributed to an inception in reason, design, and
+purpose, no matter how rapidly and as we call it instinctively, the
+creatures may now act.
+
+For if we look closely at such an invention as the steam engine in its
+latest and most complicated developments, about which there can be no
+dispute but that they are achievements of reason, purpose, and design,
+we shall find them present us with examples of all those features the
+presence of which in the handiwork of animals is too often held to bar
+reason and purpose from having had any share therein.
+
+Assuredly such men as the Marquis of Worcester and Captain Savery had
+very imperfect ideas as to the upshot of their own action. The simplest
+steam engine now in use in England is probably a marvel of ingenuity as
+compared with the highest development which appeared possible to these
+two great men, while our newest and most highly complicated engines
+would seem to them more like living beings than machines. Many, again,
+of the steps leading to the present development have been due to action
+which had but little heed of the steam engine, being the inventions of
+attendants whose desire was to save themselves the trouble of turning
+this or that cock, and who were indifferent to any other end than their
+own immediate convenience. No step in fact along the whole route was
+ever taken with much perception of what would be the next step after the
+one being taken at any given moment.
+
+Nor do we find that an engine made after any old and well-known pattern
+is now made with much more consciousness of design than we can suppose a
+bird's nest to be built with. The greater number of the parts of any
+such engine, are made by the gross as it were like screws and nuts,
+which are turned out by machinery and in respect of which the labour of
+design is now no more felt than is the design of him who first invented
+the wheel. It is only when circumstances require any modification in the
+article to be manufactured that thought and design will come into play
+again; but I take it few will deny that if circumstances compel a bird
+either to give up a nest three-parts built altogether, or to make some
+trifling deviation from its ordinary practice, it will in nine cases out
+of ten make such deviation as shall show that it had thought the matter
+over, and had on the whole concluded to take such and such a course,
+that is to say, that it had reasoned and had acted with such purpose as
+its reason had dictated.
+
+And I imagine that this is the utmost that anyone can claim even for
+man's own boasted powers. Set the man who has been accustomed to make
+engines of one type, to make engines of another type without any
+intermediate course of training or instruction, and he will make no
+better figure with his engines than a thrush would do if commanded by
+her mate to make a nest like a blackbird. It is vain then to contend
+that the ease and certainty with which an action is performed, even
+though it may have now become matter of such fixed habit that it cannot
+be suddenly and seriously modified without rendering the whole
+performance abortive, is any argument against that action having been an
+achievement of design and reason in respect of each one of the steps
+that have led to it; and if in respect of each one of the steps then as
+regards the entire action; for we see our own most reasoned actions
+become no less easy, unerring, automatic, and unconscious, than the
+actions which we call instinctive when they have been repeated a
+sufficient number of times.
+
+This has been often pointed out, but I insisted upon it and developed it
+in 'Life and Habit,' more I believe than has been done hitherto, at the
+same time making it the key to many phenomena of growth and heredity
+which without such key seem explained by words rather than by any
+corresponding peace of mind in our ideas concerning them. Seeing that I
+dwelt much on the importance of bearing in mind the vanishing tendency
+of consciousness, volition, and memory upon their becoming intense, a
+tendency which no one after five minutes' reflection will venture to
+deny, some reviewers have imagined that I am advocating the same views
+as have been put forward by Von Hartmann under the title of 'the
+Philosophy of the Unconscious.' Unless, however, I am much mistaken,
+their opinion is without foundation. For so far as I can gather, Von
+Hartmann personifies the unconscious and makes it act and think--in fact
+deifies it--whereas I only infer a certain history for certain of our
+growths and actions in consequence of observing that often repeated
+actions come in time to be performed unconsciously. I cannot think I
+have done more than note a fact which all must acknowledge, and drawn
+from it an inference which may or may not be true, but which is at any
+rate perfectly intelligible, whereas if Von Hartmann's meaning is
+anything like what Mr. Sully says it is,[26] I can only say that it has
+not been given to me to form any definite conception whatever as to what
+that meaning may be. I am encouraged moreover to hope that I am not in
+the same condemnation with Von Hartmann--if, indeed, Von Hartmann is to
+be condemned, about which I know nothing--by the following extract from
+a German Review of 'Life and Habit.'
+
+     "Der erste dieser beiden Erklaerungsversuche, ist eine wahre
+     'Philosophie des Unbewussten' nicht des Hartmann'schen Unbewussten
+     welches hellsehend und wunderthaetig von aussen in die natuerliche
+     Entwickelung der Organismen eingreift, sondern eines Unbewussten
+     welches wie der Verfasser zeigt, in allen organischen Wesen
+     anzunehmen unsere eigene Erfahrung und die Stufenfolge der
+     Organismen von den Moneren und Amoeben bis zu den hoechsten
+     Pflanzen und Thieren und uns selbst aufwaerts--uns gestattet, wenn
+     nicht uns noethigt. Der Gedankengang dieser neuen oder wenigstens in
+     diesem Sinne wohl zum ersten Male consequent im Einzelnen
+     durchgefuehrten Philosophie des Unbewussten ist, seinen Hauptzuegen
+     nach kurz angedeutet, folgender."[27]
+
+Even here I am made to personify more than I like; I do not wish to say
+that the unconscious does this or that, but that when we have done this
+or that sufficiently often we do it unconsciously.
+
+If the foregoing be granted, and it be admitted that the unconsciousness
+and seeming automatism with which any action may be performed is no bar
+to its having a foundation in memory, reason, and at one time
+consciously recognized effort--and this I believe to be the chief
+addition which I have ventured to make to the theory of Buffon and Dr.
+Erasmus Darwin--then the wideness of the difference between the
+Darwinism of eighty years ago and the Darwinism of to-day becomes
+immediately apparent, and it also becomes apparent, how important and
+interesting is the issue which is raised between them.
+
+According to the older Darwinism the lungs are just as purposive as the
+corkscrew. They, no less than the corkscrew, are a piece of mechanism
+designed and gradually improved upon and perfected by an intelligent
+creature for the gratification of its own needs. True there are many
+important differences between mechanism which is part of the body, and
+mechanism which is no such part, but the differences are such as do not
+affect the fact that in each case the result, whether, for example,
+lungs or corkscrew, is due to desire, invention, and design.
+
+And now I will ask one more question, which may seem, perhaps, to have
+but little importance, but which I find personally interesting. I have
+been told by a reviewer, of whom upon the whole I have little reason to
+complain, that the theory I put forward in 'Life and Habit,' and which I
+am now again insisting on, is pessimism--pure and simple. I have a very
+vague idea what pessimism means, but I should be sorry to believe that I
+am a pessimist. Which, I would ask, is the pessimist? He who sees love
+of beauty, design, steadfastness of purpose, intelligence, courage, and
+every quality to which success has assigned the name of "worth," as
+having drawn the pattern of every leaf and organ now and in all past
+time, or he who sees nothing in the world of nature but a chapter of
+accidents and of forces interacting blindly?
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[24] 'Nat. Theol.,' ch. xxiii.
+
+[25] 'Oiseaux,' vol. i. p. 5.
+
+[26] 'Westminster Review,' vol. xlix. p. 124.
+
+[27] Translation: "The first of these two attempts is a true 'philosophy
+of the unconscious,' not Hartmann's unconscious, which influences the
+natural evolution of organism from without as though by Providence and
+miracle, but of an unconscious, which, as the author shows, our own
+experience and the progressive succession of organisms from the monads
+and amoebae up to the highest plants and animals, including ourselves,
+allows, if it does not compel us to assume [as obtaining] in all organic
+beings. This philosophy of the unconscious is new, or at any rate now
+for the first time carried out consequentially in detail; its main
+features, briefly stated are as follows."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+SCHEME OF THE REMAINDER OF THE WORK. HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE THEORY OF
+EVOLUTION.
+
+
+I have long felt that evolution must stand or fall according as it is
+made to rest or not on principles which shall give a definite purpose
+and direction to the variations whose accumulation results in specific,
+and ultimately in generic differences. In other words, according as it
+is made to stand upon the ground first clearly marked out for it by Dr.
+Erasmus Darwin and afterwards adopted by Lamarck, or on that taken by
+Mr. Charles Darwin.
+
+There is some reason to fear that in consequence of the disfavour into
+which modern Darwinism is seen to be falling by those who are more
+closely watching the course of opinion upon this subject, evolution
+itself may be for a time discredited as something inseparable from the
+theory that it has come about mainly through "the means" of natural
+selection. If people are shown that the arguments by which a somewhat
+startling conclusion has been reached will not legitimately lead to that
+conclusion, they are very ready to assume that the conclusion must be
+altogether unfounded, especially when, as in the present case, there is
+a vast mass of vested interests opposed to the conclusion. Few know that
+there are other great works upon descent with modification besides Mr.
+Darwin's. Not one person in ten thousand has any distinct idea of what
+Buffon, Dr. Darwin, and Lamarck propounded. Their names have been
+discredited by the very authors who have been most indebted to them;
+there is hardly a writer on evolution who does not think it incumbent
+upon him to warn Lamarck off the ground which he at any rate made his
+own, and to cast a stone at what he will call the "shallow speculations"
+or "crude theories" or the "well-known doctrine" of the foremost
+exponent of Buffon and Dr. Darwin. Buffon is a great name, Dr. Darwin is
+no longer even this, and Lamarck has been so systematically laughed at
+that it amounts to little less than philosophical suicide for anyone to
+stand up in his behalf. Not one of our scientific elders or chief
+priests but would caution a student rather to avoid the three great men
+whom I have named than to consult them. It is a perilous task therefore
+to try and take evolution from the pedestal on which it now appears to
+stand so securely, and to put it back upon the one raised for it by its
+propounders; yet this is what I believe will have to be done sooner or
+later unless the now general acceptance of evolution is to be shaken
+more rudely than some of its upholders may anticipate. I propose
+therefore to give a short biographical sketch of the three writers whose
+works form new departures in the history of evolution, with a somewhat
+full _resume_ of the positions they took in regard to it. I will also
+touch briefly upon some other writers who have handled the same subject.
+The reader will thus be enabled to follow the development of a great
+conception as it has grown up in the minds of successive men of genius,
+and by thus growing with it, as it were, through its embryonic stages,
+he will make himself more thoroughly master of it in all its bearings.
+
+I will then contrast the older with the newer Darwinism, and will show
+why the 'Origin of Species,' though an episode of incalculable value,
+cannot, any more than the 'Vestiges of Creation,' take permanent rank in
+the literature of evolution.
+
+It will appear that the evolution of evolution has gone through the
+following principal stages:--
+
+I. A general conception of the fact that specific types were not always
+immutable.
+
+This was common to many writers, both ancient and modern; it has been
+occasionally asserted from the times of Anaximander and Lucretius to
+those of Bacon and Sir Walter Raleigh.
+
+II. A definite conception that animal and vegetable forms were so
+extensively mutable that few (and, if so, perhaps but one) could claim
+to be of an original stock; the direct effect of changed conditions
+being assigned as the cause of modification, and the important
+consequences of the struggle for existence being in many respects fully
+recognized. The fact of design or purpose in connection with organism,
+as causing habits and thus as underlying all variation, was also
+indicated with some clearness, but was not thoroughly understood.
+
+This phase must be identified with the name of Buffon, who, as I will
+show reason for believing, would have carried his theory much further if
+he had not felt that he had gone as far in the right direction as was
+then desirable. Buffon put forward his opinions, with great reserve and
+yet with hardly less frankness, in volume after volume from 1749 to
+1788, the year of his death, but they do not appear to have taken root
+at once in France. They took root in England, and were thence
+transplanted back to France.
+
+III. A development in England of the Buffonian system, marked by
+glimpses of the unity between offspring and parents, and broad
+suggestions to the effect that the former must be considered as capable
+of remembering, under certain circumstances, what had happened to it,
+and what it did, when it was part of the personality of those from whom
+it had descended.
+
+A definite belief, openly expressed, that not only are many species
+mutable, but that all living forms, whether animal or vegetable, are
+descended from a single, or at any rate from not many, original low
+forms of life, and this as the direct consequence of the actions and
+requirements of the living forms themselves, and as the indirect
+consequence of changed conditions. A definite cause is thus supposed to
+underlie variations, and the resulting adaptations become purposive; but
+this was not said, nor, I am afraid, seen.
+
+This is the original Darwinism of Dr. Erasmus Darwin. It was put forward
+in his 'Zoonomia,' in 1794, and was adopted almost in its entirety by
+Lamarck, who, when he had caught the leading idea (probably through a
+French translation of the 'Loves of the Plants,' which appeared in
+1800), began to expound it in 1801; in 1802, 1803, 1806, and 1809, he
+developed it with greater fulness of detail than Dr. Darwin had done,
+but perhaps with a somewhat less nice sense of some important points.
+Till his death, in 1831, Lamarck, as far as age and blindness would
+permit, continued to devote himself to the exposition of the theory of
+descent with modification.
+
+IV. A more distinct perception of the unity of parents and offspring,
+with a bolder reference of the facts of heredity (whether of structure
+or instinct), to memory pure and simple; a clearer perception of the
+consequences that follow from the survival of the fittest, and a just
+view of the relation in which those consequences stand to "the
+circumstance-suiting" power of animals and plants; a reference of the
+variations whose accumulation results in species, to the volition of the
+animal or plant which varies, and perhaps a dawning perception that all
+adaptations of structure to need must therefore be considered as
+"purposive."
+
+This must be connected with Mr. Matthew's work on 'Naval Timber and
+Arboriculture,' which appeared in 1831. The remarks which it contains in
+reference to evolution are confined to an appendix, but when brought
+together, as by Mr. Matthew himself, in the 'Gardeners' Chronicle' for
+April 7, 1860, they form one of the most perfect yet succinct
+expositions of the theory of evolution that I have ever seen. I shall
+therefore give them in full.[28] This book was well received, and was
+reviewed in the 'Quarterly Review,'[29] but seems to have been valued
+rather for its views on naval timber than on evolution. Mr. Matthew's
+merit lies in a just appreciation of the importance of each one of the
+principal ideas which must be present in combination before we can have
+a correct conception of evolution, and of their bearings upon one
+another. In his scheme of evolution I find each part kept in due
+subordination to the others, so that the whole theory becomes more
+coherent and better articulated than I have elsewhere found it; but I do
+not detect any important addition to the ideas which Dr. Darwin and
+Lamarck had insisted upon.
+
+I pass over the 'Vestiges of Creation,' which should be mentioned only
+as having, as Mr. Charles Darwin truly says, "done excellent service in
+this country, in calling attention to this subject, in removing
+prejudice, and in thus preparing the ground for the reception of
+analogous views."[30] The work neither made any addition to ideas which
+had been long familiar, nor arranged old ones in a satisfactory manner.
+Such as it is, it is Dr. Darwin and Lamarck, but Dr. Darwin and Lamarck
+spoiled. The first edition appeared in 1844.
+
+I also pass over Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire's 'Natural History,' which
+appeared 1854-62, and the position of which is best described by calling
+it intermediate between the one which Buffon thought fit to pretend to
+take, and that actually taken by Lamarck. The same may be said also of
+Etienne Geoffroy. I will, however, just touch upon these writers later
+on.
+
+A short notice, again, will suffice for the opinions of Goethe,
+Treviranus, and Oken, none of whom can I discover as having originated
+any important new idea; but knowing no German, I have taken this
+opinion from the resume of each of these writers, given by Professor
+Haeckel in his 'History of Creation.'
+
+V. A time of retrogression, during which we find but little apparent
+appreciation of the unity between parents and offspring; no reference to
+memory in connection with heredity, whether of instinct or structure; an
+exaggerated view of the consequences which may be deduced from the fact
+that the fittest commonly survive in the struggle for existence; the
+denial of any known principle as underlying variations; comparatively
+little appreciation of the circumstance-suiting power of plants and
+animals, and a rejection of purposiveness. By far the most important
+exponent of this phase of opinion concerning evolution is Mr. Charles
+Darwin, to whom, however, we are more deeply indebted than to any other
+living writer for the general acceptance of evolution in one shape or
+another. The 'Origin of Species' appeared in 1859, the same year, that
+is to say, as the second volume of Isidore Geoffroy's 'Histoire
+Naturelle Generale.'
+
+VI. A reaction against modern Darwinism, with a demand for definite
+purpose and design as underlying variations. The best known writers who
+have taken this line are the Rev. J. J. Murphy and Professor Mivart,
+whose 'Habit and intelligence' and 'Genesis of Species' appeared in 1869
+and 1871 respectively. In Germany Professor Hering has revived the idea
+of memory as explaining the phenomena of heredity satisfactorily,
+without probably having been more aware that it had been advanced
+already than I was myself when I put it forward recently in 'Life and
+Habit.' I have never seen the lecture in which Professor Hering has
+referred the phenomena of heredity to memory, but will give an extract
+from it which appeared in the 'Athenaeum,' as translated by Professor Ray
+Lankester.[31] The only new feature which I believe I may claim to have
+added to received ideas concerning evolution, is a perception of the
+fact that the unconsciousness with which we go through our embryonic and
+infantile stages, and with which we discharge the greater number and
+more important of our natural functions, is of a piece with what we
+observe concerning all habitual actions, as well as concerning memory;
+an explanation of the phenomena of old age; and of the main principle
+which underlies longevity. I may, perhaps, claim also to have more fully
+explained the passage of reason into instinct than I yet know of its
+having been explained elsewhere.[32]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[28] See ch. xviii. of this volume.
+
+[29] Vol. xlix. p. 125.
+
+[30] 'Origin of Species,' Hist. Sketch, xvii.
+
+[31] See page 199 of this volume.
+
+[32] Apropos of this, a friend has kindly sent me the following extract
+from Balzac:--"Historiquement, les paysans sont encore au lendemain de
+la Jacquerie, leur defaite est restee inscrite dans leur cervelle. _Ils
+ne se souviennent plus du fait, il est passe a l'etat d'idee
+instinctive._"--Balzac, 'Les Paysans,' v.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+PRE-BUFFONIAN EVOLUTION, AND SOME GERMAN WRITERS.
+
+
+Let us now proceed to the fuller development of the foregoing sketch.
+
+"Undoubtedly," says Isidore Geoffroy, "from the most ancient times many
+philosophers have imagined vaguely that one species can be transformed
+into another. This doctrine seems to have been adopted by the Ionian
+school from the sixth century before our era.... Undoubtedly also the
+same opinion reappeared on several occasions in the middle ages, and in
+modern times; it is to be found in some of the hermetic books, where the
+transmutation of animal and vegetable species, and that of metals, are
+treated as complementary to one another. In modern times we again find
+it alluded to by some philosophers, and especially by Bacon, whose
+boldness is on this point extreme. Admitting it as 'incontestable that
+plants sometimes degenerate so far as to become plants of another
+species,' Bacon did not hesitate to try and put his theory into
+practice. He tried, in 1635, to give 'the rules' for the art of changing
+'plants of one species into those of another.'"
+
+This must be an error. Bacon died in 1626. The passage of Bacon referred
+to is in 'Nat. Hist.,' Cent. vi. ("Experiments in consort touching the
+degenerating of plants, and the transmutation of them one into
+another"), and is as follows:--
+
+"518. This rule is certain, that plants for want of culture degenerate
+to be baser in the same kind; and sometimes so far as to change into
+another kind. 1. The standing long and not being removed maketh them
+degenerate. 2. Drought unless the earth, of itself, be moist doth the
+like. 3. So doth removing into worse earth, or forbearing to compost the
+earth; as we see that water mint turneth into field mint, and the
+colewort into rape by neglect, &c."
+
+"525. It is certain that in very steril years corn sown will grow to
+another kind:--
+
+    'Grandia saepe quibus mandavimus hordea sulcis,
+    Infelix lolium, et steriles dominantur avenae.'
+
+And generally it is a rule that plants that are brought forth for
+culture, as corn, will sooner change into other species, than those that
+come of themselves; for that culture giveth but an adventitious nature,
+which is more easily put off."
+
+Changed conditions, according to Bacon (though he does not use these
+words), appear to be "the first rule for the transmutation of plants."
+
+"But how much value," continues M. Geoffroy, "ought to be attached to
+such prophetic glimpses, when they were neither led up to, nor justified
+by any serious study? They are conjectures only, which, while bearing
+evidence to the boldness or rashness of those who hazarded them, remain
+almost without effect upon the advance of science. Bacon excepted, they
+hardly deserve to be remembered. As for De Maillet, who makes birds
+spring from flying fishes, reptiles from creeping fishes, and men from
+tritons, his dreams, taken in part from Anaximander, should have their
+place not in the history of science, but in that of the aberrations of
+the human mind."[33]
+
+A far more forcible and pregnant passage, however, is the following,
+from Sir Walter Raleigh's 'History of the World,' which Mr. Garnett has
+been good enough to point out to me:--
+
+"For mine owne opinion I find no difference but only in magnitude
+between the Cat of Europe, and the Ounce of India; and even those dogges
+which are become wild in Hispagniola, with which the Spaniards used to
+devour the naked Indians, are now changed to Wolves, and begin to
+destroy the breed of their Cattell, and doe often times teare asunder
+their owne children. The common crow and rooke of India is full of red
+feathers in the droun'd and low islands of Caribana, and the blackbird
+and thrush hath his feathers mixt with black and carnation in the north
+parts of Virginia. The Dog-fish of England is the Sharke of the South
+Ocean. For if colour or magnitude made a difference of Species, then
+were the Negroes, which wee call the Blacke-Mores, _non animalia
+rationalia_, not Men but some kind of strange Beasts, and so the giants
+of the South America should be of another kind than the people of this
+part of the World. We also see it dayly that the nature of fruits are
+changed by transplantation."[34]
+
+For information concerning the earliest German writers on evolution, I
+turn to Professor Haeckel's 'History of Creation,' and find Goethe's
+name to head the list. I do not gather, however, that Goethe added much
+to the ideas which Buffon had already made sufficiently familiar.
+Professor Haeckel does not seem to be aware of Buffon's work, and quotes
+Goethe as making an original discovery when he writes, in the year
+1796:--"Thus much then we have gained, that we may assert without
+hesitation that all the more perfect organic natures, such as fishes,
+amphibious animals, birds, mammals, and man at the head of the last,
+were all formed upon one original type, which only varies more or less
+in parts which were none the less permanent, and still daily changes and
+modifies its form by propagation."[35] But these, as we shall see, are
+almost Buffon's own words--words too that Buffon insisted on for many
+years. Again Professor Haeckel quotes Goethe as writing in the year
+1807:--
+
+"If we consider plants and animals in their most imperfect condition,
+they can hardly be distinguished." This, however, had long been insisted
+upon by Bonnet and Dr. Erasmus Darwin, the first of whom was a
+naturalist of world-wide fame, while the 'Zoonomia' of Dr. Darwin had
+been translated into German between the years 1795 and 1797, and could
+hardly have been unknown to Goethe in 1807, who continues: "But this
+much we may say, that the creatures which by degrees emerge as plants
+and animals out of a common phase where they are barely distinguishable,
+arrive at perfection in two opposite directions, so that the plant in
+the end reaches its highest glory in the tree, which is immovable and
+stiff, the animal in man who possesses the greatest elasticity and
+freedom." Professor Haeckel considers this to be a remarkable passage,
+but I do not think it should cause its author to rank among the founders
+of the evolution theory, though he may justly claim to have been one of
+the first to adopt it. Goethe's anatomical researches appear to have
+been more important, but I cannot find that he insisted on any new
+principle, or grasped any unfamiliar conception, which had not been long
+since grasped and widely promulgated by Buffon and by Dr. Erasmus
+Darwin.
+
+Treviranus (1776-1837), whom Professor Haeckel places second to Goethe,
+is clearly a disciple of Buffon, and uses the word "degeneration" in the
+same sense as Buffon used it many years earlier, that is to say, as
+"descent with modification," without any reference to whether the
+offspring was, as Buffon says, "perfectionne ou degrade." He cannot
+claim, any more than Goethe, to rank as a principal figure in the
+history of evolution.
+
+Of Oken, Professor Haeckel says that his 'Naturphilosophie,' which
+appeared in 1809--in the same year, that is to say, as the 'Philosophie
+Zoologique' of Lamarck--was "the nearest approach to the natural theory
+of descent, newly established by Mr. Charles Darwin," of any work that
+appeared in the first decade of our century. But I do not detect any
+important difference of principle between his system and that of Dr.
+Erasmus Darwin, among whose disciples he should be reckoned.
+
+"We now turn," says Professor Haeckel after referring to a few more
+German writers who adopted a belief in evolution, "from the German to
+the French nature-philosophers who have likewise held the theory of
+descent, since the beginning of this century. At their head stands Jean
+Lamarck, who occupies the first place next to Darwin and Goethe in the
+history of the doctrine of Filiation."[36] This is rather a surprising
+assertion, but I will leave the reader of the present volume to assign
+the value which should be attached to it.
+
+Professor Haeckel devotes ten lines to Dr. Erasmus Darwin, who he
+declares "expresses views very similar to those of Goethe and Lamarck,
+without, however, _then_ knowing anything about these two men;" which is
+all the more strange inasmuch as Dr. Darwin preceded them, and was a
+good deal better known to them, probably, than they to him; but it is
+plain Professor Haeckel has no acquaintance with the 'Zoonomia' of Dr.
+Erasmus Darwin. From all, then, that I am able to collect, I conclude
+that I shall best convey to the reader an idea of the different phases
+which the theory of descent with modification has gone through, by
+confining his attention almost entirely to Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin,
+Lamarck, and Mr. Charles Darwin.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[33] 'Hist. Nat. Gen.,' vol. ii. p. 385, 1859.
+
+[34] 'History of the World,' bk. i. ch. vii. Sec. 9 ('Athenaeum,' March 27,
+1875).
+
+[35] 'History of Creation,' vol. i. p. 91.
+
+[36] 'History of Creation,' bk. i. ch. iii. (H. S. King, 1876).
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+BUFFON--MEMOIR.
+
+
+Buffon, says M. Flourens, was born at Montbar, on the 7th of September,
+1707; he died in Paris, at the Jardin du Roi, on the 16th of April,
+1788, aged 81 years. More than fifty of these years, as he used himself
+to say, he had passed at his writing-desk. His father was a councillor
+of the parliament of Burgundy. His mother was celebrated for her wit,
+and Buffon cherished her memory.
+
+He studied at Dijon with much _eclat_, and shortly after leaving became
+accidentally acquainted with the Duke of Kingston, a young Englishman of
+his own age, who was travelling abroad with a tutor. The three travelled
+together in France and Italy, and Buffon then passed some months in
+England.
+
+Returning to France, he translated Hales's 'Vegetable Statics' and
+Newton's 'Treatise on Fluxions.' He refers to several English writers on
+natural history in the course of his work, but I see he repeatedly
+spells the English name Willoughby, "Willulghby." He was appointed
+superintendent of the Jardin du Roi in 1739, and from thenceforth
+devoted himself to science.
+
+In 1752 Buffon married Mdlle. de Saint Belin, whose beauty and charm of
+manner were extolled by all her contemporaries. One son was born to
+him, who entered the army, became a colonel, and I grieve to say, was
+guillotined at the age of twenty-nine, a few days only before the
+extinction of the Reign of Terror.
+
+Of this youth, who inherited the personal comeliness and ability of his
+father, little is recorded except the following story. Having fallen
+into the water and been nearly drowned when he was about twelve years
+old, he was afterwards accused of having been afraid: "I was so little
+afraid," he answered, "that though I had been offered the hundred years
+which my grandfather lived, I would have died then and there, if I could
+have added one year to the life of my father;" then thinking for a
+minute, a flush suffused his face, and he added, "but I should petition
+for one quarter of an hour in which to exult over the thought of what I
+was about to do."
+
+On the scaffold he showed much composure, smiling half proudly, half
+reproachfully, yet wholly kindly upon the crowd in front of him.
+"Citoyens," he said, "Je me nomme Buffon," and laid his head upon the
+block.
+
+The noblest outcome of the old and decaying order, overwhelmed in the
+most hateful birth frenzy of the new. So in those cataclysms and
+revolutions which take place in our own bodies during their development,
+when we seem studying in order to become fishes and suddenly make, as it
+were, different arrangements and resolve on becoming men--so, doubtless,
+many good cells must go, and their united death cry comes up, it may be,
+in the pain which an infant feels on teething.
+
+But to return. The man who could be father of such a son, and who could
+retain that son's affection, as it is well known that Buffon retained
+it, may not perhaps always be strictly accurate, but it will be as well
+to pay attention to whatever he may think fit to tell us. These are the
+only people whom it is worth while to look to and study from.
+
+"Glory," said Buffon, after speaking of the hours during which he had
+laboured, "glory comes always after labour if she can--_and she
+generally can_." But in his case she could not well help herself. "He
+was conspicuous," says M. Flourens, "for elevation and force of
+character, for a love of greatness and true magnificence in all he did.
+His great wealth, his handsome person, and graceful manners seemed in
+correspondence with the splendour of his genius, so that of all the
+gifts which Fortune has it in her power to bestow she had denied him
+nothing."
+
+Many of his epigrammatic sayings have passed into proverbs: for example,
+that "genius is but a supreme capacity for taking pains." Another and
+still more celebrated passage shall be given in its entirety and with
+its original setting.
+
+"Style," says Buffon, "is the only passport to posterity. It is not
+range of information, nor mastery of some little known branch of
+science, nor yet novelty of matter that will ensure immortality. Works
+that can claim all this will yet die if they are conversant about
+trivial objects only, or written without taste, genius and true nobility
+of mind; for range of information, knowledge of details, novelty of
+discovery are of a volatile essence and fly off readily into other
+hands that know better how to treat them. The matter is foreign to the
+man, and is not of him; the manner is the man himself."[37]
+
+"Le style, c'est l'homme meme." Elsewhere he tells us what true style
+is, but I quote from memory and cannot be sure of the passage. "Le
+style," he says, "est comme le bonheur; il vient de la douceur de
+l'ame."
+
+Is it possible not to think of the following?--
+
+"But whether there be prophecies they shall fail; whether there be
+tongues they shall cease; whether there be knowledge it shall vanish
+away ... and now abideth faith, hope and charity, these three; but the
+greatest of these is charity."[38]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[37] 'Discours de Reception a l'Academie Francaise.'
+
+[38] 1 Cor. xiii. 8, 13.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+BUFFON'S METHOD--THE IRONICAL CHARACTER OF HIS WORK.
+
+
+Buffon's idea of a method amounts almost to the denial of the
+possibility of method at all. "The true method," he writes, "is the
+complete description and exact history of each particular object,"[39]
+and later on he asks, "is it not more simple, more natural and more true
+to call an ass an ass, and a cat a cat, than to say, without knowing
+why, that an ass is a horse, and a cat a lynx."[40]
+
+He admits such divisions as between animals and vegetables, or between
+vegetables and minerals, but that done, he rejects all others that can
+be founded on the nature of things themselves. He concludes that one who
+could see things in their entirety and without preconceived opinions,
+would classify animals according to the relations in which he found
+himself standing towards them:--
+
+"Those which he finds most necessary and useful to him will occupy the
+first rank; thus he will give the precedence among the lower animals to
+the dog and the horse; he will next concern himself with those which
+without being domesticated, nevertheless occupy the same country and
+climate as himself, as for example stags, hares, and all wild animals;
+nor will it be till after he has familiarized himself with all these
+that curiosity will lead him to inquire what inhabitants there may be in
+foreign climates, such as elephants, dromedaries, &c. The same will hold
+good for fishes, birds, insects, shells, and for all nature's other
+productions; he will study them in proportion to the profit which he can
+draw from them; he will consider them in that order in which they enter
+into his daily life; he will arrange them in his head according to this
+order, which is in fact that in which he has become acquainted with
+them, and in which it concerns him to think about them. This order--the
+most natural of all--is the one which I have thought it well to follow
+in this volume. My classification has no more mystery in it than the
+reader has just seen ... it is preferable to the most profound and
+ingenious that can be conceived, for there is none of all the
+classifications which ever have been made or ever can be, which has not
+more of an arbitrary character than this has. Take it for all in all,"
+he concludes, "it is more easy, more agreeable, and more useful, to
+consider things in their relation to ourselves than from any other
+standpoint."[41]
+
+"Has it not a better effect not only in a treatise on natural history,
+but in a picture or any work of art to arrange objects in the order and
+place in which they are commonly found, than to force them into
+association in virtue of some theory of our own? Is it not better to let
+the dog which has toes, come after the horse which has a single hoof,
+in the same way as we see him follow the horse in daily life, than to
+follow up the horse by the zebra, an animal which is little known to us,
+and which has no other connection with the horse than the fact that it
+has a single hoof?"[42]
+
+Can we suppose that Buffon really saw no more connection than this? The
+writer whom we shall presently find[43] declining to admit any essential
+difference between the skeletons of man and of the horse, can here see
+no resemblance between the zebra and the horse, except that they each
+have a single hoof. Is he to be taken at his word?
+
+It is perhaps necessary to tell the reader that Buffon carried the
+foregoing scheme into practice as nearly as he could in the first
+fifteen volumes of his 'Natural History.' He begins with man--and then
+goes on to the horse, the ass, the cow, sheep, goat, pig, dog, &c. One
+would be glad to know whether he found it always more easy to decide in
+what order of familiarity this or that animal would stand to the
+majority of his readers than other classifiers have found it to know
+whether an individual more resembles one species or another; probably he
+never gave the matter a thought after he had gone through the first
+dozen most familiar animals, but settled generally down into a
+classification which becomes more and more specific--as when he treats
+of the apes and monkeys--till he reaches the birds, when he openly
+abandons his original idea, in deference, as he says, to the opinion of
+"le peuple des naturalistes."
+
+Perhaps the key to this piece of apparent extravagance is to be found
+in the word "mysterieuse."[44] Buffon wished to raise a standing protest
+against mystery mongering. Or perhaps more probably, he wished at once
+"to turn to animals and plants under domestication," so as to insist
+early on the main object of his work--the plasticity of animal forms.
+
+I am inclined to think that a vein of irony pervades the whole, or much
+the greater part of Buffon's work, and that he intended to convey, one
+meaning to one set of readers, and another to another; indeed, it is
+often impossible to believe that he is not writing between his lines for
+the discerning, what the undiscerning were not intended to see. It must
+be remembered that his 'Natural History' has two sides,--a scientific
+and a popular one. May we not imagine that Buffon would be unwilling to
+debar himself from speaking to those who could understand him, and yet
+would wish like Handel and Shakespeare to address the many, as well as
+the few? But the only manner in which these seemingly irreconcilable
+ends could be attained, would be by the use of language which should be
+self-adjusting to the capacity of the reader. So keen an observer can
+hardly have been blind to the signs of the times which were already
+close at hand. Free-thinker though he was, he was also a powerful member
+of the aristocracy, and little likely to demean himself--for so he would
+doubtless hold it--by playing the part of Voltaire or Rousseau. He would
+help those who could see to see still further, but he would not dazzle
+eyes that were yet imperfect with a light brighter than they could
+stand. He would therefore impose upon people, as much as he thought was
+for their good; but, on the other hand, he would not allow inferior men
+to mystify them.
+
+"In the private character of Buffon," says Sir William Jardine in a
+characteristic passage, "we regret there is not much to praise; his
+disposition was kind and benevolent, and he was generally beloved by his
+inferiors, followers, and dependents, which were numerous over his
+extensive property; he was strictly honourable, and was an affectionate
+parent. In early youth he had entered into the pleasures and
+dissipations of life, and licentious habits seem to have been retained
+to the end. But the great blemish in such a mind was his declared
+infidelity; it presents one of those exceptions among the persons who
+have been devoted to the study of nature; and it is not easy to imagine
+a mind apparently with such powers, scarcely acknowledging a Creator,
+and when noticed, only by an arraignment for what appeared wanting or
+defective in his great works. So openly, indeed, was the freedom of his
+religious opinions expressed, that the indignation of the Sorbonne was
+provoked. He had to enter into an explanation which he in some way
+rendered satisfactory; and while he afterwards attended to the outward
+ordinances of religion, he considered them as a system of faith for the
+multitude, and regarded those most impolitic who most opposed them."[45]
+
+This is partly correct and partly not. Buffon was a free-thinker, and as
+I have sufficiently explained, a decided opponent of the doctrine that
+rudimentary and therefore useless organs were designed by a Creator in
+order to serve some useful end throughout all time to the creature in
+which they are found.
+
+He was not, surely, to hide the magnificent conceptions which he had
+been the first to grasp, from those who were worthy to receive them; on
+the other hand he would not tell the uninstructed what they would
+interpret as a license to do whatever they pleased, inasmuch as there
+was no God. What he did was to point so irresistibly in the right
+direction, that a reader of any intelligence should be in no doubt as to
+the road he ought to take, and then to contradict himself so flatly as
+to reassure those who would be shocked by a truth for which they were
+not yet ready. If I am right in the view which I have taken of Buffon's
+work, it is not easy to see how he could have formed a finer scheme, nor
+have carried it out more finely.
+
+I should, however, warn the reader to be on his guard against accepting
+my view too hastily. So far as I know I stand alone in taking it.
+Neither Dr. Darwin nor Flourens, nor Isidore Geoffroy, nor Mr. Charles
+Darwin see any subrisive humour in Buffon's pages; but it must be
+remembered that Flourens was a strong opponent of mutability, and
+probably paid but little heed to what Buffon said on this question;
+Isidore Geoffroy is not a safe guide, as will appear presently; Mr.
+Charles Darwin seems to have adopted the one half of Isidore Geoffroy's
+conclusions without verifying either; and Dr. Erasmus Darwin, who has no
+small share of a very pleasant conscious humour, yet sometimes rises to
+such heights of unconscious humour, that Buffon's puny labour may well
+have been invisible to him. Dr. Darwin wrote a great deal of poetry,
+some of which was about the common pump. Miss Seward tells us, as we
+shall see later on, that he "illustrated this familiar object with a
+picture of Maternal Beauty administering sustenance to her infant."
+Buffon could not have done anything like this.
+
+Buffon never, then, "arraigned the Creator for what was wanting or
+defective in His works;" on the contrary, whenever he has led up by an
+irresistible chain of reasoning to conclusions which should make men
+recast their ideas concerning the Deity, he invariably retreats under
+cover of an appeal to revelation. Naturally enough, the Sorbonne
+objected to an artifice which even Buffon could not conceal completely.
+They did not like being undermined; like Buffon himself, they preferred
+imposing upon the people, to seeing others do so. Buffon made his peace
+with the Sorbonne immediately, and, perhaps, from that time forward,
+contradicted himself a little more impudently than heretofore.
+
+It is probably for the reasons above suggested that Buffon did not
+propound a connected scheme of evolution or descent with modification,
+but scattered his theory in fragments up and down his work in the
+prefatory remarks with which he introduces the more striking animals or
+classes of animals. He never wastes evolutionary matter in the preface
+to an uninteresting animal; and the more interesting the animal, the
+more evolution will there be commonly found. When he comes to describe
+the animal more familiarly--and he generally begins a fresh chapter or
+half chapter when he does so--he writes no more about evolution, but
+gives an admirable description, which no one can fail to enjoy, and
+which I cannot think is nearly so inaccurate as is commonly supposed.
+These descriptions are the parts which Buffon intended for the general
+reader, expecting, doubtless, and desiring that such a reader should
+skip the dry parts he had been addressing to the more studious. It is
+true the descriptions are written _ad captandum_, as are all great
+works, but they succeed in captivating, having been composed with all
+the pains a man of genius and of great perseverance could bestow upon
+them. If I am not mistaken, he looked to these parts of his work to keep
+the whole alive till the time should come when the philosophical side of
+his writings should be understood and appreciated.
+
+Thus the goat breeds with the sheep, and may therefore serve as the text
+for a dissertation on hybridism, which is accordingly given in the
+preface to this animal. The presence of rudimentary organs under a pig's
+hoof suggests an attack upon the doctrine of final causes in so far as
+it is pretended that every part of every animal or plant was specially
+designed with a view to the wants of the animal or plant itself once and
+for ever throughout all time. The dog with his great variety of breeds
+gives an opportunity for an article on the formation of breeds and
+sub-breeds by man's artificial selection. The cat is not honoured with
+any philosophical reflections, and comes in for nothing but abuse. The
+hare suggests the rabbit, and the rabbit is a rapid breeder, although
+the hare is an unusually slow one; but this is near enough, so the hare
+shall serve us for the theme of a discourse on the geometrical ratio of
+increase and the balance of power which may be observed in nature. When
+we come to the carnivora, additional reflections follow upon the
+necessity for death, and even for violent death; this leads to the
+question whether the creatures that are killed suffer pain; here, then,
+will be the proper place for considering the sensations of animals
+generally.
+
+Perhaps the most pregnant passage concerning evolution is to be found in
+the preface to the ass, which is so near the beginning of the work as to
+be only the second animal of which Buffon treats after having described
+man himself. It points strongly in the direction of his having believed
+all animal forms to have been descended from one single common ancestral
+type. Buffon did not probably choose to take his very first opportunity
+in order to insist upon matter that should point in this direction; but
+the considerations were too important to be deferred long, and are
+accordingly put forward under cover of the ass, his second animal.
+
+When we consider the force with which Buffon's conclusion is led up to;
+the obviousness of the conclusion itself when the premises are once
+admitted; the impossibility that such a conclusion should be again lost
+sight of if the reasonableness of its being drawn had been once
+admitted; the position in his scheme which is assigned to it by its
+propounder; the persistency with which he demonstrates during forty
+years thereafter that the premises, which he has declared should
+establish the conclusion in question, are indisputable;--when we
+consider, too, that we are dealing with a man of unquestionable genius,
+and that the times and circumstances of his life were such as would go
+far to explain reserve and irony--is it, I would ask, reasonable to
+suppose that Buffon did not, in his own mind, and from the first, draw
+the inference to which he leads his reader, merely because from time to
+time he tells the reader, with a shrug of the shoulders, that _he_ draws
+no inferences opposed to the Book of Genesis? Is it not more likely that
+Buffon intended his reader to draw his inferences for himself, and
+perhaps to value them all the more highly on that account?
+
+The passage to which I am alluding is as follows:--
+
+"If from the boundless variety which animated nature presents to us, we
+choose the body of some animal or even that of man himself to serve as a
+model with which to compare the bodies of other organized beings, we
+shall find that though all these beings have an individuality of their
+own, and are distinguished from one another by differences of which the
+gradations are infinitely subtle, there exists at the same time a
+primitive and general design which we can follow for a long way, and the
+departures from which (_degenerations_) are far more gentle than those
+from mere outward resemblance. For not to mention organs of digestion,
+circulation, and generation, which are common to all animals, and
+without which the animal would cease to be an animal, and could neither
+continue to exist nor reproduce itself--there is none the less even in
+those very parts which constitute the main difference in outward
+appearance, a striking resemblance which carries with it irresistibly
+the idea of a single pattern after which all would appear to have been
+conceived. The horse, for example--what can at first sight seem more
+unlike mankind? Yet when we compare man and horse point by point and
+detail by detail, is not our wonder excited rather by the points of
+resemblance than of difference that are to be found between them? Take
+the skeleton of a man; bend forward the bones in the region of the
+pelvis, shorten the thigh bones, and those of the leg and arm, lengthen
+those of the feet and hands, run the joints together, lengthen the jaws,
+and shorten the frontal bone, finally, lengthen the spine, and the
+skeleton will now be that of a man no longer, but will have become that
+of a horse--for it is easy to imagine that in lengthening the spine and
+the jaws we shall at the same time have increased the number of the
+vertebrae, ribs, and teeth. It is but in the number of these bones, which
+may be considered accessory, and by the lengthening, shortening, or mode
+of attachment of others, that the skeleton of the horse differs from
+that of the human body.... We find ribs in man, in all the quadrupeds,
+in birds, in fishes, and we may find traces of them as far down as the
+turtle, in which they seem still to be sketched out by means of furrows
+that are to be found beneath the shell. Let it be remembered that the
+foot of the horse, which seems so different from a man's hand, is,
+nevertheless, as M. Daubenton has pointed out, composed of the same
+bones, and that we have at the end of each of our fingers a nail
+corresponding to the hoof of a horse's foot. Judge, then, whether this
+hidden resemblance is not more marvellous than any outward
+differences--whether this constancy to a single plan of structure which
+we may follow from man to the quadrupeds, from the quadrupeds to the
+cetacea, from the cetacea to birds, from birds to reptiles, from
+reptiles to fishes--in which all such essential parts as heart,
+intestines, spine, are invariably found--whether, I say, this does not
+seem to indicate that the Creator when He made them would use but a
+single main idea, though at the same time varying it in every
+conceivable way, so that man might admire equally the magnificence of
+the execution and the simplicity of the design.[46]
+
+"If we regard the matter thus, not only the ass and the horse, _but even
+man himself, the apes, the quadrupeds, and all animals might be regarded
+but as forming members of one and the same family_. But are we to
+conclude that within this vast family which the Creator has called into
+existence out of nothing, there are other and smaller families,
+projected as it were by Nature, and brought forth by her in the natural
+course of events and after a long time, of which some contain but two
+members, as the ass and the horse, others many members, as the weasel,
+martin, stoat, ferret, &c., and that on the same principle there are
+families of vegetables, containing ten, twenty, or thirty plants, as the
+case may be? If such families had any real existence they could have
+been formed only by crossing, by the accumulation of successive
+variations (_variation successive_), and by degeneration from an
+original type; but if we once admit that there are families of plants
+and animals, so that the ass may be of the family of the horse, and
+that the one may only differ from the other through degeneration from a
+common ancestor, we might be driven to admit that the ape is of the
+family of man, that he is but a degenerate man, and that he and man have
+had a common ancestor, even as the ass and horse have had. It would
+follow then that every family, whether animal or vegetable, had sprung
+from a single stock, which after a succession of generations, had become
+higher in the case of some of its descendants and lower in that of
+others."
+
+What inference could be more aptly drawn? But it was not one which
+Buffon was going to put before the general public. He had said enough
+for the discerning, and continues with what is intended to make the
+conclusions they should draw even plainer to them, while it conceals
+them still more carefully from the general reader.
+
+"The naturalists who are so ready to establish families among animals
+and vegetables, do not seem to have sufficiently considered the
+consequences which should follow from their premises, for these would
+limit direct creation to as small a number of forms as anyone might
+think fit (reduisoient le produit immediat de la creation, a un nombre
+d'individus aussi petit que l'on voudroit). _For if it were once shown
+that we had right grounds for establishing these families; if the point
+were once gained that among animals and vegetables there had been, I do
+not say several species, but even a single one, which had been produced
+in the course of direct descent from another species; if for example it
+could be once shown that the ass was but a degeneration from the
+horse--then there is no further limit to be set to the power of nature,
+and we should not be wrong in supposing that with sufficient time she
+could have evolved all other organized forms from one primordial type
+(et l'on n'auroit pas tort de supposer, que d'un seul etre elle a su
+tirer avec le temps tous les autres etres organises)._"
+
+Buffon now felt that he had sailed as near the wind as was desirable.
+His next sentence is as follows:--
+
+"But no! It is certain _from revelation_ that all animals have alike
+been favoured with the grace of an act of direct creation, and that the
+first pair of every species issued full formed from the hands of the
+Creator."[47]
+
+This might be taken as _bona fide_, if it had been written by Bonnet,
+but it is impossible to accept it from Buffon. It is only those who
+judge him at second hand, or by isolated passages, who can hold that he
+failed to see the consequences of his own premises. No one could have
+seen more clearly, nor have said more lucidly, what should suffice to
+show a sympathetic reader the conclusion he ought to come to. Even when
+ironical, his irony is not the ill-natured irony of one who is merely
+amusing himself at other people's expense, but the serious and
+legitimate irony of one who must either limit the circle of those to
+whom he appeals, or must know how to make the same language appeal
+differently to the different capacities of his readers, and who trusts
+to the good sense of the discerning to understand the difficulty of his
+position, and make due allowance for it.
+
+The compromise which he thought fit to put before the public was that
+"Each species has a type of which the principal features are engraved in
+indelible and eternally permanent characters, while all accessory
+touches vary."[48] It would be satisfactory to know where an accessory
+touch is supposed to begin and end.
+
+And again:--
+
+"The essential characteristics of every animal have been conserved
+without alteration in their most important parts.... The individuals of
+each genus still represent the same forms as they did in the earliest
+ages, especially in the case of the larger animals" (so that the generic
+forms even of the larger animals prove not to be the same, but only
+'especially' the same as in the earliest ages).[49]
+
+This transparently illogical position is maintained ostensibly from
+first to last, much in the same spirit as in the two foregoing passages,
+written at intervals of thirteen years. But they are to be read by the
+light of the earlier one--placed as a lantern to the wary upon the
+threshold of his work in 1753--to the effect that a single, well
+substantiated case of degeneration would make it conceivable that all
+living beings were descended from a single common ancestor. If after
+having led up to this by a remorseless logic, a man is found
+five-and-twenty years later still substantiating cases of degeneration,
+as he has been substantiating them unceasingly in thirty quartos during
+the whole interval, there should be little question how seriously we
+are to take him when he wishes us to stop short of the conclusions he
+has told us we ought to draw from the premises that he has made it the
+business of his life to establish--especially when we know that he has a
+Sorbonne to keep a sharp eye upon him.
+
+I believe that if the reader will bear in mind the twofold, serious and
+ironical, character of Buffon's work he will understand it, and feel an
+admiration for it which will grow continually greater and greater the
+more he studies it, otherwise he will miss the whole point.
+
+Buffon on one of the early pages of his first volume protested against
+the introduction of either "_plaisanterie_" or "_equivoque_" (p. 25)
+into a serious work. But I have observed that there is an unconscious
+irony in most disclaimers of this nature. When a writer begins by saying
+that he has "an ineradicable tendency to make things clear," we may
+infer that we are going to be puzzled; so when he shows that he is
+haunted by a sense of the impropriety of allowing humour to intrude into
+his work, we may hope to be amused as well as interested. As showing how
+far the objection to humour which he expressed upon his twenty-fifth
+page succeeded in carrying him safely over his twenty-sixth and
+twenty-seventh, I will quote the following, which begins on page
+twenty-six:--
+
+"Aldrovandus is the most learned and laborious of all naturalists; after
+sixty years of work he has left an immense number of volumes behind him,
+which have been printed at various times, the greater number of them
+after his death. It would be possible to reduce them to a tenth part if
+we could rid them of all useless and foreign matter, and of a prolixity
+which I find almost overwhelming; were this only done, his books should
+be regarded as among the best we have on the subject of natural history
+in its entirety. The plan of his work is good, his classification
+distinguished for its good sense, his dividing lines well marked, his
+descriptions sufficiently accurate--monotonous it is true, but
+painstaking; the historical part of his work is less good; it is often
+confused and fabulous, and the author shows too manifestly the credulous
+tendencies of his mind.
+
+"While going over his work, I have been struck with that defect, or
+rather excess, which we find in almost all the books of a hundred or a
+couple of hundred years ago, and which prevails still among the
+Germans--I mean with that quantity of useless erudition with which they
+intentionally swell out their works, and the result of which is that
+their subject is overlaid with a mass of extraneous matter on which they
+enlarge with great complacency, but with no consideration whatever for
+their readers. They seem, in fact, to have forgotten what they have to
+say in their endeavour to tell us what has been said by other people.
+
+"I picture to myself a man like Aldrovandus, after he has once conceived
+the design of writing a complete natural history. I see him in his
+library reading, one after the other, ancients, moderns, philosophers,
+theologians, jurisconsults, historians, travellers, poets, and reading
+with no other end than with that of catching at all words and phrases
+which can be forced from far or near into some kind of relation with his
+subject. I see him copying all these passages, or getting them copied
+for him, and arranging them in alphabetical order. He fills many
+portfolios with all manner of notes, often taken without either
+discrimination or research, and at last sets himself to write with a
+resolve that not one of all these notes shall remain unused. The result
+is that when he comes to his account of the cow or of the hen, he will
+tell us all that has ever yet been said about cows or hens; all that the
+ancients ever thought about them; all that has ever been imagined
+concerning their virtues, characters, and courage; every purpose to
+which they have ever yet been put; every story of every old woman that
+he can lay hold of; all the miracles which certain religions have
+ascribed to them; all the superstitions they have given rise to; all the
+metaphors and allegories which poets have drawn from them; the
+attributes that have been assigned to them; the representations that
+have been made of them in hieroglyphics and armorial bearings, in a word
+all the histories and all fables in which there was ever yet any mention
+either of a cow or hen. How much natural history is likely to be found
+in such a lumber room? and how is one to lay one's hand upon the little
+that there may actually be?"[50]
+
+It is hoped that the reader will see Buffon, much us Buffon saw the
+learned Aldrovandus. He should see him going into his library, &c., and
+quietly chuckling to himself as he wrote such a passage as the one in
+which we lately found him saying that the larger animals had
+"especially" the same generic forms as they had always had. And the
+reader should probably see Daubenton chuckling also.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[39] Tom. i. p. 24, 1749.
+
+[40] Tom. i. p. 40, 1749.
+
+[41] Vol. i. p. 34, 1749.
+
+[42] Tom. i. p. 36.
+
+[43] See p. 88 of this volume; see also p. 155, and 164.
+
+[44] Tom. i. p. 33.
+
+[45] 'The Naturalist's Library,' vol. ii. p. 23, Edinburgh, 1843.
+
+[46] Tom. iv. p. 381, 1753.
+
+[47] Tom. iv. p. 383, 1753 (this was the first volume on the lower
+animals).
+
+[48] Tom. xiii. p. ix. 1765.
+
+[49] Sup. tom. v. p. 27, 1778.
+
+[50] Tom. i. p. 28, 1749.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+SUPPOSED FLUCTUATIONS OF OPINION--CAUSES OR MEANS OF THE TRANSFORMATION
+OF SPECIES.
+
+
+Enough, perhaps, has been already said to disabuse the reader's mind of
+the common misconception of Buffon, namely, that he was more or less of
+an elegant trifler with science, who cared rather about the language in
+which his ideas were clothed than about the ideas themselves, and that
+he did not hold the same opinions for long together; but the accusation
+of instability has been made in such high quarters that it is necessary
+to refute it still more completely.
+
+Mr. Darwin, for example, in his "Historical Sketch of the Recent
+Progress of Opinion on the Origin of Species" prefixed to all the later
+editions of his own 'Origin of Species,' says of Buffon that he "was the
+first author who, in modern times, has treated" the origin of species
+"in a scientific spirit. But," he continues, "as his opinions fluctuated
+greatly at different periods, and as he does not enter on the causes or
+means of the transformation of species, I need not here enter on
+details."[51]
+
+Mr. Darwin seems to have followed the one half of Isidore Geoffroy St.
+Hilaire's "full account of Buffon's conclusions" upon the subject of
+descent with modification,[52] to which he refers with approval on the
+second page of his historical sketch.[53]
+
+Turning, then, to Isidore Geoffroy's work, I find that in like manner he
+too has been following the one half of what Buffon actually said. But
+even so, he awards Buffon very high praise.
+
+"Buffon," he writes, "is to the doctrine of the mutability of species
+what Linnaeus is to that of its fixity. It is only since the appearance
+of Buffon's 'Natural History,' and in consequence thereof, that the
+mutability of species has taken rank among scientific questions."[54]
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"Buffon, who comes next in chronological order after Bacon, follows him
+in no other respect than that of time. He is entirely original in
+arriving at the doctrine of the variability of organic types, and in
+enouncing it after long hesitation, during which one can watch the
+labour of a great intelligence freeing itself little by little from the
+yoke of orthodoxy.
+
+"But from this source come difficulties in the interpretation of
+Buffon's work which have misled many writers. Buffon expresses
+absolutely different opinions in different parts of his natural
+history--so much so that partisans and opponents of the doctrine of the
+fixity of species have alike believed and still believe themselves at
+liberty to claim Buffon as one of the great authorities upon their
+side."
+
+Then follow the quotations upon which M. Geoffroy relies--to which I
+will return presently--after which the conclusion runs thus:--
+
+"The dates, however, of the several passages in question are sufficient
+to explain the differences in their tenor, in a manner worthy of Buffon.
+Where are the passages in which Buffon affirms the immutability of
+species? At the beginning of his work. His first volume on animals[55]
+is dated 1753. The two following are those in which Buffon still shares
+the views of Linnaeus; they are dated 1755 and 1756. Of what date are
+those in which Buffon declares for variability? From 1761 to 1766. And
+those in which, after having admitted variability and declared in favour
+of it, he proceeds to limit it? From 1765 to 1778.
+
+"The inference is sufficiently simple. Buffon does but correct himself.
+He does not fluctuate. He goes once for all from one opinion to the
+other, from what he accepted at starting on the authority of another to
+what he recognized as true after twenty years of research. If while
+trying to set himself free from the prevailing notions, he in the first
+instance went, like all other innovators, somewhat to the opposite
+extreme, he essays as soon as may be to retrace his steps in some
+measure, and thenceforward to remain unchanged.
+
+"Let the reader cast his eye over the general table of contents wherein
+Buffon, at the end of his 'Natural History,' gives a _resume_ of all of
+it that he is anxious to preserve. He passes over alike the passages in
+which he affirms and those in which he unreservedly denies the
+immutability of species, and indicates only the doctrine of the
+permanence of essential features and the variability of details (toutes
+les touches accessoires); he repeats this eleven years later in his
+'Epoques de la Nature'" (published 1778).[56]
+
+But I think I can show that the passages which M. Geoffroy brings
+forward, to prove that Buffon was in the first instance a supporter of
+invariability, do not bear him out in the deduction he has endeavoured
+to draw from them.
+
+"What author," he asks, "has ever pronounced more decidedly than Buffon
+in favour of the invariability of species? Where can we find a more
+decided expression of opinion than the following?
+
+"'The different species of animals are separated from one another by a
+space which Nature cannot overstep.'"
+
+On turning, however, to Buffon himself, I find the passage to stand as
+follows:--
+
+"_Although_ the different species of animals are separated from one
+another by a space which Nature cannot overstep--_yet some of them
+approach so nearly to one another in so many respects that there is only
+room enough left for the getting in of a line of separation between
+them_,"[57] and on the following page he distinctly encourages the idea
+of the mutability of species in the following passage:--
+
+"In place of regarding the ass as a degenerate horse, there would be
+more reason in calling the horse a more perfect kind of ass (un ane
+perfectionne), and the sheep a more delicate kind of goat, that we have
+tended, perfected, and propagated for our use, and that the more perfect
+animals in general--especially the domestic animals--_draw their origin
+from some less perfect species of that kind of wild animal which they
+most resemble. Nature alone not being able to do as much as Nature and
+man can do in concert with one another_."[58]
+
+But Buffon had long ago declared that if the horse and the ass could be
+considered as being blood relations there was no stopping short of the
+admission that all animals might also be blood relations--that is to
+say, descended from common ancestors--and now he tells us that the ass
+and horse _are_ in all probability descended from common ancestors. Will
+a reader of any literary experience hold that so laborious, and yet so
+witty a writer, and one so studious of artistic effect, could ignore the
+broad lines he had laid down for himself, or forget how what he had said
+would bear on subsequent passages, and subsequent passages on it? A less
+painstaking author than Buffon may yet be trusted to remember his own
+work well enough to avoid such literary bad workmanship as this. If
+Buffon had seen reason to change his mind he would have said so, and
+would have contradicted the inference he had originally pronounced to be
+deducible from an admission of kinship between the ass and the horse.
+This, it is hardly necessary to say, he never does, though he frequently
+thinks it well to remind his reader of the fact that the ass and the
+horse are in all probability closely related. This is bringing two and
+two together with sufficient closeness for all practical purposes.
+
+Should not M. Geoffroy's question, then, have rather been "Who has ever
+pronounced more grudgingly, even in an early volume, &c., &c., and who
+has more completely neutralized whatever concession he might appear to
+have been making?"
+
+Nor does the only other passage which M. Geoffroy brings forward to
+prove that Buffon was originally a believer in the fixity of species
+bear him out much better. It is to be found on the opening page of a
+brief introduction to the wild animals. M. Geoffroy quotes it thus: "We
+shall see Nature dictating her laws, so simple yet so unchangeable, and
+imprinting her own immutable characters upon every species." But M.
+Geoffroy does not give the passage which, on the same page, admits
+mutability among domesticated animals, in the case of which he declares
+we find Nature "rarement perfectionnee, souvent alteree, defiguree;" nor
+yet does he deem it necessary to show that the context proves that this
+unchangeableness of wild animals is only relative; and this he should
+certainly have done, for two pages later on Buffon speaks of the
+American tigers, lions, and panthers as being "degenerated, if their
+original nature was cruel and ferocious; or, rather, they have
+experienced the effect of climate, and under a milder sky have assumed a
+milder nature, their excesses have become moderated, and by the changes
+which they have undergone they have become more in conformity with the
+country they inhabit."[59]
+
+And again:--
+
+"If we consider each species in the different climates which it
+inhabits, we shall find perceptible varieties as regards size and form:
+they all derive an impress to a greater or less extent from the climate
+in which they live. _These changes are only made slowly and
+imperceptibly._ Nature's great workman is Time. He marches ever with an
+even pace, and does nothing by leaps and bounds, but by degrees,
+gradations, and succession he does all things; and the changes which he
+works--at first imperceptible--become little by little perceptible, and
+show themselves eventually in results about which there can be no
+mistake.
+
+"Nevertheless animals in a free, wild state are perhaps less subject
+than any other living beings, man not excepted, to alterations, changes,
+and variations of all kinds. Being free to choose their own food and
+climate, they vary less than domestic animals vary."[60] The conditions
+of their existence, in fact, remaining practically constant, the animals
+are no less constant themselves.
+
+The writer of the above could hardly be claimed as a very thick and thin
+partisan of immutability, even though he had not shown from the first
+how clearly he saw that there was no middle position between the denial
+of all mutability, and the admission that in the course of sufficient
+time any conceivable amount of mutability is possible. I will give a
+considerable part of what I have found in the first six volumes of
+Buffon to bear one way or the other on his views concerning the
+mutability of species; and I think the reader, so far from agreeing with
+M. Isidore Geoffroy that Buffon began his work with a belief in the
+fixity of species, will find, that from the very first chapter onward,
+he leant strongly to mutability, even if he did not openly avow his
+belief in it.
+
+In support of this assertion, one quotation must suffice:--
+
+"Nature advances by gradations which pass unnoticed. She passes from one
+species, and often from one genus to another by imperceptible degrees,
+so that we meet with a great number of mean species and objects of such
+doubtful characters that we know not where to place them."[61]
+
+The reader who turns to Buffon himself will find the idea that Buffon
+took a less advanced position in his old age than he had taken in middle
+life is also without foundation.
+
+Mr. Darwin has said that Buffon "does not enter into the causes or means
+of the transformation of species." It is not easy to admit the justice
+of this. Independently of his frequently insisting on the effect of all
+kinds of changed surroundings, he has devoted a long chapter of over
+sixty quarto pages to this very subject; it is to be found in his
+fourteenth volume, and is headed "De la Degeneration des Animaux," of
+which words "On descent with modification" will be hardly more than a
+literal translation. I shall give a fuller but still too brief outline
+of the chapter later on, and will confine myself here to saying that the
+three principal causes of modification which Buffon brings forward are
+changes of climate, of food, and the effects of domestication. He may
+be said to have attributed variation to the direct and specific action
+of changed conditions of life, and to have had but little conception of
+the view which he was himself to suggest to Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and
+through him to Lamarck.
+
+Isidore Geoffroy, writing of Lamarck, and comparing his position with
+that taken by Buffon, says, on the whole truly, that "what Buffon
+ascribes to the general effects of climate, Lamarck maintains to be
+caused, especially in the case of animals, by the force of habits; _so
+that, according to him, they are not, properly speaking, modified by the
+conditions of their existence, but are only induced by these conditions
+to set about modifying themselves_."[62] But it is very hard to say how
+much Buffon saw and how much he did not see. He may be trusted to have
+seen that if he once allowed the thin end of this wedge into his system,
+he could no more assign limits to the effect which living forms might
+produce upon their own organisms by effort and ingenuity in the course
+of long time, than he could set limits to what he had called the power
+of Nature if he was once to admit that an ass and a horse might, through
+that power, have been descended from a common ancestor. Nevertheless, he
+shows no unwillingness or recalcitrancy about letting the wedge enter,
+for he speaks of domestication as inducing modifications "sufficiently
+profound to become constant and hereditary in successive generations ...
+_by its action on bodily habits it influences also their natures,
+instincts, and most inward qualities_."[63]
+
+This is a very thick thin end to have been allowed to slip in unawares;
+but it is astonishing how little Buffon can see when he likes. I hardly
+doubt but he would have been well enough pleased to have let the wedge
+enter still farther, but this fluctuating writer had assigned himself
+his limits some years before, and meant adhering to them. Again, in this
+very chapter on Degeneration, to which M. Geoffroy has referred, there
+are passages on the callosities on a camel's knees, on the llama, and on
+the haunches of pouched monkeys which might have been written by Dr.
+Darwin himself.[64] They will appear more fully presently. Buffon now
+probably felt that he had said enough, and that others might be trusted
+to carry the principle farther when the time was riper for its
+enforcement.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[51] 'Origin of Species,' p. xiii. ed. 1876.
+
+[52] 'Hist. Nat. Gen.,' tom. ii. p. 405, 1859.
+
+[53] 'Origin of Species,' p. xiv. 1876.
+
+[54] 'Hist. Nat. Gen.,' tom. ii. p. 383.
+
+[55] Tom. iv.
+
+[56] 'Hist. Nat. Gen.,' tom. ii. p. 391, 1859.
+
+[57] Tom. v. p. 59, 1755.
+
+[58] Tom. v. p. 60.
+
+[59] Tom. vi. p. 58, 1756.
+
+[60] Tom. vi. pp. 59-60, 1756.
+
+[61] Tom. i. p. 13, 1749.
+
+[62] 'Hist. Nat. Gen.,' tom. ii. p. 411, 1859.
+
+[63] Tom. xi. p. 290, 1764 (misprinted on title-page 1754).
+
+[64] See tom. xiv. p. 326, 1766; and p. 162 of this volume.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+BUFFON--FULLER QUOTATIONS.
+
+
+Let us now proceed to those fuller quotations which may answer the
+double purpose of bearing me out in the view of Buffon's work which I
+have taken in the foregoing pages, and of inducing the reader to turn to
+Buffon himself.
+
+I have already said that from the very commencement of his work Buffon
+showed a proclivity towards considerations which were certain to lead
+him to a theory of evolution, even though he had not, as I believe he
+had, already taken a more comprehensive view of the subject than he
+thought fit to proclaim unreservedly.
+
+In 1749, at the beginning of his first volume he writes:--
+
+"The first truth that makes itself apparent on serious study of Nature,
+is one that man may perhaps find humiliating; it is this--that he, too,
+must take his place in the ranks of animals, being, as he is, an animal
+in every material point. It is possible also that the instinct of the
+lower animals will strike him as more unerring, and their industry more
+marvellous than his own. Then, running his eye over the different
+objects of which the universe is composed, he will observe with
+astonishment that we can descend by almost imperceptible degrees from
+the most perfect creature to the most formless matter--from the most
+highly organized animal to the most entirely inorganic substance. He
+will recognize this gradation as the great work of Nature; and he will
+observe it not only as regards size and form, but also in respect of
+movements, and in the successive generations of every species.[65]
+
+"Hence," he continues, "arises the difficulty of arriving at any perfect
+system or method in dealing either with Nature as a whole or even with
+any single one of her subdivisions. The gradations are so subtle that we
+are often obliged to make arbitrary divisions. Nature knows nothing
+about our classifications, and does not choose to lend herself to them
+without reserve. We therefore see a number of intermediate species and
+objects which it is very hard to classify, and which of necessity
+derange our system whatever it may be."[66]
+
+"The attempt to form perfect systems has led to such disastrous results
+that it is now more easy to learn botany than the terminology which has
+been adopted as its language."[67]
+
+After saying that "_la marche de la Nature_" has been misunderstood, and
+that her progress has ever been by a succession of slow steps, he
+maintains that the only proper course is to class together whatever
+objects resemble one another, and to separate those which are unlike. If
+individual specimens are absolutely alike, or differ so little that the
+differences can hardly be perceived, they must be classed as of the same
+species; if the differences begin to be perceptible, but if at the same
+time there is more resemblance than difference, the individuals
+presenting these features should be classed as of a different species,
+but as of the same genus; if the differences are still more marked, but
+nevertheless do not exceed the resemblances, then they must be taken as
+not only specific but generic, though as not sufficient to warrant
+the individuals in which they appear, being placed in different
+classes. If they are still greater, then the individuals are not even
+of the same class; but it should be always understood that the
+resemblances and differences are to be considered in reference to the
+entirety of the plant or animal, and not in reference to any particular
+part only.[68] The two rocks which are equally to be avoided are, on
+the one hand, absence of method, and, on the other, a tendency to
+over-systematize.[69]
+
+Like Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and more recently Mr. Francis Darwin, Buffon is
+more struck with the resemblances than with the differences between
+animals and plants, but he supposes the vegetable kingdom to be a
+continuation of the animal, extending lower down the scale, instead of
+holding as Dr. Darwin did, that animals and vegetables have been
+contemporaneous in their degeneration from a common stock.
+
+"We see," he writes, "that there is no absolute and essential difference
+between animals and vegetables, but that Nature descends by subtle
+gradations from what we deem the most perfect animal to one which is
+less so, and again from this to the vegetable. The fresh-water polypus
+may perhaps be considered as the lowest animal, and as at the same time
+the highest plant."[70]
+
+Looking to the resemblances between animals and plants, he declares that
+their modes of reproduction and growth involve such close analogy that
+no difference of an essential nature can be admitted between them.[71]
+
+On the other hand, Buffon appears, at first sight, to be more struck
+with the points of difference between the mental powers of the lower
+animals and man than with those which they present in common. It is
+impossible, however, to accept this as Buffon's real opinion, on the
+strength of isolated passages, and in face of a large number of others
+which point stealthily but irresistibly to an exactly opposite
+conclusion. We find passages which show a clear apprehension of facts
+that the world is only now beginning to consider established, followed
+by others which no man who has kept a dog or cat will be inclined to
+agree with. I think I have already explained this sufficiently by
+referring it to the impossibility of his taking any other course under
+the circumstances of his own position and the times in which he lived.
+Buffon does not deal with such pregnant facts, as, for example, the
+geometrical ratio of increase, in such manner as to suggest that he was
+only half aware of their importance and bearing. On the contrary, in the
+very middle of those passages which, if taken literally, should most
+shake confidence in his judgment, there comes a sustaining sentence, so
+quiet that it shall pass unnoticed by all who are not attentive
+listeners, yet so encouraging to those who are taking pains to
+understand their author that their interest is revived at once.
+
+Thus, he has insisted, and means insisting much further, on the many
+points of resemblance between man and the lower animals, and it has now
+become necessary to neutralize the effect of what he has written upon
+the minds of those who are not yet fitted to see instinct and reason as
+differentiations of a single faculty. He accordingly does this, and, as
+is his wont, he does it handsomely; so handsomely that even his most
+admiring followers begin to be uncomfortable. Whereon he begins his next
+paragraph with "Animals have excellent senses, but not _generally, all
+of them_, as good as man's."[72] We have heard of damning with faint
+praise. Is not this to praise with faint damnation? Yet we can lay hold
+of nothing. It was not Buffon's intention that we should. An ironical
+writer, concerning whom we cannot at once say whether he is in earnest
+or not, is an actor who is continually interrupting his performance in
+order to remind the spectator that he is acting. Complaint, then,
+against an ironical writer on the score that he puzzles us, is a
+complaint against irony itself; for a writer is not ironical unless he
+puzzles. He should not puzzle unless he believes that this is the best
+manner of making his reader understand him in the end, or without having
+a _bonne bouche_ for those who will be at the pains to puzzle over him;
+and he should make it plain that for long parts of his work together he
+is to be taken according to the literal interpretation of his words;
+but if he has observed the above duly, he is a successful or
+unsuccessful writer according as he puzzles or fails to do so, and
+should be praised or blamed accordingly. To condemn irony entirely, is
+to say that there should be no people allowed to go about the world but
+those to whom irony would be an impertinence.
+
+Having already in some measure reassured us by the faintness with which
+he disparages the senses of the lower animals, Buffon continues, that
+these senses, whether in man or in animals, may be greatly developed by
+exercise: which we may suppose that a man of even less humour than
+Buffon must know to be great nonsense, unless it be taken to involve
+that animals as well as man can reflect and remember; it now, therefore,
+becomes necessary to reassure the other side, and to maintain that
+animals cannot reflect, and have no memory. "_Je crois_," he writes,
+"_qu'on peut demontrer que les animaux n'ont aucune connaissance du
+passe, aucune idee du temps, et que par consequent ils n'ont pas la
+memoire_."[73]
+
+I am ashamed of even arguing seriously against the supposition that this
+was Buffon's real opinion. The very sweepingness of the assertion, the
+baldness, and I might say brutality with which it is made, are
+convincing in their suggestiveness of one who is laughing very quietly
+in his sleeve.
+
+"Society," he continues, later on, "considered even in the case of a
+single human family, involves the power of reason; it involves feeling
+in such of the lower animals as form themselves into societies freely
+and of their own accord, but it involves nothing whatever in the case of
+bees, who have found themselves thrown together through no effort of
+their own. Such societies can only be, and it is plain have only been,
+the results--neither foreseen, nor ordained, nor conceived by those who
+achieve them--of the universal mechanism and of the laws of movement
+established by the Creator."[74] A hive of bees, in fact, is to be
+considered as composed of "ten thousand animated automata."[75] Years
+later he repeats these views with little if any modification.[76] A
+still more remarkable passage is to be found a little farther on. "If,"
+he asks, "animals have neither understanding, mind, nor memory, if they
+are wholly without intelligence, and if they are limited to the exercise
+and experience of feeling only," and it must be remembered that Buffon
+has denied all these powers to the inferior animals, "whence comes that
+remarkable prescient instinct which so many of them exhibit? Is the mere
+power of feeling sensations sufficient to make them garner up food
+during the summer, on which food they may subsist in winter? Does not
+this involve the power of comparing dates, and the idea of a coming
+future, an '_inquietude raisonnee_'? Why do we find in the hole of the
+field-mouse enough acorns to keep him until the following summer? Why do
+we find such an abundant store of honey and wax within the bee-hive? Why
+do ants store food? Why should birds make nests if they do not know that
+they will have need of them? Whence arise the stories that we hear of
+the wisdom of foxes, which hide their prey in different spots, that they
+may find it at their need and live upon it for days together? Or of the
+subtilty of owls, which husband their store of mice by biting off their
+feet, so that they cannot run away? Or of the marvellous penetration of
+bees, which know beforehand that their queen should lay so many eggs in
+such and such a time, and that so many of these eggs should be of a kind
+which will develop into drones, and so many more of such another kind as
+should become neuters; and who in consequence of this their
+foreknowledge build so many larger cells for the first, and so many
+smaller for the second?"[77]
+
+Buffon answers these questions thus:--
+
+"Before replying to them," he says, "we should make sure of the facts
+themselves;--are they to be depended upon? Have they been narrated by
+men of intelligence and philosophers, or are they popular fables only?"
+(How many delightful stories of the same character does he not soon
+proceed to tell us himself). "I am persuaded that all these pretended
+wonders will disappear, and the cause of each one of them be found upon
+due examination. But admitting their truth for a moment, and granting to
+the narrators of them that animals have a presentiment, a forethought,
+and even a certainty concerning coming events, does it therefore follow
+that this should spring from intelligence? If so, theirs is assuredly
+much greater than our own. For our foreknowledge amounts to conjecture
+only; the vaunted light of our reason doth but suffice to show us a
+little probability; whereas the forethought of animals is unerring, and
+must spring from some principle far higher than any we know of through
+our own experience. Does not such a consequence, I ask, _prove repugnant
+alike to religion and common sense_?"[78]
+
+This is Buffon's way. Whenever he has shown us clearly what we ought to
+think, he stops short suddenly on religious grounds. It is incredible
+that the writer who at the very commencement of his work makes man take
+his place among the animals, and who sees a subtle gradation extending
+over all living beings "from the most perfect creature"--who must be
+man--"to the most entirely inorganic substance"--I say it is incredible
+that such a writer should not see that he had made out a stronger case
+in favour of the reason of animals than against it.
+
+According to him, the test whether a thing is to have such and such a
+name is whether it looks fairly like other things to which the same name
+is given; if it does, it is to have the name; if it does not, it is not.
+No one accepted this lesson more heartily than Dr. Darwin, whose shrewd
+and homely mind, if not so great as Buffon's, was still one of no common
+order. Let us see the view he took of this matter. He writes:--
+
+"If we were better acquainted with the histories of those insects which
+are formed into societies, as the bees, wasps, and ants, I make no doubt
+but we should find that their arts and improvements are not so similar
+and uniform as they now appear to us, but that they arose in the same
+manner from experience and tradition, as the arts of our own species;
+though their reasoning is from fewer ideas, is busied about fewer
+objects, and is executed with less energy."[79]
+
+And again, a little later:--
+
+"According to the late observations of Mr. Hunter, it appears that
+beeswax is not made from the dust of the anthers of flowers, which they
+bring home on their thighs, but that this makes what is termed
+bee-bread, and is used for the purpose of feeding the bee-maggots; in
+the same way butterflies live on honey, but the previous caterpillar
+lives on vegetable leaves, while the maggots of large flies require
+flesh for their food. What induces the bee, who lives on honey, to lay
+up vegetable powder for its young? What induces the butterfly to lay its
+eggs on leaves when itself feeds on honey?... If these are not
+deductions from their own previous experience or observation, all the
+actions of mankind must be resolved into instincts."[80]
+
+Or again:--
+
+"Common worms stop up their holes with leaves or straws to prevent the
+frost from injuring them, or the centipes from devouring them. The
+habits of peace or the stratagems of war of these subterranean nations
+are covered from our view; but a friend of mine prevailed on a
+distressed worm to enter the hole of another worm on a bowling green,
+and he presently returned much wounded about the head, ... which
+evinces they have design in stopping the mouths of their
+habitations."[81]
+
+Does it not look as if Dr. Darwin had in his mind the very passage of
+Buffon which I have been last quoting? and is it likely that the facts
+which were accepted by Dr. Darwin without question, or the conclusions
+which were obvious to him, were any less accepted by or obvious to
+Buffon?
+
+
+_The Goat--Hybridism._
+
+In his prefatory remarks upon the goat, Buffon complains of the want of
+systematic and certified experiment as to what breeds and species will
+be fertile _inter se_, and with what results. The passage is too long to
+quote, but is exceedingly good, and throughout involves belief in a very
+considerable amount of modification in the course of successive
+generations. I may give the following as an example:--
+
+"We do not know whether or no the zebra would breed with the horse or
+ass--whether the large-tailed Barbary sheep would be fertile if crossed
+with our own--whether the chamois is not a wild goat; and whether it
+would not form an intermediate breed if crossed with our domesticated
+goats; we do not know whether the differences between apes are really
+specific, or whether apes are not like dogs, one single species, of
+which there are many different breeds.... Our ignorance concerning all
+these facts is almost inevitable, as the experiments which would decide
+them require more time, pains, and money than can be spared from, the
+life and fortune of an ordinary man. I have spent many years in
+experiments of this kind, and will give my results when I come to my
+chapter on mules; but I may as well say at once that they have thrown
+but little light upon the subject, and have been for the most part
+unsuccessful."[82]
+
+"But these," he continues, "are the very points which must determine our
+whole knowledge concerning animals, their right division into species,
+and the true understanding of their history." He proposes therefore, in
+the present lack of knowledge, "to regard all animals as different
+species which do not breed together under our eyes," and to leave time
+and experiment to correct mistakes.[83]
+
+
+_The Pig--Doctrine of Final Causes._
+
+We have seen that the doctrine of the mutability of species has been
+unfortunately entangled with that of final causes, or the belief that
+every organ and every part of each animal or plant has been designed to
+serve some purpose useful to the animal, and this not only useful at
+some past time, but useful now, and for all time to come. He who
+believes species to be mutable will see in many organs signs of the
+history of the individual, but nothing more. Buffon, as I have said, is
+explicit in his denial of final causes in the sense expressed above.
+After pointing out that the pig is an animal whose relation to other
+animals it is difficult to define, he says:--
+
+"In a word, it is of a nature altogether equivocal and ambiguous, or,
+rather, it must appear so to those who believe the hypothetical order of
+their own ideas to be the real order of things, and who see nothing in
+the infinite chain of existences but a few apparent points to which they
+will refer everything.
+
+"But we cannot know Nature by inclosing her action within the narrow
+circle of our own thoughts.... Instead of limiting her action, we should
+extend it through immensity itself; we should regard nothing as
+impossible, but should expect to find all things--supposing that all
+things are possible--nay, _are_. Doubtful species, then, irregular
+productions, anomalous existences will henceforth no longer surprise us,
+and will find their place in the infinite order of things as duly as any
+others. They fill up the links of the chain; they form knots and
+intermediate points, and also they mark its extremities: they are of
+especial value to human intelligence, as providing it with cases in
+which Nature, being less in conformity with herself, is taken more
+unawares, so that we can recognize singular characters and fleeting
+traits which show us that her ends are much more general than are our
+own views of those ends, and that, though she does nothing in vain, yet
+she does but little with the designs which we ascribe to her."[84]
+
+"The pig," he continues, "is not formed on an original, special, and
+perfect type; its type is compounded of that of many other animals. It
+has parts which are evidently useless, or which at any rate it cannot
+use--such as toes, all the bones of which are perfectly formed but
+which are yet of no service to it. Nature then is far from subjecting
+herself to final causes in the composition of her creatures. Why should
+she not sometimes add superabundant parts, seeing she so often omits
+essential ones?" "How many animals are there not which lack sense and
+limbs? Why is it considered so necessary that every part in an
+individual should be useful to the other parts and to the whole animal?
+Should it not be enough that they do not injure each other nor stand in
+the way of each other's fair development? All parts coexist which do not
+injure each other enough to destroy each other, and perhaps in the
+greater number of living beings the parts which must be considered as
+relative, useful, or necessary, are fewer than those which are
+indifferent, useless, and superabundant. But we--ever on the look out to
+refer all parts to a certain end--when we can see no apparent use for
+them suppose them to have hidden uses, and imagine connections which are
+without foundation, and serve only to obscure our perception of Nature
+as she really is: we fail to see that we thus rob philosophy of her true
+character, which is to inquire into the 'how' of things--into the manner
+in which Nature acts--and that we substitute for this true object a vain
+idea, seeking to divine the 'why'--the ends which she has proposed in
+acting."[85]
+
+
+_The Dog--Varieties in consequence of Man's Selection._
+
+"Of all animals the dog is most susceptible of impressions, and becomes
+most easily modified by moral causes. He is also the one whose nature
+is most subject to the variations and alterations caused by physical
+influences: he varies to a prodigious extent, in temperament, mental
+powers, and in habits: his very form is not constant;" ... but presents
+so many differences that "dogs have nothing in common but conformity of
+interior organization, and the power of interbreeding freely."...
+
+... "How then can we detect the characters of the original race? How
+recognize the effects produced by climate, food, &c.? How, again,
+distinguish these from those other effects which come from the
+intermixture of races, either when wild or in a state of domestication?
+All these causes, in the course of time, alter even the most constant
+forms, so that the imprint of Nature does not preserve its sharpness in
+races which man has dealt with largely. Those animals which are free to
+choose climate and food for themselves can best conserve their original
+character, ... but those which man has subjected to his own
+influence--which he has taken with him from clime to clime, whose food,
+habits, and manner of life he has altered--must also have changed their
+form far more than others; and as a matter of fact we find much greater
+variety in the species of domesticated animals than in those of wild
+ones. Of all these, however, the dog is the one most closely attached to
+man, living like man the least regular manner of life; he is also the
+one whose feelings so master him as to make him docile, obedient,
+susceptible of every kind of impression, and even of every kind of
+constraint; it is not surprising, then, that he should of all animals
+present us with the greatest variety in shape, stature, colour, and all
+physical and mental qualities."
+
+Here again the direct cause of modification is given as being the inner
+feelings of the animal modified, change of conditions being the indirect
+cause as with Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck.
+
+"Other circumstances, however, concur to produce these results. The dog
+is short-lived: he breeds often and freely: he is perpetually under the
+eye of man; hence when--by some chance common enough with Nature--a
+variation or special feature has made its appearance, man has tried to
+perpetuate it by uniting together the individuals in which it has
+appeared, as people do now who wish to form new breeds of dogs and other
+animals. Moreover, though species were all formed at the same time, yet
+the number of generations since the creation has been much greater in
+the short-lived than in the long-lived species: hence variations,
+alterations, and departure from the original type, may be expected to
+have become more perceptible in the case of animals which are so much
+farther removed from their original stock.
+
+"Man is now eight times nearer Adam than the dog is to the first
+dog--for man lives eighty years, while the dog lives but ten. If, then,
+these species have an equal tendency to depart from their original type,
+the departure should be eight times more apparent with the dog than with
+man."[86]
+
+Here follow remarks upon the great variability of ephemeral insects and
+of animal plants, on the impossibility of discovering the parent-stock
+of our wheat and of others of our domesticated plants,[87] and on the
+tendency of both plants and animals to resume feral characteristics on
+becoming wild again after domestication.[88]
+
+
+_The Hare--Geometrical Ratio of Increase._
+
+We have already seen that it was Buffon's pleasure to consider the hare
+a rabbit for the time being, and to make it the text for a discourse
+upon fecundity. I have no doubt he enjoyed doing this, and would have
+found comparatively little pleasure in preaching the same discourse upon
+the rabbit. Speaking of the way in which even the races of mankind have
+struggled and crowded each other out, Buffon says:--
+
+"These great events--these well-marked epochs in the history of the
+human race--are yet but ripples, as it were, on the current of life;
+which, as a general rule, flows onward evenly and in equal volume.
+
+"It may be said that the movement of Nature turns upon two immovable
+pivots--one, the illimitable fecundity which she has given to all
+species; the other, the innumerable difficulties which reduce the
+results of that fecundity, and leave throughout time nearly the same
+quantity of individuals in every species.[89]... Taking the earth as a
+whole, and the human race in its entirety, the numbers of mankind, like
+those of animals, should remain nearly constant throughout time; for
+they depend upon an equilibrium of physical causes which has long since
+been reached, and which neither man's moral nor his physical efforts can
+disturb, inasmuch as these moral efforts do but spring from physical
+causes, of which they are the special effects. No matter what care man
+may take of his own species, he can only make it more abundant in one
+place by destroying it or diminishing its numbers in another. When one
+part of the globe is overpeopled, men emigrate, spread themselves over
+other countries, destroy one another, and establish laws and customs
+which sometimes only too surely prevent excess of population. In those
+climates where fecundity is greatest, as in China, Egypt, and Guinea,
+they banish, mutilate, sell, or drown infants. Here, we condemn them to
+a perpetual celibacy. Those who are in being find it easy to assert
+rights over the unborn. Regarding themselves as the necessary, they
+annihilate the contingent, and suppress future generations for their own
+pleasure and advantage. Man does for his own race, without perceiving
+it, what he does also for the inferior animals: that is to say, he
+protects it and encourages it to increase, or neglects it according to
+his sense of need--according as advantage or inconvenience is expected
+as the consequence of either course. And since all these moral effects
+themselves depend upon physical causes, which have been in permanent
+equilibrium ever since the world was formed, it follows that the numbers
+of mankind, like those of animals, should remain constant.
+
+"Nevertheless, this fixed state, this constant number, is not absolute,
+all physical and moral causes, and all the results which spring from
+them, balance themselves, as though, upon a see-saw, which has a certain
+play, but never so much as that equilibrium should be altogether lost.
+As everything in the universe is in movement, and as all the forces
+which are contained in matter act one against the other and
+counterbalance one another, all is done by a kind of oscillation; of
+which the mean points are those to which we refer as being the ordinary
+course of nature, while the extremes are the periods which deviate from
+that course most widely. And, as a matter of fact, with animals as much
+as with plants, a time of unusual fecundity is commonly followed by one
+of sterility; abundance and dearth come alternately, and often at such
+short intervals that we may foretell the production of a coming year by
+our knowledge of the past one. Our apples, pears, oaks, beeches, and the
+greater number of our fruit and forest trees, bear freely but about one
+year in two. Caterpillars, cockchafers, woodlice, which in one year may
+multiply with great abundance, will appear but sparsely in the next.
+What indeed would become of all the good things of the earth, what would
+become of the useful animals, and indeed of man himself, if each
+individual in these years of excess was to leave its quotum of
+offspring? This, however, does not happen, for destruction and sterility
+follow closely upon excessive fecundity, and, independently of the
+contagion which follows inevitably upon overcrowding, each species has
+its own special sources of death and destruction, which are of
+themselves sufficient to compensate for excess in any past generation.
+
+"Nevertheless the foregoing should not be taken in an absolute sense,
+nor yet too strictly,--especially in the case of those races which are
+not left entirely to the care of Nature. Those which man takes care
+of--commencing with his own--are more abundant than they would be
+without his care, yet, as his power of taking this care is limited, the
+increase which has taken place is also fixed, and has long been
+restrained within impassable boundaries. Again, though in civilized
+countries man, and all the animals useful to him, are more numerous than
+in other places, yet their numbers never become excessive, for the same
+power which brings them into being destroys them as soon as they are
+found inconvenient."[90]
+
+
+_The Carnivora--Sensation._
+
+Buffon begins his seventh volume with some remarks on the _carnivora_ in
+general, which I would gladly quote at fuller length than my space will
+allow. He dwells on the fact that the number, as well as the fecundity
+of the insect races is greater than that of the mammalia, and even than
+of plants; and he points out that "violent death is almost as necessary
+an usage as is the law that we must all, in one way or another, die."
+This leads him to the question whether animals can feel. "To speak
+seriously," (au reel) he says (and why this, if he had always spoken
+seriously?[91]), "can we doubt that those animals whose organization
+resembles our own, feel the same sensations as we do? They must feel,
+for they have senses, and they must feel more and more in proportion as
+their senses are more active and more perfect." Those whose organ of any
+sense is imperfect, have but imperfect perception in respect of that
+sense; and those that are entirely without the organ want also all
+corresponding sensation. "Movement is the necessary consequence of acts
+of perception. I have already shown that in whatever manner a living
+being is organized, if it has perceptions at all, it cannot fail to show
+that it has them by some kind of movement of its body. Hence plants,
+though highly organized, have no feeling, any more than have those
+animals which, like plants, manifest no power of motion. Among animals
+there are those which, like the sensitive plant, have but a certain
+power of movement about their own parts, and which have no power of
+locomotion; such animals have as yet but little perception. Those,
+again, which have power of locomotion, but which, like automata, do but
+a small number of things, and always after the same fashion, can have
+only small powers of perception, and these limited to a small number of
+objects. But in the case of man, what automata, indeed, have we not
+here! How much do not education and the intercommunication of ideas
+increase our powers and vivacity of perception. What difference can we
+not see in this respect between civilized and uncivilized races, between
+the peasant girl, and the woman of the world? And in like manner among
+animals, those which live with us have their perceptions increased in
+range, while those that are wild have but their natural instinct, which
+is often more certain but always more limited in range than is the
+intelligence of domesticated animals."[92]
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"For perception to exist in its fullest development in any animal body,
+that body must form a whole--an _ensemble_, which shall not only be
+capable of feeling in all its parts, but shall be so arranged that all
+these feeling parts shall have a close correspondence with one another,
+and that no one of them can be disturbed without communicating a portion
+of that disturbance to every other part. There must also be a single
+chief centre, with which all these different disturbances may be
+connected, and from which, as from a common _point d'appui_, the
+reactions against them may take their rise. Hence man, and those animals
+whose organization most resembles man's, will be the most capable of
+perceptions, while those whose unity is less complete, whose parts have
+a less close correspondence with each other--which have several centres
+of sensation, and which seem, in consequence, less to envelope a single
+existence in a single body than to contain many centres of existence
+separated and different from one another--these will have fewer and
+duller perceptions. The polypus, which can be reproduced by fission; the
+wasp, whose head even after separation from the body still moves, lives,
+acts, and even eats as heretofore; the lizard which we deprive neither
+of sensation nor movement by cutting off part of its body; the lobster
+which can restore its amputated limbs; the turtle whose heart beats long
+after it has been plucked out, in a word all the animals whose
+organization differs from our own, have but small powers of perception,
+and the smaller the more they differ from us."[93]
+
+This is Buffon's way of satirizing our inability to bear in mind that we
+are compelled to judge all things by our own standards. He also wishes
+to reassure those who might be alarmed at the tendency of some of his
+foregoing remarks, and who he knew would find comfort in being told that
+a thing which does not express itself as they do does not feel at all.
+
+The diaphragm according to Buffon appears to be the centre of the powers
+of sensation; the slightest injury "even to the attachments of the
+diaphragm is followed by strong convulsions, and even by death. The
+brain which has been called the seat of 'sensations' is yet not the
+centre of 'perception,' since we can wound it, and even take
+considerable parts of it away, without death's ensuing, and without
+preventing an animal from living, moving and feeling in all its parts."
+
+Buffon thus distinguishes between "sensation" and "perception."
+"Sensation," he says, "is simply the activity of a sense, but perception
+is the pleasantness or unpleasantness of this sensation," "perceived by
+its being propagated and becoming active throughout the entire system."
+I have therefore several times, when translating from Buffon, rendered
+the word "_sentiment_" by "perception," and shall continue to do so. "I
+say," writes Buffon, "the pleasantness or unpleasantness, because this
+is the very essence of perception; the one feature of perception
+consists in perceiving either pain or pleasure; and though movements
+which do not affect us in either one or the other of these two ways may
+indeed take place within us, yet we are indifferent to them, and do not
+perceive that we are affected by them. All external movement, and all
+exercise of the animal powers, spring from perception; its action is
+proportionate to the extent of its excitation, to the extent of the
+feeling which is being felt.[94] And this same part, which we regard as
+the centre of sensation, will also be that of all the animal powers; or,
+if it is preferred to call it so, it will be the common _point d'appui_
+from which they all take rise. The diaphragm is to the animal what the
+'stock' is to the plant; both divide an organism transversely, both
+serve as the _point d'appui_ of opposing forces; for the forces which
+push upward those parts of a tree which should form its trunk and
+branches, bear upon and are supported by the 'stock,' as do those
+opposing forces, which drive the roots downwards.
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"Even on a cursory examination we can see that all our innermost
+affections, our most lively emotions, our most expansive moments of
+delight, and, on the other hand, our sudden starts, pains, sicknesses,
+and swoons--in fact, all our strong impressions concerning the pleasure
+or pain of any sensation--make themselves felt within the body, and
+about the region of the diaphragm. The brain, on the contrary, shows no
+sign of being a seat of perception. In the head there are pure
+sensations and nothing else, or rather, there are but the
+representations of sensations stripped of the character of perception;
+that is to say, we can remember and call to mind whether such and such a
+sensation was pleasant to us or otherwise, and if this operation, which
+goes on in the head, is followed by a vivid perception, then the
+impression made is perceived in the interior of the body, and always in
+the region of the diaphragm. Hence, in the foetus where this membrane
+is without use, there is no perception, or so little that nothing comes
+of it, the movements of the foetus, such as they are, being rather
+mechanical than dependent on sensation and will.
+
+"Whatever the matter may be which serves as the vehicle of perception,
+and produces muscular movement, it is certain that it is propagated
+through the nerves, and that it communicates itself instantaneously from
+one extremity of the system to the other. In whatever manner this
+operation is conducted, whether by the vibrations, as it were, of
+elastic cords or by a subtle fire, or by a matter resembling
+electricity, which not only resides in animal as in all other bodies,
+but is being continually renewed in them by the movements of the heart
+and lungs, by the friction of the blood within the arteries, and also by
+the action of exterior causes upon our organs of sense--in whatever
+manner, I say, the operation is conducted, it is nevertheless certain
+that the nerves and membranes are the only parts in an animal body that
+can feel. The blood, lymphs, and all other fluids, the fats, bone,
+flesh, and all other solids, are of themselves void of sensation. And
+so also is the brain; it is a soft and inelastic substance, incapable
+therefore of producing or of propagating the movement, vibrations, or
+concussions which, result in perception. The meninges, on the other
+hand, are exceedingly sensitive, and are the envelopes of all the
+nerves; like the nerves, they take rise in the head; and, dividing
+themselves like the branches of the nerves, they extend even to their
+smallest ramifications: they are, so to speak, flattened nerves; they
+are of the same substance as the nerves, are nearly of the same degree
+of elasticity, and form a necessary part of the system of sensation. If,
+then, the seat of the sensations must be placed in the head, let it be
+placed in the meninges, and not in the medullary part of the brain,
+which is of an entirely different substance."[95]
+
+If this is so, it appears from what will follow as though the meninges
+must be the "stock" rather than the diaphragm.
+
+"What perhaps has given rise to the opinion that the seat of all
+sensations and the centre of all sensibility is in the brain, is the
+fact that the nerves, which are the organs of perception, all attach
+themselves to the brain, which has hence come to be regarded as the one
+common centre which can receive all their vibrations and impressions.
+This fact alone has sufficed to indicate the brain as the origin of
+perceptions--as the essential organ of sensations; in a word, as the
+common sensorium. This supposition has appeared so simple and natural
+that its physical impossibility has been overlooked, an impossibility,
+however, which should be sufficiently apparent. For how can a part
+which cannot feel--a soft inactive substance like the brain--be the very
+organ of perception and movement? How can this soft and perceptionless
+part not only receive impressions, but preserve them for a length of
+time, and transmit their undulatory movements (_en propage les
+ebranlements_) throughout all the solid and feeling parts of the body?
+It may perhaps be maintained with Descartes and M. de Peyronie that the
+principle of sensation does not reside in the brain, but in the pineal
+gland or in the _corpus callosum_; but a glance at the conformation of
+the brain itself will suffice to show that these parts do not join on to
+the nerves, but that they are entirely surrounded by those parts of the
+brain which do not feel, and are so separated from the nerves that they
+cannot receive any movement from them; whence it follows that this
+second supposition is as groundless as the first."[96]
+
+What, then, asks Buffon, _is_ the use of the brain? Man, the quadrupeds,
+and birds all have larger brains, and at the same time more extended
+perceptions, than fishes, insects, and those other living beings whose
+brains are smaller in proportion. "When the brain is compressed, there
+is suspension of all power of movement. If this part is not the source
+of our powers of motion, why is it so necessary and so essential? Why,
+again, does it seem so proportionate in each animal to the amount of
+perceiving power which that animal possesses?
+
+"I think I can answer this question in a satisfactory manner, difficult
+though it seems; but in order that I may do so, I would ask the reader
+to lend me his attention for a few moments while we regard the brain
+simply _as brain_, and have no other idea concerning it than we can
+derive from inspection and reflection. The brain, as well as the
+_medulla oblongata_ and the spinal marrow, which are but prolongations
+of the brain itself, is only a kind of hardly organized mucilage; we
+find in it nothing but the extremities of small arteries, which run into
+it in very great numbers, but which convey a white and nourishing lymph
+instead of blood. When the parts of the brain are disunited by
+maceration, these same small arteries, or lymphatic vessels, appear as
+very delicate threads throughout their whole length. The nerves, on the
+contrary, do not penetrate the substance of the brain; they abut upon
+its surface only; before reaching it they lose their elasticity and
+solidity, and the extremities of the nerves which are nearest to the
+brain are soft, and nearly mucilaginous. From this exposition, in which
+there is nothing hypothetical, it appears that the brain, which is
+nourished by the lymphatic arteries, does in its turn provide
+nourishment for the nerves, and that we must regard these as a kind of
+vegetation which rises as trunks and branches from the brain, and become
+subsequently subdivided into an infinite number, as it were, of twigs.
+The brain is to the nerves what the earth is to plants: the last
+extremities of the nerves are the roots, which with every vegetable are
+more soft and tender than the trunk or branches; they contain a ductile
+matter fit for the growth and nourishment of the nervous tree or fibre;
+they draw the ductile matter from the substance of the brain itself, to
+which the arteries are continually bringing the lymph that is necessary
+to supply it. The brain, then, instead of being the seat of the
+sensations, and the originator of perception, is an organ of secretion
+and nutrition only, though a very essential organ, without which the
+nerves could neither grow nor be maintained.
+
+"This organ is greater in man, in quadrupeds, and in birds, because the
+number or bulk of the nerves is greater in these animals than in fishes
+or insects, whose power of perception is more feeble, for this very
+reason, that they have but a small brain; one, in fact, that is
+proportioned to the small quantity of nerves which that brain must
+support. Nor can I omit to state here that man has not, as has been
+pretended by some, a larger brain than has any other animal; for there
+are apes and cetacea which have more brain than man in proportion to the
+volume of their bodies--another fact which proves that the brain is
+neither the seat of sensations nor the originator of perception, since
+in that case these animals would have more sensations and perception
+than man.
+
+"If we consider the manner in which plants derive their nourishment, we
+shall find that they do not draw up the grosser parts either of earth or
+water; these parts must be reduced by warmth into subtle vapours before
+the roots can suck them up into the plant. In like manner the nutrition
+of the nerves is only effected by means of the more subtle parts of the
+humidity of the brain, which are sucked up by the roots or extremities
+of the nerves, and are carried thence through all the branches of the
+sensory system. This system forms, as we have said, a whole, all whose
+parts are interconnected by so close a union that we cannot wound one
+without communicating a violent shock to all the others; the wounding or
+simply pulling of the smallest nerve is sufficient to cause lively
+irritation to all the others, and to put the body in convulsion; nor can
+we ease this pain and convulsion except by cutting the nerve higher up
+than the injured part; but on this all the parts abutting on this nerve
+become thenceforward senseless and immovable for ever. The brain should
+not be considered as of the same character, nor as an organic portion of
+the nervous system, for it has not the same properties nor the same
+substance, being neither solid nor elastic, nor yet capable of feeling.
+I admit that on its compression perception ceases, but this very fact
+shows it to be a body foreign to the nervous system itself, which,
+acting by its weight, or pressure, against the extremities of the
+nerves, oppresses them and stupefies them in the same way as a weight
+placed upon the arm, leg, or any other part of the body, stupefies the
+nerves and deadens the perceptions of that part. And it is evident that
+this cessation of sensation on compression is but a suspension and
+temporary stupefaction, for the moment the compression of the brain
+ceases, perception and the power of movement returns. Again, I admit
+that on tearing the medullary substance, and on wounding the brain till
+the _corpus callosum_ is reached, convulsion, loss of sensation, and
+death ensue; but this is because the nerves are so entirely deranged
+that they are, so to speak, torn up by the roots and wounded all
+together, and at their source.
+
+"In further proof that the brain is neither the centre of perception nor
+the seat of the sensations, I may remind the reader that animals and
+even children have been born without heads and brains, and have yet had
+feeling, movement, and life. There are also whole classes of animals,
+like insects and worms, with a brain that is by no means a distinct mass
+nor of sensible volume, but with only something which corresponds with
+the _medulla oblongata_ and the spinal marrow. There would be more
+reason, then, in placing the seat of the feelings and perceptions in the
+spinal marrow, which no animal is without, than in the brain which is
+not an organ common to all creatures that can feel."
+
+If Buffon's ideas concerning the brain are as just as they appear to be,
+the resemblance between plants and animals is more close than is
+apparent, even to a superficial observer, on a first inspection of the
+phenomena. Such an observer, however, on looking but a little more
+intently, will see the higher _vertebrata_ as perambulating vegetables
+planted upside down. So the man who had been born blind, on being made
+to see, and on looking at the objects before him with unsophisticated
+eyes, said without hesitation that he saw "men as trees walking," thus
+seeing with more prophetic insight than either he or the bystanders
+could interpret. For our skull is as a kind of flower-pot, and holds the
+soil from which we spring, that is to say the brain; our mouth and
+stomach are roots, in two stories or stages; our bones are the
+trellis-work to which we cling while going about in search of
+sustenance for our roots; or they are as the woody trunk of a tree; _we_
+are the nerves which are rooted in the brain, and which draw thence the
+sustenance which is supplied it by the stomach; our lungs are leaves
+which are folded up within us, as the blossom of a fig is hidden within
+the fruit itself.
+
+This is what should follow if Buffon's theory of the brain is allowed to
+stand, which I hope will prove to be the case, for it is the only
+comfortable thought concerning the brain that I have met with in any
+writer. I have given it here at some length on account of its
+importance, and for the illustration it affords of Buffon's hatred of
+mystery, rather than for its bearing upon evolution. The fact that our
+leading men of science have adopted other theories will weigh little
+with those who have watched scientific orthodoxy with any closeness.
+What Buffon thought of that orthodoxy may be gathered from the
+following:--
+
+"The greatest obstacles to the advancement of human knowledge lie less
+in things themselves than in man's manner of considering them. However
+complicated a machine the human body may be, it is still less
+complicated than are our own ideas concerning it. It is less difficult
+to see Nature as she is, than as she is presented to us. She carries a
+veil only, while we would put a mask over her face; we load her with our
+own prejudices, and suppose her to act and to conduct her operations
+even after the same fashion as ourselves.[97]
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"I am by no means speaking of those purely arbitrary systems which we
+are able at a glance to detect as chimeras that are being pretended to
+us as realities, but I refer to the methods whereby people have set
+themselves seriously to study nature. Even the experimental method
+itself has been more fertile of error than of truth, for though it is
+indeed the surest, yet is it no surer than the hand of him who uses it.
+No matter how little we incline out of the straight path, we soon find
+ourselves wandering in a sterile wilderness, where we can see but a few
+obscure objects scattered sparsely; nevertheless we do violence to these
+facts and to ourselves, and resemble them together on a conceit of
+analogies and common properties amongst them. Then, passing and
+repassing complaisantly over the tortuous path which we have ourselves
+beaten, we deem the road a worn one, and though it leads no whither, the
+world follows it, adopts it, and accepts its supposed consequences as
+first principles. I could show this by laying bare the origin of that
+which goes by the name of 'principle' in all the sciences, whether
+abstract or natural. In the case of the former, the basis of principle
+is abstraction--that is to say, one or more suppositions: in that of the
+second, principles are but the consequences, better or worse, of the
+methods which may have been followed. And to speak here of anatomy only,
+did not he who first surmounted his natural repugnance and set himself
+to work to open a human body--did he not believe that through going all
+over it, dissecting it, dividing it into all its parts, he would soon
+learn its structure, mechanism, and functions? But he found the task
+greater than he had expected, and renouncing such pretensions, was fain
+to content himself with a method--not for seeing and judging, but for
+seeing after an orderly fashion. This method ... is still the sole
+business of our ablest anatomists, but it is not science. It is the road
+which should lead scienceward, and might perhaps have reached science
+itself, if instead of walking ever on a single narrow path men had set
+the anatomy of man and that of animals face to face with one another.
+For, what real knowledge can be drawn from an isolated pursuit? Is not
+the foundation of all science seen to consist in the comparison which
+the human mind can draw between different objects in the matter of their
+resemblances and differences--of their analogous or conflicting
+properties, and of all the relations in which they stand to one another?
+The absolute, if it exist at all, is but of the concurrence of man's own
+knowledge; we judge and can judge of things only by their bearings one
+upon another; hence whenever a method limits us to only a single
+subject, whenever we consider it in its solitude and without regard to
+its resemblances or to its differences from other objects, we can attain
+to no real knowledge, nor yet, much less, reach any general principle.
+We do but give names, and make descriptions of a thing, and of all its
+parts. Hence comes it that, after three thousand years of dissection,
+anatomy is still but a nomenclature, and has hardly advanced a step
+towards its true object, which is the science of animal economy.
+Furthermore, what defects are there not in the method itself, which
+should above all things else be simple and easy to be understood,
+depending as it does upon inspection and having denominations only for
+its end! For seeing that nomenclature has been mistaken for knowledge,
+men have made it their chief business to multiply names, instead of
+limiting things; they have crushed themselves under the burden of
+details, and been on the look out for differences where there was no
+distinction. When they had given a new name they conceived of it as a
+new thing, and described the smallest parts with the most minutious
+exactness, while the description of some still smaller part, forgotten
+or neglected by previous anatomists, has been straightway hailed as a
+discovery. The denominations themselves being often taken from things
+which had no relation to the object that it was desired to denominate,
+have served but to confound confusion. The part of the brain, for
+example, which is called testes and nates, wherein does it so differ
+from the rest of the brain that it should deserve a name? These names,
+taken at haphazard or springing from some preconceived opinion, have
+themselves become the parents of new prejudices and speculations; other
+names given to parts which have been ill observed, or which are even
+non-existent, have been sources of new errors. What functions and uses
+has it not been attempted to foist upon the pineal gland, and on the
+alleged empty space in the brain which is called the arch, the first of
+which is but a gland, while the very existence of the other is
+doubtful,--the empty space being perhaps produced by the hand of the
+anatomist and the method of dissection."[98]
+
+
+_The Genus felis._
+
+In his preliminary remarks upon the lion, Buffon while still professing
+to believe in some considerable mutability of species, seems very far
+from admitting that all living forms are capable of modification. But he
+has shown us long since how clearly he saw the impossibility of limiting
+mutability, if he once admitted so much of the thin end of the wedge as
+that a horse and an ass might be related. It is plain, therefore, that
+he is not speaking "_au reel_" here, and we accordingly find him talking
+clap-trap about the nobleness of the lion in having no species
+immediately allied to it. A few lines lower on he reminds us in a casual
+way that the ass and horse are related.
+
+He writes:--
+
+"Added to all these noble individual features the lion has also what may
+be called a _specific_ nobility. For I call those species noble which
+are constant, invariable, and which are above suspicion of having
+degenerated. These species are commonly isolated, and the only ones of
+their genus. They are distinguished by such well-marked features that
+they cannot be mistaken, nor confounded with any other species. To begin
+for example with man, the noblest of created beings; he is but of a
+single species, inasmuch as men and women will breed freely _inter se_
+in spite of all existing differences of race, climate and colour; and
+also inasmuch as there is no other animal which can claim either a
+distant or near relationship with him. The horse, on the other hand, is
+more noble as an individual than as a species, for he has the ass as
+his near neighbour, _and seems himself to be nearly enough related to
+it_; ... the dog is perhaps of even less noble species, approaching as
+he does to the wolf, fox, and jackal, _which we can only consider to be
+the degenerated species of a single family_"[99]--all which may seem
+very natural opinions for a French aristocrat in the days before the
+Revolution, but which cannot for a moment be believed to have been
+Buffon's own. I have not ascertained the date of Buffon's little quarrel
+with the Sorbonne, but I cannot doubt that if we knew the inner history
+of the work we are considering, we should find this passage and others
+like it explained by the necessity of quieting orthodox adversaries. He
+concludes the paragraph from which I have just been quoting by saying,
+"To class man and the ape together, or the lion with the cat, and to say
+that the lion is a _cat with a mane and a long tail_--this were to
+degrade and disfigure nature instead of describing her and denominating
+her species." Buffon very rarely uses italics, but those last given are
+his, not mine; could words be better chosen to make us see the lion and
+the cat as members of the same genus? No wonder the Sorbonne considered
+him an infelicitous writer; why could he not have said "cat," and have
+done with it, instead of giving a couple of sly but telling touches,
+which make the cat as like a lion as possible, and then telling us that
+we must not call her one? Sorbonnes never do like people who write in
+this way.
+
+"The lion, then, belongs to a most noble species, standing as he does
+alone, and incapable of being confounded with the tiger, leopard,
+ounce, &c., while, on the contrary, those species, which appear to be
+least distant from the lion, are very sufficiently indistinguishable, so
+that travellers and nomenclators are continually confounding them."[100]
+
+If this is not pure malice, never was a writer more persistently
+unfortunate in little ways. Why remind us here that the species which
+come nearest to the lion are so hard to distinguish? Why not have said
+nothing about it? As it is, the case stands thus: we are required to
+admit close resemblance between the leopard and the tiger, while we are
+to deny it between the tiger and the lion, in spite of there being no
+greater outward difference between the first than between the second
+pair, and in spite of the hurried whisper "_cat with a mane and a long
+tail_" still haunting our ears. Isidore Geoffroy and his followers may
+consent to this arrangement, but I hope the majority of my readers will
+not do so.
+
+I went on to the account of the tiger with some interest to see the line
+which Buffon would take concerning it. I anticipated that we should find
+cats, pumas, lynxes, &c., to be really very like tigers, and was
+surprised to learn that the "true" tiger, though certainly not unlike
+these animals, was still to be distinguished from "many others which had
+since been called tigers." He is on no account to be confounded with
+these, in spite of the obvious temptation to confound him. He is "a rare
+animal, little known to the ancients, and badly described by the
+moderns." He is a beast "of great ferocity, of terrible swiftness, and
+surpassing even the proportions of the lion." The effect of the
+description is that we no longer find the lion standing alone, but with
+the tiger on a par with him if not above him; but at the same time we
+fall easy victims to the temptation to confound the tiger with "the many
+other animals which are also called tigers." A surface stream has swept
+the members of the cat family in different directions, but a stealthy
+undercurrent has seized them from beneath, and they are now happily
+reunited.
+
+
+_Animals of the Old and New World--Changed Geographical Distribution._
+
+Writing upon the animals of the old world,[101] and referring to the
+humps of the camel and the bison, Buffon shows that very considerable
+modification may be effected in some animals within even a few
+generations, but he attributes the effect produced to the direct
+influence of climate. Buffon concludes his sketch of the animals of the
+new world by pointing out that the larger animals of the African torrid
+zone have been hindered by sea and desert from finding their way to
+America, and by claiming to be the first "even to have suspected" that
+there was not a single denizen of the torrid zone of one continent which
+was common also to the other.[102]
+
+The animals common to both continents are those which can stand the cold
+and which are generally suited for a temperate climate. These, Buffon
+believes, to have travelled either over some land still unknown, or
+"more probably," over territory which has long since been submerged. The
+species of the old and new world are never without some well-marked
+difference, which however should not be held sufficient for us to refuse
+to admit their practical identity. But he maintains, I imagine wilfully,
+that there is a tendency in all the mammalia to become smaller on being
+transported to the new world, and refers the fact to the quality of the
+earth, the condition of the climate, the degrees of heat and humidity,
+to the height of mountains, amounts of running or stagnant waters,
+extent of forest, and above all to the brutal condition of nature in a
+new country, which he evidently regards with true aristocratic
+abhorrence.[103]
+
+Then follows a passage which I had better perhaps give in full:--
+
+The mammoth "was certainly the greatest and strongest of all quadrupeds;
+but it has disappeared; and if so, how many smaller, feebler, and less
+remarkable species must have also perished without leaving us any traces
+or even hints of their having existed? How many other species have
+changed their nature, that is to say, become perfected or degraded,
+through great changes in the distribution of land and ocean, through the
+cultivation or neglect of the country which they inhabit, through the
+long-continued effects of climatic changes, so that they are no longer
+the same animals that they once were? Yet of all living beings after
+man, the quadrupeds are the ones whose nature is most fixed and form
+most constant: birds and fishes vary much more easily; insects still
+more again than these, and if we descend to plants, which certainly
+cannot be excluded from animated nature, we shall be surprised at the
+readiness with which species are seen to vary, and at the ease with
+which they change their forms and adopt new natures.
+
+"It is probable then that all the animals of the new world are derived
+from congeners in the old, without any deviation from the ordinary
+course of nature. We may believe that having become separated in the
+lapse of ages, by vast oceans and countries which they could not
+traverse, they have gradually been affected by, and derived impressions
+from, a climate which has itself been modified so as to become a new one
+through the operation of those same causes which dissociated the
+individuals of the old and new world from one another; thus in the
+course of time they have grown smaller and changed their characters.
+This, however, should not prevent our classifying them as different
+species now, for the difference is no less real whether it is caused by
+time, climate and soil, or whether it dates from the creation. _Nature I
+maintain is in a state of continual flux and movement. It is enough for
+man if he can grasp her as she is in his own time, and throw but a
+glance or two upon the past and future, so as to try and perceive what
+she may have been in former times and what one day she may attain
+to._"[104]
+
+
+_The Buffalo--Animals under Domestication._
+
+"The bison and the aurochs," says Buffon, "differ only in unessential
+characteristics, and are, by consequence, of the same species as our
+domestic cattle, so that I believe all the pretended species of the ox,
+whether ancient or modern, may be reduced to three--the bull, the
+buffalo, and the bubalus.
+
+"The case of animals under domestication is in many respects different
+from that of wild ones; they vary much more in disposition, size and
+shape, especially as regards the exterior parts of their bodies: the
+effects of climate, so powerful throughout nature, act with far greater
+effect upon captive animals than upon wild ones. Food prepared by man,
+and often ill chosen, combined with the inclemency of an uncongenial
+climate--these eventuate in modifications sufficiently profound to
+become constant and hereditary in successive generations. I do not
+pretend to say that this general cause of modification is so powerful as
+to change radically the nature of beings which have had their impress
+stamped upon them in that surest of moulds--heredity; but it
+nevertheless changes them in not a few respects; it masks and transforms
+their outward appearance; it suppresses some of their parts, and gives
+them new ones; it paints them with various colours, and _by its action
+on bodily habits influences also their natures, instincts, and most
+inward qualities_" (and what is this but "radically changing their
+nature"?). "The modification of but a single part, moreover, in a whole
+as perfect as an animal body, will necessitate a correlative
+modification in every other part, and it is from this cause that our
+domestic animals differ almost as much in nature and instinct, as in
+form, from those from which they originally sprung."[105]
+
+Buffon confirms this last assertion by quoting the sheep as an
+example--an animal which can now no longer exist in a wild state. Then
+returning to cattle, he repeats that many varieties have been formed by
+the effects--"diverse in themselves, and diverse in their
+combinations--of climate, food, and treatment, whether under
+domestication or in their wild state." These are the main causes of
+variation ("causes generales de variete"),[106] among our domesticated
+animals, but by far the greatest is changed climate in consequence of
+their accompanying man in his migrations. The effects of the foregoing
+causes of modification, especially the last of them, are repeatedly
+insisted on in the course of the forty pages which complete the
+preliminary account of the buffalo.
+
+What holds good for the buffalo does so also for the mouflon or wild
+sheep. This, Buffon declares to be the source of all our domesticated
+breeds: of these there are in all some four or five, "all of them being
+but degenerations from a single stock, produced by man's agency, and
+propagated for his convenience."[107] At the same time that man has
+protected them he has hunted out the original race which was "less
+useful to him,"[108] so that it is now to be found only in a few
+secluded spots, such as the mountains of Greece, Cyprus, and Sardinia.
+Buffon does not consider even the differences between sheep and goats to
+be sufficiently characteristic to warrant their being classed as
+different species.
+
+"I shall never tire," he continues, "of repeating--seeing how important
+the matter is--that we must not form our opinions concerning nature, nor
+differentiate (differencier) her species, by a reference to minor
+special characteristics. And, again, that systems, far from having
+illustrated the history of animals, have, on the contrary, served rather
+to obscure it ... leading, as they do, to the creation of arbitrary
+species which nature knows nothing about; perpetually confounding real
+and hypothetical existences; giving us false ideas as to the very
+essence of species; uniting them and separating them without foundation
+or knowledge, and often without our having seen the animal with which we
+are dealing."[109]
+
+
+_First and Second Views of Nature._
+
+The twelfth volume begins with a preface, entitled "A First View of
+Nature," from which I take the following:--
+
+"What cannot Nature effect with such means at her disposal? She can do
+all except either create matter or destroy it. These two extremes of
+power the deity has reserved for himself only; creation and destruction
+are the attributes of his omnipotence. To alter and undo, to develop and
+to renew--these are powers which he has handed over to the charge of
+Nature."[110]
+
+The thirteenth volume opens with a second view of nature. After
+describing what a man would have observed if he could have lived during
+many continuous ages, Buffon goes on to say:--
+
+"And as the number, sustenance, and balance of power among species is
+constant, Nature would present ever the same appearance, and would be in
+all times and under all climates absolutely and relatively the same, if
+it were not her fashion to vary her individual forms as much as
+possible. The type of each species is founded in a mould of which the
+principal features have been cut in characters that are ineffaceable and
+eternally permanent, but all the accessory touches vary; no one
+individual is the exact facsimile of any other, and no species exists
+without a large number of varieties. In the human race on which the
+divine seal has been set most firmly, there are yet varieties of black
+and white, large and small races, the Patagonian, Hottentot, European,
+American, Negro, which, though all descended from a common father,
+nevertheless exhibit no very brotherly resemblance to one another."[111]
+
+On an earlier page there is a passage which I may quote as showing
+Buffon to have not been without some--though very imperfect--perception
+of the fact which evidently made so deep an impression upon his
+successor, Dr. Erasmus Darwin. I refer to that continuity of life in
+successive generations, and that oneness of personality between parents
+and offspring, which is the only key that will make the phenomena of
+heredity intelligible.
+
+"Man," he says, "and especially educated man, is no longer a single
+individual, but represents no small part of the human race in its
+entirety. He was the first to receive from his fathers the knowledge
+which their own ancestors had handed down to them. These, having
+discovered the divine art of fixing their thoughts so that they can
+transmit them to their posterity, become, as it were, one and the same
+people with their descendants (_se sont, pour ainsi dire, identifies
+avec leur neveux_); while our descendants will in their turn be one and
+the same people with ourselves (_s'identifieront avec nous_). This
+reunion in a single person of the experience of many ages, throws back
+the boundaries of man's existence to the utmost limits of the past; he
+is no longer a single individual, limited as other beings are to the
+sensations and experiences of to-day. In place of the individual we have
+to deal, as it were, with the whole species."[112]
+
+"Differences in exterior are nothing in comparison with those in
+interior parts. These last must be regarded as the causes, while the
+others are but the effects. The interior parts of living beings are the
+foundation of the plan of their design; this is their essential form,
+their real shape, their exterior is only the surface, or rather the
+drapery in which their true figure is enveloped. How often does not the
+study of comparative anatomy show us that two exteriors which differ
+widely conceal interiors absolutely like each other, and, on the
+contrary, that the smallest internal difference is accompanied by the
+most marked differences of outward appearance, changing as it does even
+the natural habits, faculties and attributes of the animal?"[113]
+
+
+_Apes and Monkeys._
+
+The fourteenth volume is devoted to apes and monkeys, and to the chapter
+with which the volumes on quadrupeds are brought to a conclusion--a
+chapter for which perhaps the most important position in the whole work
+is thus assigned. It is very long, and is headed "On Descent with
+Modification" ("De la Degeneration des Animaux"). This is the chapter in
+which Buffon enters more fully into the "causes or means" of the
+transformation of species.
+
+At the opening of the chapter on the nomenclature of monkeys, the theory
+is broached that there is a certain fixed amount of life-substance as of
+matter in nature; and that neither can be either augmented or
+diminished. Buffon maintains this organic and living substance to be as
+real and durable as inanimate matter; as permanent in its state of life
+as the other in that of death; it is spread over the whole of nature,
+and passes from vegetables to animals by way of nutrition, and from
+animals back to vegetables through putrefaction, thus circulating
+incessantly to the animation of all that lives.
+
+As might be expected, Buffon is loud in his protest against any real
+similarity between man and the apes--man has had the spirit of the Deity
+breathed into his nostrils, and the lowest creature with this is higher
+than the highest without it. Having settled this point, he makes it his
+business to show how little difference in other respects there is
+between the apes and man.
+
+"One who could view," he writes, "Nature in her entirety, from first to
+last, and then reflect upon the manner in which these two
+substances--the living and the inanimate--act and react upon one
+another, would see that every living being is a mould which casts into
+its own shape those substances upon which it feeds; that it is this
+assimilation which constitutes the growth of the body, whose development
+is not simply an augmentation of volume, but an extension in all its
+dimensions, a penetration of new matter into all parts of its mass: he
+would see that these parts augment proportionately with the whole, and
+the whole proportionately with these parts, while general configuration
+remains the same until the full development is accomplished.... He would
+see that man, the quadruped, the cetacean, the bird, reptile, insect,
+tree, plant, herb, all are nourished, grow, and reproduce themselves on
+this same system, and that though their manner of feeding and of
+reproducing themselves may appear so different, this is only because the
+general and common cause upon which these operations depend can only
+operate in the individual agreeably with the form of each species.
+Travelling onward (for it has taken the human mind ages to arrive at
+these great truths, from which all others are derived), he would compare
+living forms, give them names to distinguish them, and other names to
+connect them with each other. Taking his own body as the model with
+which all living forms should be compared, and having measured them,
+explained them thoroughly, and compared them in all their parts, he
+would see that there is but small difference between the forms of living
+beings; that by dissecting the ape he could arrive at the anatomy of
+man, and that taking some other animal we find always the same ultimate
+plan of organization, the same senses, the same viscera, the same bones,
+the same flesh, the same movements of the fluids, the same play and
+action of the solids; he would find all of them with a heart, veins,
+arteries, in all the same organs of circulation, respiration, digestion,
+nutrition, secretion; in all of them a solid frame, composed of pieces
+put together in nearly the same manner; and he would find this system
+always the same, from man to the ape, from the ape to the quadrupeds,
+from the quadrupeds to the cetacea, birds, fishes, reptiles; this system
+or plan then, I say, if firmly laid hold of and comprehended by the
+human mind, is a true copy of nature; it is the simplest and most
+general point of view from which we can consider her, and if we extend
+our view, and go on from what lives to what vegetates, we may see this
+plan--which originally did but vary almost imperceptibly--change its
+scope and descend gradually from reptiles to insects, from insects to
+worms, from worms to zoophytes, from zoophytes to plants, and yet
+keeping ever the same fundamental unity in spite of differences of
+detail, insomuch that nutrition, development, and reproduction remain
+the common traits of all organic bodies; traits eternally essential and
+divinely implanted; which time, far from effacing or destroying, does
+but make plainer and plainer continually."
+
+This is the writer who can see nothing in common between the horse and
+the zebra except that each has a solid hoof.[114] He continues:--
+
+"If from this grand tableau of resemblances, in which the living
+universe presents itself to our eyes as though it were a single family,
+we pass to a tableau rather of the differences between living forms, we
+shall see that, with the exception of some of the greater species, such
+as the elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, tiger, lion, which must each
+have their separate place, the other races seem all to blend with
+neighbouring forms, and to fall into groups of likenesses, greater or
+lesser, and of genera which our nomenclators represent to us by a
+network of shapes, of which some are held together by the feet, others
+by the teeth, horns, and skin, and others by points of still minor
+importance. And even those whose form strikes us as most perfect, as
+approaching most nearly to our own--even the apes--require some
+attention before they can be distinguished from one another, for the
+privilege of being an isolated species has been assigned less to form
+than to size; and man himself, though of a separate species and
+differing infinitely from all or any others, has but a medium size, and
+is less isolated and has nearer neighbours than have the greater
+animals. If we study the Orang-outang with regard only to his
+configuration, we might regard him, with equal justice, as either the
+highest of the apes or as the lowest of mankind, because, with the
+exception of the soul, he wants nothing of what we have ourselves, and
+because, as regards his body, he differs less from man than he does from
+other animals which are still called apes."[115]
+
+The want of a soul Buffon maintains to be the only essential difference
+between the Orang-outang and man--"his body, limbs, senses, brain and
+tongue are the same as ours. He can execute whatever movements man can
+execute; yet he can neither think nor speak, nor do any action of a
+distinctly human character. Is this merely through want of training? or
+may it not be through wrong comparison on our own parts? We compare the
+wild ape in the woods to the civilized citizen of our great towns. No
+wonder the ape shows to disadvantage. He should be compared with the
+hideous Hottentot rather, who is himself almost as much above the lowest
+man, as the lowest man is above the Orang-outang."[116]
+
+The passage is a much stronger one than I have thought it fit to quote.
+The reader can refer to it for himself. After reading it I entertain no
+further doubt that Buffon intended to convey the impression that men and
+apes are descended from common ancestors. He was not, however, going to
+avow this conclusion openly.
+
+"I admit," he continues, "that if we go by mere structure the ape might
+be taken for a variety of the human race; the Creator did not choose to
+model mankind upon an entirely distinct system from the other animals:
+He comprised their form and man's under a plan which is in the main
+uniform."[117] Buffon then dwells upon the possession of a soul by man;
+"even the lowest creature," he avers, "which had this, would have become
+man's rival."
+
+"The ape then is purely an animal, far from being a variety of our own
+species, he does not even come first in the order of animals, since he
+is not the most intelligent: the high opinion which men have of the
+intelligence of apes is a prejudice based only upon the resemblance
+between their outward appearance and our own."[118] But the undiscerning
+were not only to be kept quiet, they were to be made happy. With this
+end, if I am not much mistaken, Buffon brings his chapter on the
+nomenclature of apes to the following conclusion:--
+
+"The ape, which the philosopher and the uneducated have alike regarded
+as difficult to define, and as being at best equivocal, and midway
+between man and the lower animals, proves in fact to be an animal and
+nothing more; he is masked externally in the shape of man, but
+internally he is found incapable of thought, and of all that constitutes
+man; apes are below several of the other animals in respect of qualities
+corresponding to their own, and differ essentially from man, in nature,
+temperament, the time which must be spent upon their gestation and
+education, in their period of growth, duration of life, and in fact in
+all those profounder habits which constitute what is called the 'nature'
+of any individual existence."[119] This is handsome, and leaves the more
+timorous reader in full possession of the field.
+
+Buffon is accordingly at liberty in the following chapter to bring
+together every fact he can lay his hands on which may point the
+resemblance between man and the Orang-outang most strongly; but he is
+careful to use inverted commas here much more freely than is his wont.
+Having thus made out a strong case for the near affinity between man and
+the Orang-outang, and having thrown the responsibility on the original
+authors of the passages he quotes, he excuses himself for having quoted
+them on the ground that "everything may seem important in the history of
+a brute which resembles man so nearly," and then insists upon the points
+of difference between the Orang-outang and ourselves. They do not,
+however, in Buffon's hands come to much, until the end of the chapter,
+when, after a _resume_ dwelling on the points of resemblance, the
+differences are again emphatically declared to have the best of it.
+
+I need not follow Buffon through his description of the remaining
+monkeys. It comprises 250 pp., and is confined to details with which we
+have no concern; but the last chapter--"De la Degeneration des
+Animaux"--deserves much fuller quotation than my space will allow me to
+make from it. The chapter is very long, comprising, as I have said, over
+sixty quarto pages. It is impossible, therefore, for me to give more
+than an outline of its contents.
+
+
+_Causes or Means of the Transformation of Species._
+
+The human race is declared to be the one most capable of modification,
+all its different varieties being descended from a common stock, and
+owing their more superficial differences to changes of climate, while
+their profounder ones, such as woolly hair, flat noses, and thick lips,
+are due to differences of diet, which again will vary with the nature of
+the country inhabited by any race. Changes will be exceedingly gradual;
+it will take centuries of unbroken habit to bring about modifications
+which can be transmitted with certainty so as to eventuate in national
+characteristics.[120] It is a pleasure to find that here, too, habit is
+assigned as the main cause which underlies heredity.
+
+Modification will be much prompter with animals. When compelled to
+abandon their native land, they undergo such rapid and profound
+modification, that at first sight they can hardly be recognized as the
+same race, and cannot be detected in their disguise till after the most
+careful inspection, and on grounds of analogy only. Domestication will
+produce still more surprising results; the stigmata of their captivity,
+the marks of their chains, can be seen upon all those animals which man
+has enslaved; the older and more confirmed the servitude, the deeper
+will be its scars, until at length it will be found impossible to
+rehabilitate the creature and restore to it its lost attributes.
+
+"Temperature of climate, quality of food, and the ills of slavery--here
+are the three main causes of the alteration and degeneration of animals.
+The consequences of each of these should be particularly considered, so
+that by examining Nature as she is to-day we may thus perceive what she
+was in her original condition."[121]
+
+I have more than once admitted that there is a wide difference between
+this opinion, which assigns modification to the direct influence of
+climate, food, and other changed conditions of life, and that of Dr.
+Erasmus Darwin, which assigns only an indirect effect to these, while
+the direct effect is given to changed actions in consequence of changed
+desires; but it is surprising how nearly Buffon has approached the later
+and truer theory, which may perhaps have been suggested to Dr. Darwin by
+the following pregnant passage--as pregnant, probably, to Buffon himself
+as to another:--
+
+"The camel is the animal which seems to me to have felt the weight of
+slavery most profoundly. He is born with wens upon his back and
+callosities upon his knees and chest; these callosities are the
+unmistakable results of rubbing, for they are full of pus and of
+corrupted blood. The camel never walks without carrying a heavy burden,
+and the pressure of this has hindered, for generations, the free
+extension and uniform growth of the muscular parts of the back; whenever
+he reposes or sleeps his driver compels him to do so upon his folded
+legs, so that little by little this position becomes habitual with him.
+All the weight of his body bears, during several hours of the day
+continuously, upon his chest and knees, so that the skin of these parts,
+pressed and rubbed against the earth, loses its hair, becomes bruised,
+hardened, and disorganized.
+
+"The llama, which like the camel passes its life beneath burdens, and
+also reposes only by resting its weight upon its chest, has similar
+callosities, which again are perpetuated in successive generations.
+Baboons, and pouched monkeys, whose ordinary position is a sitting one,
+whether waking or sleeping, have callosities under the region of the
+haunches, and this hard skin has even become inseparable from the bone
+against which it is being continually pressed by the weight of the body;
+in the case, however, of these animals the callosities are dry and
+healthy, for they do not come from the constraint of trammels, nor from
+the burden of a foreign weight, but are the effects only of the natural
+habits of the animal, which cause it to continue longer seated than in
+any other position. There are callosities of these pouched monkeys which
+resemble the double sole of skin which we have ourselves under our feet;
+this sole is a natural hardness which our continued habit of walking or
+standing upright will make thicker or thinner according to the greater
+or less degree of friction to which we subject our feet."[122]
+
+This involves the whole theory of Dr. Darwin.
+
+Wild animals would not change either their food or climate if left to
+themselves, and in this case they would not vary, but either man or some
+other enemies have harassed most of them into migrations; "those whose
+nature was sufficiently flexible to lend itself to the new situation
+spread far and wide, while others have had no resource but the deserts
+in the neighbourhood of their own countries."[123]
+
+Since food and climate, and still less man's empire over them, can have
+but little effect upon wild animals, Buffon refers their principal
+varieties in great measure to their sexual habits, variations being much
+less frequent among animals that pair and breed slowly, than among those
+which do not mate and breed more freely. After running rapidly over
+several animals, and discussing the flexibility or inflexibility of
+their organizations, he declares the elephant to be the only one on
+which a state of domestication has produced no effect, inasmuch as "it
+refuses to breed under confinement, and cannot therefore transmit the
+badges of its servitude to its descendants."[124]
+
+Here is an example of Buffon's covert manner, in the way he maintains
+that descent with modification may account not only for specific but for
+generic differences.
+
+"But after having taken a rapid survey of the varieties which indicate
+to us the alterations that each species has undergone, there arises a
+broader and more important question, how far, namely, species themselves
+can change--how far there has been an older degeneration, immemorial
+from all antiquity, which has taken place in every family, or, if the
+term is preferred, _in all the genera_ under which those species are
+comprehended which neighbour one another without presenting points of
+any very profound dissimilarity? We have only a few isolated species,
+such as man, which form at once the species and the whole genus; the
+elephant, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, and the giraffe form genera,
+or simple species, which go down in a single line, with no collateral
+branches. All other races appear to form families, in which we may
+perceive a common source or stock from which the different branches seem
+to have sprung in greater or less numbers according as the individuals
+of each species are smaller and more fecund."[125]
+
+I can see no explanation of the introduction of this passage unless that
+it is intended to raise the question whether modification may be not
+only specific but generic, the point of the paragraph lying in the
+words "dans chaque famille, _ou si l'on veut, dans chacun des genres_."
+We are told in the next paragraph, that if we choose to look at the
+matter in this light, well--in that case--we ought to see not only the
+ass and the horse, but _the zebra too_, as members of the same family;
+"the number of their points of resemblance being infinitely greater than
+those in respect of which they differ."[126] Thus, at the close of his
+work on the quadrupeds, he thinks it well, as at the commencement
+seventeen years earlier, to emphasize--in his own quiet way--his
+perception that the principles on which he has been insisting should be
+carried much farther than he has chosen to carry them.
+
+His conclusion is, that "after comparing all the animals and bringing
+them each under their proper genus, we shall find the two hundred
+species we have already described to be reducible into a sufficiently
+small number of families or main stocks from which it is not impossible
+that all the others may be derived."[127]
+
+The chapter closes thus:--
+
+"To account for the origin of these animals" (certain of those peculiar
+to America), "we must go back to the time when the two continents were
+not yet separated, and call to mind the earliest geological changes. At
+the same time, we must consider the two hundred existing species of
+quadrupeds as reduced to thirty-eight families. And though this is not
+at all the state of Nature as she is in our time, and as she has been
+represented in this volume, and though, in fact, it is a condition which
+we can only arrive at by induction, and by analogies almost as
+difficult to lay hold of as is the time which has effaced the greater
+number of their traces, I shall, nevertheless, endeavour to ascend to
+these first ages of Nature by the aid of facts and monuments which yet
+remain to us, and to represent the epochs which these facts seem to
+indicate."[128]
+
+The fifteenth volume contains a description of a few more monkeys, as
+also of some animals which Buffon had never actually seen, a great part
+being devoted to indices.
+
+
+_Supplement._
+
+The first four volumes of the Supplement to Buffon's 'Natural History,'
+1774-1789, contain little which throws additional light upon his
+opinions concerning the mutability of species. At the beginning,
+however, of the fifth volume I find the following:--
+
+"On comparing these ancient records of the first ages of life [fossils]
+with the productions of to-day, we see with sufficient clearness that
+the essential form has been preserved without alteration in its
+principal parts: there has been no change whatever in the general type
+of each species; the plan of the inner parts has been preserved without
+variation. However long a time we may imagine for the succession of
+ages, whatever number of generations we may suppose, the individuals of
+to-day present to us in each genus the same forms as they did in the
+earliest ages; and this is more especially true of the greater species,
+whose characters are more invariable and nature more fixed; for the
+inferior species have, as we have said, experienced in a perceptible
+manner all the effects of different causes of degeneration. Only it
+should be remarked in regard to these greater species, such as the
+elephant and hippopotamus, that in comparing their fossil remains with
+the existing forms we find the earlier ones to have been larger. Nature
+was then in the full vigour of her youth, and the interior heat of the
+earth gave to her productions all the force and all the extent of which
+they were capable ... if there have been lost species, that is to say
+animals which existed once, but no longer do so, these can only have
+been animals which required a heat greater than that of our present
+torrid zone."[129]
+
+The context proves Buffon to have been thinking of such huge creatures
+as the megatherium and mastodon, but his words seem to limit the
+extinction of species to the denizens of a hot climate which had turned
+colder. It is not at all likely that Buffon meant this, as the passage
+quoted at p. 146 of this work will suffice to show. The whole paragraph
+is ironical.
+
+I can see nothing to justify the conclusion drawn from this passage by
+Isidore Geoffroy, that Buffon had modified his opinions, and was
+inclined to believe in a more limited mutability than he had done a few
+years earlier. His exoteric position is still identical with what it was
+in the outset, and his esoteric may be seen from the spirit which is
+hardly concealed under the following:--
+
+"I shall be told that analogy points towards the belief that our own
+race has followed the same path, and dates from the same period as
+other species; that it has spread itself even more widely than they; and
+that if man's creation has a later date than that of the other animals,
+nothing shows that he has not been subjected to the same laws of nature,
+the same alterations, and the same changes as they. We will grant that
+the human species does not differ essentially from others in the matter
+of bodily organs, and that, in respect of these, our lot has been much
+the same as that of other animals."[130]
+
+
+_Plants under Domestication._
+
+"If more modern and even recent examples are required in order to prove
+man's power over the vegetable kingdom, it is only necessary to compare
+our vegetables, flowers, and fruits with the same species such as they
+were a hundred and fifty years ago; this can be done with much ease and
+certainty by running the eye over the great collection of coloured
+drawings begun in the time of Gaston of Orleans, and continued to the
+present day at the Jardin du Roi. We find with surprise that the finest
+flowers of that date, as the ranunculuses, pinks, tulips, bear's ears,
+&c., would be rejected now, I do not say by our florists, but by our
+village gardeners. These flowers, though then already cultivated, were
+still not far above their wild condition. They had a single row of
+petals only, long pistils, colours hard and false; they had little
+velvety texture, variety, or gradation of tints, and, in fact, presented
+all the characteristics of untamed nature. Of herbs there was a single
+kind of endive, and two of lettuce--both bad--while we can now reckon
+more than fifty lettuces and endives, all excellent. We can even name
+the very recent dates of our best pippins and kernel fruits--all of them
+differing from those of our forefathers, which they resemble in name
+only. In most cases things remain while names change; here, on the
+contrary, it is the names that have been constant while the things have
+varied.[131]
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"It is not that every one of these good varieties did not arise from the
+same wild stock; but how many attempts has not man made on Nature before
+he succeeded in getting them. How many millions of germs has he not
+committed to the earth, before she has rewarded him by producing them?
+It was only by sowing, tending, and bringing to maturity an almost
+infinite number of plants of the same kind that he was able to recognize
+some individuals with fruits sweeter and better than others; and this
+first discovery, which itself involves so much care, would have remained
+for ever fruitless if he had not made a second, which required as much
+genius as the first required patience--I mean the art of grafting those
+precious individuals, which, unfortunately, cannot continue a line as
+noble as their own, nor themselves propagate their rare and admirable
+qualities? And this alone proves that these qualities are purely
+individual, and not specific, for the pips or stones of these excellent
+fruits bring forth the original wild stock, so that they do not form
+species essentially different from this. Man, however, by means of
+grafting, produces what may be called secondary species, which he can
+propagate at will; for the bud or small branch which he engrafts upon
+the stock contains within itself the individual quality which cannot be
+transmitted by seed, but which needs only to be developed in order to
+bring forth the same fruits as the individual from which it was taken in
+order to be grafted on to the wild stock. The wild stock imparts none of
+its bad qualities to the bud, for it did not contribute to the forming
+thereof, being, as it were, a wet nurse, and no true mother.
+
+"In the case of animals, the greater number of those features which
+appear individual, do not fail to be transmitted to offspring, in the
+same way as specific characters. It was easier then for man to produce
+an effect upon the natures of animals than of plants. The different
+breeds in each animal species are variations that have become constant
+and hereditary, while vegetable species on the other hand present no
+variations that can be depended on to be transmitted with certainty.
+
+"In the species of the fowl and the pigeon alone, a large number of
+breeds have been formed quite recently, which are all constant, and in
+other species we daily improve breeds by crossing them. From time to
+time we acclimatize and domesticate some foreign and wild species. All
+these examples of modern times prove that man has but tardily discovered
+the extent of his own power, and that he is not even yet sufficiently
+aware of it. It depends entirely upon the exercise of his intelligence;
+the more, therefore, he observes and cultivates nature the more means he
+will find of making her subservient to him, and of drawing new riches
+from her bosom without diminishing the treasures of her inexhaustible
+fecundity."[132]
+
+
+_Birds._
+
+In the preface to his volumes upon birds, Buffon says that these are not
+only much more numerous than quadrupeds, but that they also exhibit a
+far larger number of varieties, and individual variations.
+
+"The diversities," he declares, "which arise from the effects of climate
+and food, of domestication, captivity, transportation, voluntary and
+compulsory migration--all the causes in fact of alteration and
+degeneration--unite to throw difficulties in the way of the
+ornithologist."[133]
+
+He points out the infinitely keener vision of birds than that of man and
+quadrupeds, and connects it with their habits and requirements.[134] He
+does not appear to consider it as caused by those requirements, though
+it is quite conceivable that he saw this, but thought he had already
+said enough. He repeatedly refers to the effects of changed climate and
+of domestication, but I find nothing in the first volume which modifies
+the position already taken by him in regard to descent with
+modification: it is needless, therefore, to repeat the few passages
+which are to be found bearing at all upon the subject. The chapter on
+the birds that cannot fly, contains a sentence which seems to be the
+germ that has been developed, in the hands of Lamarck, into the
+comparison between nature and a tree. Buffon says that the chain of
+nature is not a single long chain, but is comparable rather to something
+woven, "which at certain intervals throws out a branch sideways that
+unites it with the strands of some other weft."[135] On the following
+page there is a passage which has been quoted as an example of Buffon's
+contempt for the men of science of his time. The writer maintains that
+the most lucid arrangement of birds, would have been to begin with those
+which most resembled quadrupeds. "The ostrich, which approaches the
+camel in the shape of its legs, and the porcupine in the quills with
+which its wings are armed, should have immediately followed the
+quadrupeds, but philosophy is often obliged to make a show of yielding
+to popular opinions, and _the tribe of naturalists_ is both numerous and
+impatient of any disturbance of its methods. It would only, then, have
+regarded this arrangement as an unreasonable innovation caused by a
+desire to contradict and to be singular."[136]
+
+It is, I believe, held not only by "_le peuple des naturalistes_," but
+by most sensible persons, that the proposed arrangement would not have
+been an improvement. I find, however, in the preface to the third volume
+on birds that M. Gueneau de Montbeillard described all the birds from
+the ostrich to the quail, so the foregoing passage is perhaps his and
+not Buffon's. If so, the imitation is fair, but when we reflect upon it
+we feel uncertain whether it is or is not beneath Buffon's dignity.
+
+Here, as often with pictures and music, we cannot criticise justly
+without taking more into consideration than is actually before us. We
+feel almost inclined to say that if the passage is by Buffon it is
+probably right, and if by M. Gueneau de Montbeillard, probably wrong. It
+must also be remembered that, as we learn from the preface already
+referred to, Buffon was seized at this point in his work with a long and
+painful illness, which continued for two years; a single hasty passage
+in so great a writer may well be pardoned under such circumstances.
+
+Looking through the third and remaining volumes on birds, the greater
+part of which was by Gueneau de Montbeillard, and bearing in mind that
+in point of date they are synchronous with some of those upon quadrupeds
+from which I have already extracted as much as my space will allow, and
+not seeing anything on a rapid survey which promises to throw new light
+upon the author's opinions, I forbear to quote further. I therefore
+leave Buffon with the hope that I have seen him more justly than some
+others have done, but with the certainty that the points I have caught
+and understood are few in comparison with those that I have missed.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[65] 'Hist. Nat.,' tom. i. p. 13, 1749.
+
+[66] Ibid.
+
+[67] Ibid. p. 16.
+
+[68] Tom. i. p. 21.
+
+[69] Ibid. p. 23.
+
+[70] Tom. ii. p. 9, 1749.
+
+[71] Ibid. p. 10.
+
+[72] Tom. iv. p. 31, 1753.
+
+[73] Tom. iv. p. 55.
+
+[74] Tom. iv. p. 98, 1753.
+
+[75] Ibid.
+
+[76] Tom. viii. p. 283, &c., 1760.
+
+[77] Tom. iv. p. 102, 1760.
+
+[78] Tom. iv. p. 103, 1753.
+
+[79] Dr. Darwin, 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 183, 1796.
+
+[80] Ibid. p. 184.
+
+[81] Dr. Darwin,'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 186.
+
+[82] Tom. v. p. 63, 1755.
+
+[83] Ibid. p. 64.
+
+[84] Tom. v. p. 103, 1755.
+
+[85] Tom. v. p. 104, 1755.
+
+[86] Tom. v. pp. 192-195, 1755.
+
+[87] Tom. v. p. 195.
+
+[88] Tom. v. pp. 196, 197.
+
+[89] This passage would seem to be the one which has suggested the
+following to the author of 'The Vestiges of Creation':--
+
+"He [the Deity] has endowed the families which enjoy His bounty with an
+almost infinite fecundity, ... but the limitation of the results of this
+fecundity ... is accomplished in a befitting manner by His ordaining
+that certain other animals shall have endowments sure so to act as to
+bring the rest of animated beings to a proper balance" (p. 317, ed.
+1853).
+
+[90] Tom. vi. p. 252, 1756.
+
+[91] 'Discours sur la Nature des Animaux,' vol. iv. and p. 113 of
+this vol.
+
+[92] Tom. vii. p. 9, 1758.
+
+[93] Tom. vii. p. 10, 1758.
+
+[94] Tom. vii. p. 12, 1758.
+
+[95] Tom. vii. p. 14, 1758
+
+[96] Tom. vii. p. 15, 1758.
+
+[97] Tom. vii. p. 19, 1758.
+
+[98] Tom. vii. p. 23, 1758. See Stenon's Discourse upon this subject.
+
+[99] Tom. ix. p. 10, 1761.
+
+[100] Tom. ix. p. 11, 1761.
+
+[101] Tom. ix. p. 68, 1761.
+
+[102] Ibid. p. 96, 1761.
+
+[103] Tom. ix. p. 107 and following pages (during which he rails at the
+new world generally), 1761.
+
+[104] Tom. ix. p. 127, 1761.
+
+[105] Tom. xi. p. 290, 1764 (misprinted on title-page 1754).
+
+[106] Ibid. p. 296.
+
+[107] Ibid. p. 363.
+
+[108] Ibid. p. 363.
+
+[109] Tom. xi. p. 370, 1764.
+
+[110] Ibid. xii., preface, iv. 1764.
+
+[111] Tom. xiii., preface, x. 1765.
+
+[112] Tom. xiii., preface, iv. 1765.
+
+[113] Ibid. xiii. p. 37.
+
+[114] See p. 80 of this volume.
+
+[115] Tom. xiv. p. 30, 1766.
+
+[116] Tom. xiv. p. 31, 1766.
+
+[117] Ibid. p. 32, 1766.
+
+[118] Tom. xiv. p. 38, 1766.
+
+[119] Ibid. p. 42, 1766.
+
+[120] Tom. xiv. p. 316, 1766.
+
+[121] Ibid. p. 317.
+
+[122] Tom. xiv. p. 326, 1766.
+
+[123] Ibid. p. 327.
+
+[124] Tom. xiv. p. 333.
+
+[125] Ibid. p. 335, 1766.
+
+[126] See p. 80 of this volume.
+
+[127] Tom. xiv. p. 358, 1766.
+
+[128] Tom. xiv. p. 374, 1766.
+
+[129] 'Hist. Nat.,' Sup. tom. v. p. 27, 1778.
+
+[130] Sup. tom. v. p. 187, 1778.
+
+[131] Sup. tom. v. p. 250, 1778.
+
+[132] Sup. tom. v. p. 253, 1778.
+
+[133] 'Oiseaux,' tom. i., preface, v. 1770.
+
+[134] Ibid. pp. 9-11.
+
+[135] 'Oiseaux,' tom. i. pp. 394, 395.
+
+[136] Ibid. p. 396, 1771.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+SKETCH OF DR. ERASMUS DARWIN'S LIFE.
+
+
+Proceeding now to the second of the three founders of the theory of
+evolution, I find, from a memoir by Dr. Dowson, that Dr. Erasmus Darwin
+was born at Elston, near Newark, in Nottinghamshire, on the 12th of
+December, 1731, being the seventh child and fourth son of Robert Darwin,
+"a private gentleman, who had a taste for literature and science, which
+he endeavoured to impart to his sons. Erasmus received his early
+education at Chesterfield School, and later on was entered at St. John's
+College, Cambridge, where he obtained a scholarship of about 16_l._ a
+year, and distinguished himself by his poetical exercises, which he
+composed with uncommon facility. He took the degree of M.B. there in
+1755, and afterwards prepared himself for the practice of medicine by
+attendance on the lectures of Dr. Hunter in London, and a course of
+studies in Edinburgh.
+
+"He first settled as a physician at Nottingham; but meeting with no
+success there, he removed in the autumn of 1756, his twenty-fifth year,
+to Lichfield, where he was more fortunate; for a few weeks after his
+arrival, to use the words of Miss Seward, 'he brilliantly opened his
+career of fame.' A young gentleman of family and fortune lay sick of a
+dangerous fever. A physician who had for many years possessed the
+confidence of Lichfield and the neighbourhood attended, but at length
+pronounced the case hopeless, and took his leave. Dr. Darwin was then
+called in, and by 'a reverse and entirely novel kind of treatment' the
+patient recovered."[137]
+
+Of Dr. Darwin's personal appearance Miss Seward says:--
+
+"He was somewhat above the middle size; his form athletic, and inclined
+to corpulence; his limbs were too heavy for exact proportion; the traces
+of a severe smallpox disfigured features and a countenance which, when
+they were not animated by social pleasure, were rather saturnine than
+sprightly; a stoop in the shoulders, and the then professional
+appendage--a large full-bottomed wig--gave at that early period of life
+an appearance of nearly twice the years he bore. Florid health and the
+earnest of good humour, a funny smile on entering a room and on first
+accosting his friends, rendered in his youth that exterior agreeable, to
+which beauty and symmetry had not been propitious.
+
+"He stammered extremely, but whatever he said, whether gravely or in
+jest, was always well worth waiting for, though the inevitable
+impression it made might not be always pleasant to individual self-love.
+Conscious of great native elevation above the general standard of
+intellect, he became early in life sore upon opposition, whether in
+argument or conduct, and always resented it by sarcasm of very keen
+edge. Nor was he less impatient of the sallies of egotism and vanity,
+even when they were in so slight a degree that strict politeness would
+rather tolerate than ridicule them. Dr. Darwin seldom failed to present
+their caricature in jocose but wounding irony. If these ingredients of
+colloquial despotism were discernible in _unworn_ existence, they
+increased as it advanced, fed by an ever growing reputation within and
+without the pale of medicine."[138]
+
+I imagine that this portrait is somewhat too harshly drawn. Dr. Darwin's
+taste for English wines is the worst trait which I have been able to
+discover in his character. On this head Miss Seward tells us that "he
+despised the prejudice which deems foreign wines more wholesome than the
+wines of the country. 'If you must drink wine,' said he, 'let it be
+home-made.'" "It is well known," she continues, "that Dr. Darwin's
+influence and example have sobered the county of Derby; that
+intemperance in fermented fluid of every species is almost unknown among
+its gentlemen,"[139] which, if he limited them to cowslip wine, is
+hardly to be wondered at.
+
+Dr. Dowson, quoting Miss Edgeworth, says that Dr. Darwin attributed
+almost all the diseases of the upper classes to the too great use of
+fermented liquors. "This opinion he supported in his writings with the
+force of his eloquence and reason; and still more in conversation by all
+those powers of wit, satire, and peculiar humour, which never appeared
+fully to the public in his works, but which gained him strong
+ascendancy in private society.... When he heard that my father was
+bilious, he suspected that this must be the consequence of his having,
+since his residence in Ireland, and in compliance with the fashion of
+the country, indulged too freely in drinking. His letter, I remember,
+concluded with, 'Farewell, my dear friend; God keep you from whisky--if
+He can.'"[140]
+
+On the other hand, Dr. Darwin seems to have been a very large eater.
+"Acid fruits with sugar, and all sorts of creams and butter were his
+luxuries; but he always ate plentifully of animal food. This liberal
+alimentary regimen he prescribed to people of every age where unvitiated
+appetite rendered them capable of following it; even to infants."
+
+Dr. Dowson writes:--
+
+"I have mentioned already that he had in his carriage a receptacle for
+paper and pencils, with which he wrote as he travelled, and in one
+corner a pile of books; but he had also a receptacle for a knife, fork,
+and spoon, and in the other corner a hamper, containing fruit and
+sweetmeats, cream and sugar. He provided also for his horses by having a
+large pail lashed to his carriage for watering them, as well as hay and
+oats to be eaten on the road. Mrs. Schimmelpenninck says that when he
+came on a professional visit to her father's house they had, as was the
+custom whenever he came, 'a luncheon-table set out with hothouse fruits
+and West India sweetmeats, clotted cream, stilton cheese, &c. While the
+conversation went on, the dishes in his vicinity were rapidly emptied,
+and what,' she adds, 'was my astonishment when, at the end of the three
+hours during which the meal had lasted, he expressed his joy at hearing
+the dressing bell, and hoped dinner would soon be announced.' This was
+not mere gluttony; he thought an abundance, or what most people would
+consider a superabundance of food, conducive to health. '_Eat or be
+eaten_' is said to have been often his medical advice. He had especially
+a very high opinion of the nutritive value of sugar, and said 'that if
+ever our improved chemistry should discover the art of making sugar from
+fossil or aerial matter without the assistance of vegetation, food for
+animals would then become as plentiful as water, and mankind might live
+upon the earth as thick as blades of grass, with no restraint to their
+numbers but want of room.'--Botanic Garden, vol. i. p. 470."[141]
+
+"Professional generosity," says Miss Seward, "distinguished Dr. Darwin's
+practice. Whilst resident in Lichfield he always cheerfully gave to the
+priest and lay vicars of its cathedral and their families _his advice_,
+but never took fees from any of them. Diligently also did he attend the
+health of the poor in that city, and afterwards at Derby, and supplied
+their necessities by food, and all sort of charitable assistance. In
+each of those towns _his_ was the cheerful board of almost open-housed
+hospitality, without extravagance or parade; generosity, wit, and
+science were his household gods."[142]
+
+Of his first marriage the following account is given:--
+
+"In 1757 he married Miss Howard, of the Close of Lichfield, a blooming
+and lovely young lady of eighteen.... Mrs. Darwin's own mind, by nature
+so well endowed, strengthened and expanded in the friendship,
+conversation, and confidence of so beloved a preceptor. But alas! upon
+her too early youth, and too delicate constitution, the frequency of her
+maternal situation, during the first five years of her marriage, had
+probably a baneful effect. The potent skill and assiduous cares of _him_
+before whom disease daily vanished from the frame of _others_, could not
+expel it radically from that of her he loved. It was, however, kept at
+bay during thirteen years.
+
+"Upon the distinguished happiness of those years she spoke with fervour
+to two intimate female friends in the last week of her existence, which
+closed at the latter end of the summer 1770. 'Do not weep for my
+impending fate,' said the dying angel with a smile of unaffected
+cheerfulness. 'In the short term of my life a great deal of happiness
+has been comprised. The maladies of my frame were peculiar; those of my
+head and stomach which no medicine could eradicate, were spasmodic and
+violent; and required stronger measures to render them supportable while
+they lasted than my constitution could sustain without injury. The
+periods of exemption from those pains were frequently of several days'
+duration, and in my intermissions I felt no indications of malady. Pain
+taught me the value of ease, and I enjoyed it with a glow of spirit,
+seldom, perhaps, felt by the habitually healthy. While Dr. Darwin
+combated and assuaged my disease from time to time, his indulgence to
+all my wishes, his active desire to see me amused and happy, proved
+incessant. His house, as you know, has ever been the resort of people of
+science and merit. If, from my husband's great and extensive practice, I
+had much less of his society than I wished, yet the conversation of his
+friends, and of my own, was ever ready to enliven the hours of his
+absence. As occasional malady made me doubly enjoy health, so did those
+frequent absences give a zest even to delight, when I could be indulged
+with his company. My three boys have ever been docile and affectionate.
+Children as they are, I could trust them with important secrets, so
+sacred do they hold every promise they make. They scorn deceit and
+falsehood of every kind, and have less selfishness than generally
+belongs to childhood. Married to any other man, I do not suppose I could
+have lived a third part of the years which I have passed with Dr.
+Darwin; he has prolonged my days, and he has blessed them.'
+
+"Thus died this superior woman, in the bloom of life, sincerely
+regretted by all who knew how to value her excellence, and
+_passionately_ regretted by the selected few whom she honoured with her
+personal and confidential friendship."[143]
+
+I find Miss Seward's pages so fascinating, that I am in danger of
+following her even in those parts of her work which have no bearing on
+Dr. Darwin. I must, however, pass over her account of Mr. Edgeworth and
+of his friend Mr. Day, the author of 'Sandford and Merton,' "which, by
+wise parents, is put into every youthful hand," but the description of
+Mr. Day's portrait cannot be omitted.
+
+"In the course of the year 1770, Mr. Day stood for a full-length picture
+to Mr. Wright, of Derby. A strong likeness and a dignified portrait were
+the result. Drawn in the open air, the surrounding sky is tempestuous,
+lurid, dark. He stands leaning his left arm against a column inscribed
+to Hambden (_sic_). Mr. Day looks upwards, as enthusiastically
+meditating on the contents of a book held in his dropped right hand. The
+open leaf is the oration of that virtuous patriot in the senate, against
+the grant of ship money, demanded by King Charles I. A flash of
+lightning plays in Mr. Day's hair, and illuminates the contents of the
+volume. The poetic fancy and what were _then_ the politics of the
+original, appear in the choice of subject and attitude. Dr. Darwin sat
+to Mr. Wright about the same period. _That_ was a simply contemplative
+portrait, of the most perfect resemblance."[144]
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"In the year 1768, Dr. Darwin met with an accident of irretrievable
+injury to the human frame. His propensity to mechanics had unfortunately
+led him to construct a very singular carriage. It was a platform with a
+seat fixed upon a very high pair of wheels, and supported in the front
+upon the back of the horse, by means of a kind of proboscis which,
+forming an arch, reached over the hind-quarters of the horse, and passed
+through a ring, placed on an upright piece of iron, which worked in a
+socket fixed in the saddle. The horse could thus move from one side of
+the road to the other, quartering, as it is called, at the will of the
+driver, whose constant attention was necessarily employed to regulate a
+piece of machinery contrived, but _not well_ contrived, for that
+purpose."
+
+I cannot help the reader to understand the foregoing description. "From
+this whimsical carriage, however, the doctor was several times thrown,
+and the last time he used it had the misfortune, from a similar
+accident, to break the patella of his right knee, which caused, as it
+must always cause, an incurable weakness in the fractured part, and a
+lameness not very discernible, indeed, when walking on even
+ground."[145]
+
+Miss Seward presently tells a story which reads as though it might have
+been told by Plutarch of some Greek or Roman sage. Much as we must
+approve of Dr. Darwin's habitual sobriety, we shall most of us be agreed
+that a few more such stories would have been cheaply purchased by a
+corresponding number of lapses on the doctor's part.
+
+Miss Seward writes:--
+
+"Since these memoirs commenced, an odd anecdote of Dr. Darwin's early
+residence at Lichfield, was narrated to a friend of the author by a
+gentleman, who was of the party in which it happened. Mr. Sneyd, then of
+Bishton, and a few more gentlemen of Staffordshire, prevailed upon the
+doctor to join them in an expedition by water from Burton to Nottingham,
+and on to Newark. They had cold provisions on board, and plenty of wine.
+It was midsummer; the day ardent and sultry. The noon-tide meal had
+been made, and the glass had gone gaily round. It was one of those _few_
+instances in which the medical votary of the Naiads transgressed his
+general and strict sobriety," in which, in fact, he may be said to
+have--remembered himself.
+
+"If not absolutely intoxicated, his spirits were in a high state of
+vinous exhilaration. On the boat approaching Nottingham, within the
+distance of a few fields, he surprised his companions by stepping,
+without any previous notice, from the boat into the middle of the river,
+and swimming to shore. They saw him get upon the bank, and walk coolly
+over the meadows towards the town: they called to him in vain, but he
+did not once turn his head.
+
+"Anxious lest he should take a dangerous cold by remaining in his wet
+clothes, and uncertain whether or not he intended to desert the party,
+they rowed instantly to the town at which they had not designed to have
+touched, and went in search of their river-god.
+
+"In passing through the market-place they saw him standing upon a tub,
+encircled by a crowd of people, and resisting the entreaties of an
+apothecary of the place, one of his old acquaintances, who was
+importuning him to his house, and to accept other raiments till his own
+could be dried.
+
+"The party on pressing through the crowd were surprised to hear him
+speaking without any degree of his usual stammer:--'Have I not told you,
+my friend, that I had drank a considerable quantity of wine before I
+committed myself to the river. You know my general sobriety, and as a
+professional man you _ought_ to know that the _unusual_ existence of
+internal stimulus would, in its effects upon the system, counteract the
+_external_ cold and moisture.'"
+
+"Then perceiving his companions near him, he nodded, smiled, and waived
+his hand, as enjoining them silence, thus, without hesitation,
+addressing the populace:--
+
+"'Ye men of Nottingham, listen to me. You are ingenious and industrious
+mechanics. By your industry life's comforts are procured for yourselves
+and families. If you lose your health the power of being industrious
+will forsake you. _That_ you know, but you may _not_ know that to
+breathe fresh and changed air constantly, is not less necessary to
+preserve health than sobriety itself. Air becomes unwholesome in a few
+hours if the windows are shut. Open those of your sleeping rooms
+whenever you quit them to go to your workshops. Keep the windows of your
+workshops open whenever the weather is not insupportably cold. I have no
+_interest_ in giving you this advice; remember what I, your countryman
+and a physician, tell you. If you would not bring infection and disease
+upon yourselves, and to your wives and little ones, change the air you
+breathe, change it many times a day, by opening your windows.'
+
+"So saying, he stepped down from the tub, and, returning with his party
+to their boat, they pursued their voyage."[146]
+
+Could any missionary be more perfectly sober and sensible, or more alive
+to the immorality of trying to effect too sudden a modification in the
+organisms he was endeavouring to influence? If the men of Nottingham
+want a statue in their market-place, I would respectfully suggest that a
+subject is here afforded them.
+
+     *     *     *     *     *
+
+"Dr. Johnson was several times at Lichfield on visits to Mrs. Lucy
+Porter, his daughter-in-law, while Dr. Darwin was one of the
+inhabitants. They had one or two interviews, but never afterwards sought
+each other. Mutual and strong dislike subsisted between them. It is
+curious that in Johnson's various letters to Mrs. Thrale, now Mrs.
+Piozzi, published by that lady after his death, many of them dated from
+Lichfield, the name of Darwin cannot be found, nor, indeed, that of any
+of the ingenious and lettered people who lived there; while of its mere
+common-life characters there is frequent mention, with many hints of
+Lichfield's intellectual barrenness, while it could boast a Darwin and
+other men of classical learning, poetic talents, and liberal
+information."[147]
+
+Here there follows a pleasant sketch of the principal Lichfield
+notabilities, which I am compelled to omit.
+
+"_These_ were the men," exclaims Miss Seward, "whose intellectual
+existence passed unnoticed by Dr. Johnson in his depreciating estimate
+of Lichfield talents. But Johnson liked only _worshippers_. Archdeacon
+Vyse, Mr. Seward, and Mr. Robinson paid all the respect and attention to
+Dr. Johnson, on these his visits to their town, due to his great
+abilities, his high reputation, and to whatever was estimable in his
+_mixed_ character; but they were not in the herd that 'paged his heels,'
+and sunk in servile silence under the force of his dogmas, when their
+hearts and their judgments bore _contrary_ testimony.
+
+"Certainly, however, it was an arduous hazard to the feelings of the
+company to oppose in the slightest degree Dr. Johnson's opinions. His
+stentor lungs; that combination of wit, humour, and eloquence, which
+'could make the _worse_ appear the _better_ reason,' that sarcastic
+contempt of his antagonist, never suppressed or even softened by the due
+restraints of good breeding, were sufficient to close the lips in his
+presence, of men who could have met him in fair argument, on _any_
+ground, literary or political, moral or characteristic.
+
+"Where Dr. Johnson was, Dr. Darwin had no chance of being heard, though
+at least his equal in genius, his superior in science; nor, indeed, from
+his impeded utterance, in the company of any overbearing declaimer; and
+he was too intellectually great to be an humble listener to Johnson.
+Therefore he shunned him on having experienced what manner of man he
+was. The surly dictator felt the mortification, and revenged it by
+_affecting_ to avow his disdain of powers too distinguished to be
+objects of _genuine_ scorn.
+
+"Dr. Darwin, in his turn, was not much more just to Dr. Johnson's
+genius. He uniformly spoke of him in terms which, had they been
+deserved, would have justified Churchill's 'immane Pomposo' as an
+appellation of _scorn_; since if his person was huge, and his manners
+pompous and violent, so were his talents vast and powerful, in a degree
+from which only prejudice and resentment could withhold respect.
+
+"Though Dr. Darwin's hesitation in speaking precluded his flow of
+colloquial eloquence, it did not impede, or at all lessen, the force of
+that conciser quality, _wit_. Of satiric wit he possessed a very
+peculiar species. It was neither the dead-doing broadside of Dr.
+Johnson's satire, nor the aurora borealis of Gray ... whose arch yet coy
+and quiet fastidiousness of taste and feeling, as recorded by Mason,
+glanced bright and cold through his conversation, while it seemed
+difficult to define its nature; and while its effects were rather
+_perceived_ than _felt_, exciting surprise more than mirth, and never
+awakening the pained sense of being the object of its ridicule. That
+unique in humorous verse, the Long Story, is a complete and beautiful
+specimen of Gray's singular vein.
+
+"Darwinian wit is not more easy to be defined; instances will best
+convey an idea of its character to those who never conversed with its
+possessor.
+
+"Dr. Darwin was conversing with a brother botanist concerning the plant
+kalmia, then a just imported stranger in our greenhouses and gardens. A
+lady who was present, concluding he had seen it, which in fact he had
+not, asked the doctor what were the colours of the plant. He replied,
+'Madam, the kalmia has precisely the colours of a seraph's wing.' So
+fancifully did he express his want of consciousness concerning the
+appearance of a flower, whose name and rareness were all he knew of the
+matter.
+
+"Dr. Darwin had a large company at tea. His servant announced a
+stranger, lady and gentleman. The female was a conspicuous figure,
+ruddy, corpulent, and tall. She held by the arm a little, meek-looking,
+pale, effeminate man, who, from his close adherence to the side of the
+lady, seemed to consider himself as under her protection.
+
+"'Dr. Darwin, I seek you not as a physician, but as a _Belle Esprit_. I
+make this husband of mine,' and she looked down with a side glance upon
+the animal, 'treat me every summer with a tour through one of the
+British counties, to explore whatever it contains worth the attention of
+ingenious people. On arriving at the several inns in our route I always
+search out the man of the vicinity most distinguished for his genius and
+taste, and introduce myself, that he may direct as the objects of our
+examination, whatever is curious in nature, art, or science. Lichfield
+will be our headquarters during several days. Come, doctor, whither must
+we go; what must we investigate to-morrow, and the next day, and the
+next? Here are my tablets and pencil.'
+
+"'You arrive, madam, at a fortunate juncture. To-morrow you will have an
+opportunity of surveying an annual exhibition perfectly worthy your
+attention. To-morrow, madam, you will go to Tutbury bull-running.'
+
+"The satiric laugh with which he stammered out the last word more keenly
+pointed this sly, yet broad rebuke to the vanity and arrogance of her
+speech. She had been up amongst the boughs, and little expected they
+would break under her so suddenly, and with so little mercy. Her large
+features swelled, and her eyes flashed with anger--'I was recommended to
+a man of genius, and I find him insolent and ill-bred.' Then, gathering
+up her meek and alarmed husband, whom she had loosed when she first
+spoke, under the shadow of her broad arm and shoulder, she strutted out
+of the room.
+
+"After the departure of this curious couple, his guests told their host
+he had been very unmerciful. 'I chose,' replied he, 'to avenge the cause
+of the little man, whose nothingness was so ostentatiously displayed by
+his lady-wife. Her vanity has had a smart emetic. If it abates the
+symptoms, she will have reason to thank her physician who administered
+without hope of a fee.'"[148]
+
+"In the spring of 1778 the children of Colonel and Mrs. Pole of Radburn,
+in Derbyshire, had been injured by a dangerous quantity of the cicuta,
+injudiciously administered to them in the hooping-cough by a physician
+of the neighbourhood. Mrs. Pole brought them to the house of Dr. Darwin
+in Lichfield, remaining with them there a few weeks, till by his art the
+poison was expelled from their constitutions and their health restored.
+
+"Mrs. Pole was then in the full bloom of her youth and beauty. Agreeable
+features; the glow of health; a fine form, tall and graceful; playful
+sprightliness of manner; a benevolent heart, and maternal affection, in
+all its unwearied cares and touching tenderness, contributed to inspire
+Dr. Darwin's admiration, and to secure his esteem."[149]
+
+"In the autumn of this year" (1778) "Mrs. Pole of Radburn was taken ill;
+her disorder a violent fever. Dr. Darwin was called in, and never
+perhaps since the death of Mrs. Darwin, prescribed with such deep
+anxiety. Not being requested to continue in the house during the ensuing
+night, which he apprehended might prove critical, he passed the
+remaining hours till day-dawn beneath a tree opposite her apartment,
+watching the passing and repassing lights in the chamber. During the
+period in which a life so passionately valued was in danger, he
+paraphrased Petrarch's celebrated sonnet, narrating a dream whose
+prophecy was accomplished by the death of Laura. It took place the night
+on which the vision arose amid his slumber. Dr. Darwin extended the
+thought of that sonnet into the following elegy:--
+
+    "Dread dream, that, hovering in the midnight air,
+      Clasp'd with thy dusky wing my aching head,
+    While to imagination's startled ear
+      Toll'd the slow bell, for bright Eliza dead.
+
+    "Stretched on her sable bier, the grave beside,
+      A snow-white shroud her breathless bosom bound,
+    O'er her wan brow the mimic lace was tied,
+      And loves and virtues hung their garlands round.
+
+    "From those cold lips did softest accents flow?
+      Round that pale mouth did sweetest dimples play?
+    On this dull cheek the rose of beauty blow,
+      And those dim eyes diffuse celestial day?
+
+    "Did this cold hand, unasking Want relieve,
+      Or wake the lyre to every rapturous sound?
+    How sad for other's woe this breast would heave!
+      How light this heart for other's transport bound!
+
+    "Beats not the bell again?--Heavens, do I wake?
+      Why heave my sighs, why gush my tears anew?
+    Unreal forms my trembling doubts mistake,
+      And frantic sorrow fears the vision true.
+
+    "Dreams to Eliza bend thy airy flight,
+      Go, tell my charmer all my tender fears,
+    How love's fond woes alarm the silent night,
+      And steep my pillow in unpitied tears."
+
+Unwilling as I am to extend this memoir, I must give Miss Seward's
+criticism on the foregoing.
+
+"The second verse of this charming elegy affords an instance of Dr.
+Darwin's too exclusive devotion to distinct picture in poetry; that it
+sometimes betrayed him into bringing objects so precisely to the eye as
+to lose in such precision their power of striking forcibly on the heart.
+The pathos in the second verse is much injured by the words 'mimic
+lace,' which allude to the perforated borders on the shroud. The
+expression is too minute for the solemnity of the subject. Certainly it
+cannot be natural for a shocked and agitated mind to observe, or to
+describe with such petty accuracy. Besides, the allusion is not
+sufficiently obvious. The reader pauses to consider what the poet means
+by 'mimic lace.' Such pauses deaden sensation and break the course of
+attention. A friend of the doctor's pleaded greatly that the line might
+run thus:--
+
+    "On her wan brow the _shadowy crape_ was tied;"
+
+but the alteration was rejected. Inattention to the rules of grammar in
+the first verse was also pointed out to him at the same time. The dream
+is addressed:
+
+    "Dread dream, that clasped my aching head,"
+
+but nothing is said to it, and therefore the sense is left unfinished,
+while the elegy proceeds to give a picture of the lifeless beauty. The
+same friend suggested a change which would have remedied the defect.
+Thus:--
+
+    "Dread _was the dream_ that in the midnight air
+      Clasped with its dusky wing my aching head,
+    While to" &c., &c.
+
+"Hence not only the grammatic error would have been done away, but the
+grating sound produced by the near alliteration of the harsh _dr_ in
+'_dr_ead _dr_eam' removed, by placing those words at a greater distance
+from each other.
+
+"This alteration was, for the same reason, rejected. The doctor would
+not spare the word _hovering_, which he said strengthened the picture;
+but surely the image ought not to be elaborately precise, by which a
+dream is transformed into an animal with black wings."[150]
+
+Then Mrs. Pole got well, and the doctor wrote more verses and Miss
+Seward more criticism. It was not for nothing that Dr. Johnson came down
+to Lichfield.
+
+     *     *     *     *     *
+
+In 1780 Colonel Pole died, and his widow, still young, handsome, witty,
+and--for those days--rich, was in no want of suitors.
+
+"Colonel Pole," says Miss Seward, "had numbered twice the years of his
+fair wife. His temper was said to have been peevish and suspicious; yet
+not beneath those circumstances had her kind and cheerful attentions to
+him grown cold or remiss. He left her a jointure of 600_l._ per annum, a
+son to inherit his estate, and two female children amply portioned.
+
+"Mrs. Pole, it has already been remarked, had much vivacity and sportive
+humour, with very engaging frankness of temper and manners. Early in her
+widowhood she was rallied in a large company upon Dr. Darwin's passion
+for her, and was asked what she would do with her captive philosopher.
+'He is not very fond of churches, I believe,' said she, 'and even if he
+would go there for my sake, I shall scarcely follow him. He is too old
+for me.' 'Nay, Madam,' was the answer, 'what are fifteen years on the
+right side?' She replied, with an arch smile, 'I have had so _much_ of
+that right side.'
+
+"This confession was thought inauspicious for the doctor's hopes, but it
+did not prove so. The triumph of intellect was complete."[151]
+
+Mrs. Pole had taken a strong dislike to Lichfield, and had made it a
+condition of her marriage that Dr. Darwin should not reside there after
+he had married her. In 1781, therefore, immediately after his marriage,
+he removed to Derby, and continued to live there till a fortnight before
+his death.
+
+Here he wrote 'The Botanic Garden' and a great part of the 'Zoonomia.'
+Those who wish for a detailed analysis of 'The Botanic Garden' can
+hardly do better than turn to Miss Seward's pages. Opening them at
+random, I find the following:--
+
+"The mention of Brindley, the father of commercial canals, has propriety
+as well as happiness. Similitude for their course to the sinuous track
+of a serpent, produces a fine picture of a gliding animal of that
+species, and it is succeeded by these supremely happy lines:--
+
+    "'So with strong arms immortal Brindley leads
+    His long canals, and parts the velvet meads;
+    Winding in lucid lines, the watery mass
+    Mines the firm rock, or loads the deep morass;'[152]
+      &c. &c. &c.
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"The mechanism of the pump is next described with curious ingenuity.
+Common as is the machine, it is not unworthy a place in this splendid
+composition, as being, after the sinking of wells, the earliest of those
+inventions, which in situations of exterior aridness gave ready
+accession to water. This familiar object is illustrated by a picture of
+Maternal Beauty administering sustenance to her infant."[153]
+
+Here we will leave the poetical part of the 'Botanic Garden.' The notes,
+however, to which are "still," as Dr. Dowson says, "instructive and
+amusing," and contain matter which, at the time they were written, was
+for the most part new.
+
+Of the 'Zoonomia' there is no occasion to speak here, as a sufficient
+number of extracts from those parts that concern us as bearing upon
+evolution will be given presently.
+
+On the 18th of April, 1802, Dr. Darwin had written "one page of a very
+sprightly letter to Mr. Edgeworth, describing the Priory and his
+purposed alterations there, when the fatal signal was given. He rang the
+bell and ordered the servant to send Mrs. Darwin to him. She came
+immediately, with his daughter, Miss Emma Darwin. They saw him shivering
+and pale. He desired them to send to Derby for his surgeon, Mr. Hadley.
+They did so, but all was over before he could arrive.
+
+"It was reported at Lichfield that, perceiving himself growing rapidly
+worse, he said to Mrs. Darwin, 'My dear, you must bleed me instantly.'
+'Alas! I dare not, lest--' 'Emma, will you? There is no time to be
+lost.' 'Yes, my dear father, if you will direct me.' At that moment he
+sank into his chair and expired."[154]
+
+Dr. Dowson gives the letter to Mr. Edgeworth, which is as follows:--
+
+     "Dear Edgeworth,
+
+     "I am glad to find that you still amuse yourself with mechanism, in
+     spite of the troubles of Ireland.
+
+     "The _use_ of turning aside or downwards the claw of a table, I
+     don't see; as it must then be reared against a wall, for it will
+     not stand alone. If the use be for carriage, the feet may shut up,
+     like the usual brass feet of a reflecting telescope.
+
+     "We have all been now removed from Derby about a fortnight, to the
+     Priory, and all of us like our change of situation. We have a
+     pleasant house, a good garden, ponds full of fish, and a pleasing
+     valley, somewhat like Shenstone's--deep, umbrageous, and with a
+     talkative stream running down it. Our house is near the top of the
+     valley, well screened by hills from the east and north, and open to
+     the south, where at four miles distance we see Derby tower.
+
+     "Four or more strong springs rise near the house, and have formed
+     the valley which, like that of Petrarch, may be called Val Chiusa,
+     as it begins, or is shut at the situation of the house. I hope you
+     like the description, and hope farther that yourself and any part
+     of your family will sometimes do us the pleasure of a visit.
+
+     "Pray tell the authoress" (Miss Maria Edgeworth) "that the
+     water-nymphs of our valley will be happy to assist her next novel.
+
+     "My bookseller, Mr. Johnson, will not begin to print the 'Temple of
+     Nature' till the price of paper is fixed by Parliament. I suppose
+     the present duty is paid...."
+
+At these words Dr. Darwin's pen stopped. What followed was written on
+the opposite side of the paper by another hand.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[137] 'Sketch, &c., of Erasmus Darwin,' pp. 3, 4.
+
+[138] Miss Seward's 'Memoirs of Dr. Darwin,' p. 3.
+
+[139] Ibid.
+
+[140] Dr. Dowson's 'Sketch of Dr. Erasmus Darwin,' p. 50.
+
+[141] Dr. Dowson's 'Sketch of Dr. Darwin,' p. 53.
+
+[142] Miss Seward's 'Memoirs,' &c., p. 6.
+
+[143] 'Memoirs,' &c., p. 14.
+
+[144] 'Memoirs,' &c., p. 21.
+
+[145] 'Memoirs,' &c., p. 62.
+
+[146] 'Memoirs,' &c., p. 68.
+
+[147] Miss Seward's 'Memoirs,' p. 69.
+
+[148] 'Memoirs,' &c., p. 84.
+
+[149] Ibid., p. 105.
+
+[150] 'Memoirs,' &c., p. 120.
+
+[151] 'Memoirs,' &c., p. 149.
+
+[152] 'Memoirs,' &c., p. 249.
+
+[153] 'Memoirs,' &c., p. 250.
+
+[154] 'Memoirs,' &c., p. 426.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+PHILOSOPHY OF DR. ERASMUS DARWIN.
+
+
+Considering the wide reputation enjoyed by Dr. Darwin at the beginning
+of this century, it is surprising how completely he has been lost sight
+of. The 'Botanic Garden' was translated into Portuguese in 1803; the
+'Loves of the Plants' into French and Italian in 1800 and 1805; while,
+as I have already said, the 'Zoonomia' had appeared some years earlier
+in Germany. Paley's 'Natural Theology' is written throughout at the
+'Zoonomia,' though he is careful, _more suo_, never to mention this work
+by name. Paley's success was probably one of the chief causes of the
+neglect into which the Buffonian and Darwinian systems fell in this
+country. Dr. Darwin is as reticent about teleology as Buffon, and
+presumably for the same reason, but the evidence in favour of design was
+too obvious; Paley, therefore, with his usual keen-sightedness seized
+upon this weak point, and had the battle all his own way, for Dr. Darwin
+died the same year as that in which the 'Natural Theology' appeared. The
+unfortunate failure to see that evolution involves design and purpose as
+necessarily and far more intelligibly than the theological view of
+creation, has retarded our perception of many important facts for
+three-quarters of a century.
+
+However this may be, Dr. Darwin's name has been but little before the
+public during the controversies of the last thirty years. Mr. Charles
+Darwin, indeed, in the "historical sketch" which he has prefixed to the
+later editions of his 'Origin of Species,' says, "It is curious how
+largely my grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, anticipated the views and
+erroneous grounds of opinion of Lamarck in his 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. pp.
+500-510, published in 1794."[155] And a few lines lower Mr. Darwin adds,
+"It is rather a singular instance of the manner in which similar views
+arise at about the same time, that Goethe in Germany, and Geoffroy St.
+Hilaire (as we shall immediately see) in France, came to the same
+conclusion on the 'Origin of Species' in the years 1794-1796."
+Acquaintance with Buffon's work will explain much of the singularity,
+while those who have any knowledge of the writings of Dr. Darwin and
+Etienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire will be aware that neither would admit the
+other as "coming to the same conclusion," or even nearly so, as himself.
+Dr. Darwin goes beyond his successor, Lamarck, while Etienne Geoffroy
+does not even go so far as Dr. Darwin's predecessor, Buffon, had thought
+fit to let himself be known as going. I have found no other reference to
+Dr. Darwin in the 'Origin of Species,' except the two just given from
+the same note. In the first edition I find no mention of him.
+
+The chief fault to be found with Dr. Darwin's treatise on evolution is
+that there is not enough of it; what there is, so far from being
+"erroneous," is admirable. But so great a subject should have had a book
+to itself, and not a mere fraction of a book. If his opponents, not
+venturing to dispute with him, passed over one book in silence, he
+should have followed it up with another, and another, and another, year
+by year, as Buffon and Lamarck did; it is only thus that men can expect
+to succeed against vested interests. Dr. Darwin could speak with a
+freedom that was denied to Buffon. He took Buffon at his word as well as
+he could, and carried out his principles to what he conceived to be
+their logical conclusion. This was doubtless what Buffon had desired and
+reckoned on, but, as I have said already, I question how far Dr. Darwin
+understood Buffon's humour; he does not present any of the phenomena of
+having done so, and therefore I am afraid he must be said to have missed
+it.
+
+Like Buffon, Dr. Darwin had no wish to see far beyond the obvious; he
+missed good things sometimes, but he gained more than he lost; he knew
+that it is always on the margin, as it were, of the self-evident that
+the greatest purchase against the nearest difficulty is obtainable. His
+life was not one of Herculean effort, but, like the lives of all those
+organisms that are most likely to develop and transmit a useful
+modification, it was one of well-sustained activity; it was a
+long-continued keeping open of the windows of his own mind, much after
+the advice he gave to the Nottingham weavers. Dr. Darwin knew, and, I
+imagine, quite instinctively, that nothing tends to oversight like
+overseeing. He does not trouble himself about the origin of life; as
+for the perceptions and reasoning faculties of animals and plants, it is
+enough for him that animals and plants do things which we say involve
+sensation and consciousness when we do them ourselves or see others do
+them. If, then, plants and animals appear as if they felt and
+understood, let the matter rest there, and let us say they feel and
+understand--being guided by the common use of language, rather than by
+any theories concerning brain and nervous system. If any young writer
+happens to be in want of a subject, I beg to suggest that he may find
+his opportunity in a 'Philosophy of the Superficial.'
+
+Though Dr. Darwin was more deeply impressed than Buffon with the oneness
+of personality between parents and offspring, so that these latter are
+not "new" creatures, but "elongations of the parents," and hence "may
+retain some of the habits of the parent system," he did not go on to
+infer definitely all that he might easily have inferred from such a
+pregnant premiss. He did not refer the repetition by offspring, of
+actions which their parents have done for many generations, but which
+they can never have seen those parents do, to the memory (in the strict
+sense of the word) of their having done those actions when they were in
+the persons of their parents; which memory, though dormant until
+awakened by the presence of associated ideas, becomes promptly kindled
+into activity when a sufficient number of these ideas are reproduced.
+
+This, I gather, is the theory put forward by Professor Hering, of whose
+work, however, I know no more than is told us by Professor Ray
+Lankester in an article which, appeared in 'Nature,' July 13th, 1876.
+This theory seems to be adopted by Professor Haeckel, and to receive
+support from Professor Ray Lankester himself. Knowing no German, I have
+been unable to make myself acquainted with Professor Hering's position
+in detail, but its similarity to, if not identity with, that taken by
+myself subsequently, but independently, in 'Life and Habit,' seems
+sufficiently established by the following extracts; it is to be wished,
+however, that a full account of this lecture were accessible to English
+readers. The extracts are as follows:--
+
+"Professor Hering has the merit of introducing some striking phraseology
+into his treatment of the subject which serves to emphasize the leading
+idea. He points out that since all transmission of 'qualities' from cell
+to cell in the growth and repair of one and the same organ, or from
+parent to offspring, is a transmission of vibrations or affections of
+material particles, whether these qualities manifest themselves as form,
+or as a facility for entering on a given series of vibrations, we may
+speak of all such phenomena as 'memory,' whether it be the conscious
+memory exhibited by the nerve cells of the brain or the unconscious
+memory we call habit, or the inherited memory we call instinct; or
+whether, again, it be the reproduction of parental form and minute
+structure. All equally may be called the 'memory of living matter.' From
+the earliest existence of protoplasm to the present day the memory of
+living matter is continuous. Though individuals die, the universal
+memory of living matter is carried on.
+
+"Professor Hering, in short, helps us to a comprehensive conception of
+the nature of heredity and adaptation, by giving us the term 'memory'
+conscious or unconscious, for the continuity of Mr. Herbert Spencer's
+polar forces, or polarities of physiological units.
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"The undulatory movement of the plastidules is the key to the mechanical
+explanation of all the essential phenomena of life. The plastidules are
+liable to have their undulations affected by every external force, and,
+once modified, the movement does not return to its pristine condition.
+By assimilation they continually increase to a certain point in size,
+and then divide, and thus perpetuate in the undulatory movement of
+successive generations, the impressions or resultants due to the action
+of external agencies on individual plastidules. This is Memory. All
+plastidules possess memory; and Memory which we see in its ultimate
+analysis is identical with reproduction, is the distinguishing feature
+of the plastidule; is that which it alone of all molecules possesses, in
+addition to the ordinary properties of the physicist's molecule; is, in
+fact, that which distinguishes it as vital. To the sensitiveness of the
+movement of plastidules is due Variability--to their unconscious Memory
+the power of Hereditary Transmission. As we know them to-day they may
+'have learnt little, and forgotten nothing' in one organism, and 'have
+learnt much, and forgotten much' in another; but in all, their memory if
+sometimes fragmentary, yet reaches back to the dawn of life upon the
+earth.--E. Ray Lankester."
+
+Nothing can well be plainer and more uncompromising than the above.
+Professor Hering would, I gather, no less than myself, refer the
+building of its nest by a bird to the intense--but unconscious, owing to
+its very perfection and intensity--recollection by the bird of the nests
+it built when it was in the persons of its ancestors; this memory would
+begin to stimulate action when the surrounding associations, such as
+temperature, state of vegetation, &c., reminded it of the time when it
+had been in the habit of beginning to build in countless past
+generations. Dr. Darwin does not go so far as this. He says that wild
+birds choose spring as their building time "from their _acquired_
+knowledge that the mild temperature of the air is more convenient for
+hatching their eggs," and a little lower down he speaks of the fact that
+graminivorous animals generally produce their young in spring, as "part
+of the traditional knowledge which they learn _from the example_ of
+their parents."[156]
+
+Again he says, that birds "seem to be instructed how to build their
+nests _from their observation_ of that in which they were educated, and
+from their knowledge of those things that are most agreeable to their
+touch in respect to warmth, cleanliness, and stability."
+
+Had Dr. Darwin laid firmly hold of two superficial facts concerning
+memory which we can all of us test for ourselves--I mean its dormancy
+until kindled by the return of a sufficient number of associated ideas,
+and its unselfconsciousness upon becoming intense and perfect--and had
+he connected these two facts with the unity of life through successive
+generations--an idea which plainly haunted him--he would have been
+saved from having to refer instinct to imitation, in the face of the
+fact that in a thousand instances the creature imitating can never have
+seen its model, save when it was a part of its parents,--seeing what
+they saw, doing what they did, feeling as they felt, and remembering
+what they remembered.
+
+Miss Seward tells us that Dr. Darwin read his chapter on instinct "to a
+lady who was in the habit of rearing canary birds. She observed that the
+pair which he then saw building their nest in her cage, were a male and
+female, who had been hatched and reared in that very _cage_, and were
+not in existence when the mossy cradle was fabricated in which _they_
+first saw light." She asked him, and quite reasonably, "how, upon his
+principle of imitation, he could account for the nest he then saw
+building, being constructed even to the precise disposal of every hair
+and shred of wool upon the model of _that_ in which the pair were born,
+and on which every other canary bird's nest is constructed, when the
+proper materials are furnished. That of the pyefinch," she added, "is of
+much compacter form, warmer, and more comfortable. Pull one of these
+nests to pieces for its materials; and place another nest before these
+canary birds as a pattern, and see if they will make the slightest
+attempt to imitate their model! No, the result of their labour will,
+upon instinctive hereditary impulse, be exactly the slovenly little
+mansion of their race, the same with that which their parents built
+before themselves were hatched. The Doctor could not do away the force
+of that single fact, with which his system was incompatible, yet he
+maintained that system with philosophic sturdiness, though experience
+brought confutation from a thousand sources."[157]
+
+As commonly happens in such disputes, both were right and both were
+wrong. The lady was right in refusing to refer instinct to imitation,
+and the Doctor was right in maintaining reason and instinct to be but
+different degrees of perfection of the same mental processes. Had he
+substituted "memory" for "imitation," and asked the lady to define
+"sameness" or "personal identity," he would have soon secured his
+victory.
+
+The main fact, compared with which all else is a matter of detail, is
+the admission that instinct is only reason become habitual. This
+admission involves, consciously or unconsciously, the admission of all
+the principles contended for in 'Life and Habit'; principles which, if
+admitted, make the facts of heredity intelligible by showing that they
+are of the same character as other facts which we call intelligible, but
+denial of which makes nonsense of half the terms in common use
+concerning it. For the view that instinct is habitual reason involves
+sameness of personality and memory as common to parents and offspring;
+it involves also the latency of that memory till rekindled by the return
+of a sufficient number of its associated ideas, and points the
+unconsciousness with which habitual actions are performed. These
+principles being grasped, the infertility _inter se_ of widely distant
+species, the commonly observed sterility of hybrids, the sterility of
+certain animals and plants under confinement, the phenomena of old age
+as well as those of growth, and the principle which underlies longevity
+and alternate generations, follow logically and coherently, as I showed
+in 'Life and Habit.' Moreover, we find that the terms in common use show
+an unconscious sense that some such view as I have insisted on was
+wanted and would come, for we find them made and to hand already; few if
+any will require altering; all that is necessary is to take common words
+according to their common meanings.
+
+Dr. Darwin is very good on this head. Here, as everywhere throughout his
+work, if things or qualities appear to resemble one another sufficiently
+and without such traits of unlikeness, on closer inspection, as shall
+destroy the likeness which was apparent at first, he connects them, all
+theories notwithstanding. I have given two instances of his manner of
+looking at instinct and reason.[158] "If these are not," he concludes,
+"deductions _from their own previous experience, or observation_, all
+the actions of mankind must be resolved into instincts."[159]
+
+If by "previous experience" we could be sure that Dr. Darwin
+persistently meant "previous experience in the persons of their
+ancestors," he would be in an impregnable position. As it is, we feel
+that though he had caught sight of the truth, and had even held it in
+his hands, yet somehow or other it just managed to slip through his
+fingers.
+
+Again he writes:--
+
+"So flies burn themselves in candles, deceived like mankind by the
+misapplication of their knowledge."
+
+Again:--
+
+"An ingenious philosopher has lately denied that animals can enter into
+contracts, and thinks this an essential difference between them and the
+human creature: but does not daily observation convince us that they
+form contracts of friendship with each other and with mankind? When
+puppies and kittens play together is there not a tacit contract that
+they will not hurt each other? And does not your favourite dog expect
+you should give him his daily food for his services and attention to
+you? And thus barters his love for your protection? In the same manner
+that all contracts are made among men that do not understand each
+other's arbitrary language."[160]
+
+One more extract from a chapter full of excellent passages must suffice.
+
+"One circumstance I shall relate which fell under my own eye, and showed
+the power of reason in a wasp, as it is exercised among men. A wasp on a
+gravel walk had caught a fly nearly as large as himself; kneeling on the
+ground, I observed him separate the tail and the head from the body
+part, to which the wings were attached. He then took the body part in
+his paws, and rose about two feet from the ground with it; but a gentle
+breeze wafting the wings of the fly turned him round in the air, and he
+settled again with his prey upon the gravel. I then distinctly observed
+him cut off with his mouth first one of the wings and then the other,
+after which he flew away with it, unmolested by the wind.
+
+"Go, proud reasoner, and call the worm thy sister!"[161]
+
+Dr. Darwin's views on the essential unity of animal and vegetable life
+are put forward in the following admirable chapter on "Vegetable
+Animation," which I will give in full, and which is confirmed in all
+important respects by the latest conclusions of our best modern
+scientists, so, at least, I gather from Mr. Francis Darwin's interesting
+lecture.[162]
+
+"I. 1. The fibres of the vegetable world, as well as those of the
+animal, are excitable into a variety of motion by irritations of
+external objects. This appears particularly in the mimosa or sensitive
+plant, whose leaves contract on the slightest injury: the _Dionaea
+muscipula_, which was lately brought over from the marshes of America,
+presents us with another curious instance of vegetable irritability; its
+leaves are armed with spines on their upper edge, and are spread on the
+ground around the stem; when an insect creeps on any of them in its
+passage to the flower or seed, the leaf shuts up like a steel rat-trap,
+and destroys its enemy.[163]
+
+"The various secretions of vegetables as of odour, fruit, gum, resin,
+wax, honey, seem brought about in the same manner as in the glands of
+animals; the tasteless moisture of the earth is converted by the hop
+plant into a bitter juice; as by the caterpillar in the nutshell, the
+sweet powder is converted into a bitter powder. While the power of
+absorption in the roots and barks of vegetables is excited into action
+by the fluids applied to their mouths like the lacteals and lymphatics
+of animals.
+
+"2. The individuals of the vegetable world may be considered as inferior
+or less perfect animals; a tree is a congeries of many living buds, and
+in this respect resembles the branches of the coralline, which are a
+congeries of a multitude of animals. Each of these buds of a tree has
+its proper leaves or petals for lungs, produces its viviparous or its
+oviparous offspring in buds or seeds; has its own roots, which,
+extending down the stem of the tree, are interwoven with the roots of
+the other buds, and form the bark, which is the only living part of the
+stem, is annually renewed and is superinduced upon the former bark,
+which then dies, and, with its stagnated juices gradually hardening into
+wood, forms the concentric circles which we see in blocks of timber.
+
+"The following circumstances evince the individuality of the buds of
+trees. First, there are many trees whose whole internal wood is
+perished, and yet the branches are vegete and healthy. Secondly, the
+fibres of the bark of trees are chiefly longitudinal, resembling roots,
+as is beautifully seen in those prepared barks that were lately brought
+from Otaheita. Thirdly, in horizontal wounds of the bark of trees, the
+fibres of the upper lip are always elongated downwards like roots, but
+those of the lower lip do not approach to meet them. Fourthly, if you
+wrap wet moss round any joint of a vine, or cover it with moist earth,
+roots will shoot out from it. Fifthly, by the inoculation or engrafting
+of trees many fruits are produced from one stem. Sixthly, a new tree is
+produced from a branch plucked from an old one and set in the ground.
+Whence it appears that the buds of deciduous trees are so many annual
+plants, that the bark is a contexture of the roots of each individual
+bud, and that the internal wood is of no other use but to support them
+in the air, and that thus they resemble the animal world in their
+individuality.
+
+"The irritability of plants, like that of animals, appears liable to be
+increased or decreased by habit; for those trees or shrubs which are
+brought from a colder climate to a warmer, put out their leaves and
+blossoms a fortnight sooner than the indigenous ones.
+
+"Professor Kalm, in his travels in New York, observes that the apple
+trees brought from England blossom a fortnight sooner than the native
+ones. In our country, the shrubs that are brought a degree or two from
+the north are observed to flourish better than those which come from the
+south. The Siberian barley and cabbage are said to grow larger in this
+climate than the similar more southern vegetables; and our hoards of
+roots, as of potatoes and onions, germinate with less heat in spring,
+after they have been accustomed to the winter's cold, than in autumn,
+after the summer's heat.
+
+"II. The stamens and pistils of flowers show evident marks of
+sensibility, not only from many of the stamens and some pistils
+approaching towards each other at the season of impregnation, but from
+many of them closing their petals and calyxes during the cold part of
+the day. For this cannot be ascribed to irritation, because cold means
+a defect of the stimulus of heat; but as the want of accustomed stimuli
+produces pain, as in coldness, hunger, and thirst of animals, these
+motions of vegetables in closing up their flowers must be ascribed to
+the disagreeable sensation, and not to the irritation of cold. Others
+close up their leaves during darkness, which, like the former, cannot be
+owing to irritation, as the irritating material is withdrawn.
+
+"The approach of the anthers in many flowers to the stigmas, and of the
+pistils of some flowers to the anthers, must be ascribed to the passion
+of love, and hence belongs to sensation, not to irritation.
+
+"III. That the vegetable world possesses some degree of voluntary powers
+appears from their necessity to sleep, which we have shown in Section
+XVIII. to consist in the temporary abolition of voluntary power. This
+voluntary power seems to be exerted in the circular movement of the
+tendrils of the vines, and other climbing vegetables; or in the efforts
+to turn the upper surfaces of their leaves, or their flowers, to the
+light.
+
+"IV. The associations of fibrous motions are observable in the vegetable
+world as well as in the animal. The divisions of the leaves of the
+sensitive plant have been accustomed to contract at the same time from
+the absence of light; hence, if by any other circumstance, as a slight
+stroke or injury, one division is irritated into contraction, the
+neighbouring ones contract also from their motions being associated with
+those of the irritated part. So the various stamina of the class of
+syngenesia have been accustomed to contract together in the evening, and
+thence if you stimulate any one of them with a pin, according to the
+experiment of M. Colvolo, they all contract from their acquired
+associations.
+
+"To evince that the collapsing of the sensitive plant is not owing to
+any mechanical vibrations propagated along the whole branch when a
+single leaf is struck with the finger, a leaf of it was slit with sharp
+scissors, with as little disturbance as possible, and some seconds of
+time passed before the plant seemed sensible of the injury, and then the
+whole branch collapsed as far as the principal stem. This experiment was
+repeated several times with the least possible impulse to the plant.
+
+"V. 1. For the numerous circumstances in which vegetable buds are
+analogous to animals, the reader is referred to the additional notes at
+the end of 'Botanic Garden,' Part I. It is there shown that the roots of
+vegetables resemble the lacteal system of animals; the sap vessels in
+the early spring, before their leaves expand, are analogous to the
+placental vessels of the foetus; that the leaves of land plants
+resemble lungs, and those of aquatic plants the gills of fish; that
+there are other systems of vessels resembling the vena portarum of
+quadrupeds, or the aorta of fish; that the digestive power of vegetables
+is similar to that of animals converting the fluids which they absorb
+into sugar;[164] that their seeds resemble the eggs of animals, and
+their buds and bulbs their viviparous offspring; and lastly, that the
+anthers and stigmas are real animals attached to their parent tree like
+polypi or coral insects, but capable of spontaneous motion; that they
+are affected with the passion of love, and furnished with powers of
+reproducing their species, and are fed with honey like the moths and
+butterflies which plunder their nectaries.[165]
+
+"The male flowers of Vallisneria approach still nearer to apparent
+animality, as they detach themselves from the parent plant, and float on
+the surface of the water to the female ones.[166] Other flowers of the
+classes of monoecia and dioecia, and polygamia discharge the
+fecundating farina, which, floating in the air, is carried to the stigma
+of the female flowers, and that at considerable distances. Can this be
+effected by any specific attraction? Or, like the diffusion of the
+odorous particles of flowers, is it left to the currents of the winds,
+and the accidental miscarriages of it counteracted by the quantity of
+its production?
+
+"2. This leads us to a curious inquiry, whether vegetables have ideas of
+external things? As all our ideas are originally received by our senses,
+the question may be changed to whether vegetables possess any organs of
+sense? Certain it is that they possess a sense of heat and cold, another
+of moisture and dryness, and another of light and darkness, for they
+close their petals occasionally from the presence of cold, moisture, or
+darkness. And it has been already shown that these actions cannot be
+performed simply from irritation, because cold and darkness are negative
+quantities, and on that account sensation, or volition are implied, and
+in consequence a sensorium or union of their nerves. So when we go into
+the light we contract the iris; not from any stimulus of the light on
+the fine muscles of the iris, but from its motions being associated with
+the sensation of too much light upon the retina, which could not take
+place without a sensorium or centre of union of the nerves of the iris,
+with those of vision.[167]
+
+"Besides these organs of sense, which distinguish cold, moisture, and
+darkness, the leaves of mimosa, and of dionaea, and of drosera, and the
+stamens of many flowers, as of the berbery, and the numerous class of
+syngenesia, are sensible to mechanic impact, that is, they possess a
+sense of touch, as well as a common sensorium, by the medium of which
+their muscles are excited into action. Lastly, in many flowers the
+anthers, when mature, approach the stigma, in others the female organ
+approaches to the male. In a plant of collinsonia, a branch of which is
+now before me, the two yellow stamens are about three-eighths of an inch
+high, and diverge from each other at an angle of about fifteen degrees,
+the purple style is half an inch high, and in some flowers is now
+applied to the stamen on the right hand, and in others to that of the
+left; and will, I suppose, change place to-morrow in those, where the
+anthers have not yet effused their powder.
+
+"I ask by what means are the anthers in many flowers and stigmas in
+other flowers directed to find their paramours? How do either of them
+know that the other exists in their vicinity? Is this curious kind of
+storge produced by mechanic attraction, or by the sensation of love? The
+latter opinion is supported by the strongest analogy, because a
+reproduction of the species is the consequence; and then another organ
+of sense must be wanted to direct these vegetable amourettes to find
+each other, one probably analogous to our sense of smell, which in the
+animal world directs the new-born infant to its source of nourishment,
+and they may thus possess a faculty of perceiving as well as of
+producing odours.
+
+"Thus, besides a kind of taste at the extremity of their roots, similar
+to that of the extremities of our lacteal vessels, for the purpose of
+selecting their proper food, and besides different kinds of irritability
+residing in the various glands, which separate honey, wax, resin, and
+other juices from their blood; vegetable life seems to possess an organ
+of sense to distinguish the variations of heat, another to distinguish
+the varying degrees of moisture, another of light, another of touch, and
+probably another analogous to our sense of smell. To these must be added
+the indubitable evidence of their passion of love, and I think we may
+truly conclude that they are furnished with a common sensorium for each
+bud, and that they must occasionally repeat those perceptions, either in
+their dreams or waking hours, and consequently possess ideas of so many
+of the properties of the external world, and of their own
+existence."[168]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[155] 'Origin of Species,' note on p. xiv.
+
+[156] 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 170.
+
+[157] Miss Seward's 'Memoirs,' &c., p. 491.
+
+[158] See p. 116 of this volume.
+
+[159] 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 184.
+
+[160] 'Zoonomia,' p. 171.
+
+[161] 'Zoonomia,' p. 187.
+
+[162] 'Nature,' March 14 and 21, 1878.
+
+[163] See 'Botanic Garden,' part ii., note on Silene.
+
+[164] 'On the Digestive Powers of Plants.' See Mr. Francis Darwin's
+lecture, already referred to.
+
+[165] See 'Botanic Garden, part i., add. note, p. xxxix.
+
+[166] Ibid., part ii., art. "Vallisneria."
+
+[167] See 'Botanic Garden,' part i. cant 3, l. 440.
+
+[168] 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 107.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+FULLER QUOTATIONS FROM THE 'ZOONOMIA.'
+
+
+The following are the passages in the 'Zoonomia' which have the most
+important bearing on evolution:--
+
+"The ingenious Dr. Hartley, in his work on man, and some other
+philosophers have been of opinion, that our immortal part acquires
+during this life certain habits of action or of sentiment which become
+for ever indissoluble, continuing after death in a future state of
+existence; and add that if these habits are of the malevolent kind, they
+must render their possessor miserable even in Heaven. I would apply this
+ingenious idea to the generation or production of the embryon or new
+animal, which partakes so much of the form and propensities of its
+parent.
+
+"_Owing to the imperfection of language the offspring is termed a new
+animal, but is in truth a branch or elongation of the parent, since a
+part of the embryon-animal is, or was, a part of the parent, and
+therefore in strict language, cannot be said to be entirely new at the
+time of its production; and, therefore, it may retain some of the habits
+of the parent system._
+
+"At the earliest period of its existence the embryon would seem to
+consist of a living filament with certain capabilities of irritation,
+sensation, volition, and association, and also with some acquired
+habits or propensities peculiar to the parents; the former of these are
+in common with other animals; the latter seem to distinguish or produce
+the kind of animal, whether man or quadruped, with the similarity of
+feature or form to the parent."[169]
+
+     *     *     *     *     *
+
+Going on to describe the gradual development of the embryo, Dr. Darwin
+continues:--
+
+"As the want of this oxygenation of the blood is perpetual (as appears
+from the incessant necessity of breathing by lungs or gills), the
+vessels become extended by the efforts of pain or desire to seek this
+necessary object of oxygenation, and to remove the disagreeable
+sensations which this want occasions."[170]
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"The lateral production of plants by wires, while each new plant is thus
+chained to its parent, and continues to put forth another and another as
+the wire creeps onward on the ground, is exactly resembled by the
+tape-worm or taenia, so often found in the bowels, stretching itself in a
+chain quite from the stomach to the rectum. Linnaeus asserts 'that it
+grows old at one extremity, while it continues to generate younger ones
+at the other, proceeding _ad infinitum_ like a sort of grass; the
+separate joints are called gourd worms, and propagate new joints like
+the parent without end, each joint being furnished with its proper mouth
+and organs of digestion.'"[171]
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"Many ingenious philosophers have found so great difficulty in
+conceiving the manner of the reproduction of animals, that they have
+supposed all the numerous progeny to have existed in miniature in the
+animal originally created; and that these infinitely minute forms are
+only evolved or distended, as the embryon increases in the womb. This
+idea, besides its being unsupported by any analogy we are acquainted
+with, ascribes a greater tenuity to organized matter than we can readily
+admit; as these included embryons are supposed each of them to consist
+of the various and complicate parts of animal bodies, they must possess
+a much greater degree of minuteness than that which was ascribed to the
+devils which tempted St. Anthony, of whom 20,000 were said to have been
+able to dance a saraband on the point of the finest needle without
+incommoding one another."[172]
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"I conceive the primordium or rudiment of the embryon as secreted from
+the blood of the parent to consist of a simple living filament as a
+muscular fibre; which I suppose to be an extremity of a nerve of
+locomotion, as a fibre of the retina is an extremity of a nerve of
+sensation; as, for instance, one of the fibrils which compose the mouth
+of an absorbent vessel. I suppose this living filament of whatever form
+it may be, whether sphere, cube, or cylinder, to be endued with the
+capability of being excited into action by certain kinds of stimulus. By
+the stimulus of the surrounding fluid in which it is received from the
+male it may bend into a ring, and thus form the beginning of a tube.
+Such moving filaments and such rings are described by those who have
+attended to microscopic animalculae. This living ring may now embrace or
+absorb a nutritive particle of the fluid in which it swims; and by
+drawing it into its pores, or joining it by compression to its
+extremities, may increase its own length or crassitude, and by degrees
+the living ring may become a living tube.
+
+"With this new organization, or accretion of parts, new kinds of
+irritability may commence; for so long as there was but one living organ
+it could only be supposed to possess irritability; since sensibility may
+be conceived to be an extension of the effect of irritability over the
+rest of the system. These new kinds of irritability and of sensibility
+in consequence of new organization appear from variety of facts in the
+more mature animals; thus ... the lungs must be previously formed before
+their exertions to obtain fresh air can exist; the throat, or
+oesophagus, must be formed previous to the sensation or appetites of
+hunger and thirst, one of which seems to reside at the upper end and the
+other at the lower end of that canal."[173]
+
+It seems to me Dr. Darwin is wrong in supposing that the organ must have
+preceded the power to use it. The organ and its use--the desire to do
+and the power to do--have always gone hand in hand, the organism finding
+itself able to do more according as it advanced its desires, and
+desiring to do more simultaneously with any increase in power, so that
+neither appetency nor organism can claim precedence, but power and
+desire must be considered as Siamese twins begotten together, conceived
+together, born together, and inseparable always from each other. At the
+same time they are torn by mutual jealousy; each claims, with some vain
+show of reason, to have been the elder brother; each intrigues
+incessantly from the beginning to the end of time to prevent the other
+from outstripping him; each is in turn successful, but each is doomed to
+death with the extinction of the other.
+
+"So inflamed tendons and membranes, and even bones, acquire new
+sensations; and the parts of mutilated animals, as of wounded snails and
+polypi and crabs, are reproduced; and at the same time acquire
+sensations adapted to their situation. Thus when the head of a snail is
+reproduced after decollation with a sharp razor, those curious
+telescopic eyes are also reproduced, and acquire their sensibility to
+light, as well as their adapted muscles for retraction on the approach
+of injury.
+
+"With every change, therefore, of organic form or addition of organic
+parts, I suppose a new kind of irritability or of sensibility to be
+produced; such varieties of irritability or of sensibility exist in our
+adult state in the glands; every one of which is furnished with an
+irritability or a taste or appetency, and a consequent mode of action
+peculiar to itself.
+
+"In this manner I conceive the vessels of the jaws to produce those of
+the teeth; those of the fingers to produce the nails; those of the skin
+to produce the hair; in the same manner as afterwards, about the age of
+puberty, the beard and other great changes in the form of the body and
+disposition of the mind are produced in consequence of new developments;
+for, if the animal is deprived of these developments, those changes do
+not take place. These changes I believe to be formed not by elongation
+or distension of primeval stamina, but by apposition of parts; as the
+mature crab fish when deprived of a limb, in a certain space of time,
+has power to regenerate it; and the tadpole puts forth its feet after
+its long exclusion from the spawn, and the caterpillar in changing into
+a butterfly acquires a new form with new powers, new sensations, and new
+desires."[174]
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"From hence I conclude that with the acquisition of new parts, new
+sensations and new desires, as well as new powers are produced; and this
+by accretion to the old ones and not by distension of them. And finally,
+that the most essential parts of the system, as the brain for the
+purpose of distributing the powers of life, and the placenta for the
+purpose of oxygenating the blood, and the additional absorbent vessels,
+for the purpose of acquiring aliment, are first formed by the
+irritations above mentioned, and by the pleasurable sensations attending
+those irritations, and by the exertions in consequence of painful
+sensations similar to those of hunger and suffocation. After these an
+apparatus of limbs for future uses, or for the purpose of moving the
+body in its present natant state, and of lungs for future respiration,
+and of _testes_ for future reproduction, are formed by the irritations
+and sensations and consequent exertions of the parts previously
+existing, and to which the new parts are to be attached.[175]
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"The embryon" must "be supposed to be a living filament, which acquires
+or makes new parts, with new irritabilities as it advances in its
+growth."[176]
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"From this account of reproduction it appears that all animals have a
+similar origin, viz. a single living filament; and that the difference
+of their forms and qualities has arisen only from the different
+irritabilities and sensibilities, or voluntarities, or associabilities,
+of this original living filament, and perhaps in some degree from the
+different forms of the particles of the fluids by which it has at first
+been stimulated into activity."[177]
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"All animals, therefore, I contend, have a similar cause of their
+organization, originating from a single living filament, endued with
+different kinds of irritabilities and sensibilities, or of animal
+appetencies, which exist in every gland, and in every moving organ of
+the body, and are as essential to living organism as chemical affinities
+are to certain combinations of inanimate matter.
+
+"If I might be indulged to make a simile in a philosophical work, I
+should say that the animal appetencies are not only perhaps less
+numerous originally than the chemical affinities, but that, like these
+latter, they change with every fresh combination; thus vital air and
+azote, when combined, produce nitrous acid, which now acquires the
+property of dissolving silver; so that with every new additional part to
+the embryon, as of the throat or lungs, I suppose a new animal appetency
+to be produced."[178]
+
+     *     *     *     *     *
+
+Here, again, it should be insisted on that neither can the "additional
+part" precede "the appetency," nor the appetency precede the additional
+part for long together--the two advance nearly _pari passu_; sometimes
+the power a little ahead of the desire, stimulates the desire to an
+activity it would not otherwise have known; as those who have more money
+than they once had, feel new wants which they would not have known if
+they had not obtained the power to gratify them; sometimes, on the other
+hand, the desire is a little more active than the power, and pulls the
+power up to itself by means of the effort made to gratify the desire--as
+those who want a little more of this or that than they have money to pay
+for, will try all manner of shifts to earn the additional money they
+want, unless it is so much in excess of their present means that they
+give up the endeavour as hopeless; but whichever gets ahead, immediately
+sets to work to pull the other level with it, the getting ahead either
+of power or desire being exclusively the work of external agencies,
+while the coming up level of the other is due to agencies that are
+incorporate with the organism itself. Thus an unusually abundant supply
+of food, due to causes entirely beyond the control of the individual, is
+an external agency; it will immediately set power a little ahead of
+desire. On this the individual will eat as much as it can--thus learning
+_pro tanto_ to be able to eat more, and to want more under ordinary
+circumstances--and will also breed rapidly up to the balance of the
+abundance. This is the work of the agencies incorporate in the organism,
+and will bring desire level with power again. Famine, on the other hand,
+puts desire ahead of power, and the incorporate agencies must either
+bring power up by resource and invention, or must pull desire back by
+eating less, both as individuals, and as the race, that is to say, by
+breeding less freely; for breeding is an assimilation of outside matter
+so closely akin to feeding, that it is only the feeding of the race, as
+against that of the individual.
+
+I do not think the reader will find any clearer manner of picturing to
+himself the development of organism than by keeping the normal growth of
+wealth continually in his mind. He will find few of the phenomena of
+organic development which have not their counterpart in the acquisition
+of wealth. Thus a too sudden acquisition, owing to accidental and
+external circumstances and due to no internal source of energy, will be
+commonly lost in the next few generations. So a sudden sport due to a
+lucky accident of soil will not generally be perpetuated if the
+offspring plant be restored to its normal soil. Again, if the advance in
+power carry power suddenly far beyond any past desire, or be far greater
+than any past-remembered advance of power beyond desire--then desire
+will not come up level easily, but only with difficulty and all manner
+of extravagance, such as is likely to destroy the power itself. Demand
+and Supply are also good illustrations.
+
+But to return to Dr. Darwin.
+
+"When we revolve in our minds," he writes, "first the great changes
+which we see naturally produced in animals after their nativity, as in
+the production of the butterfly with painted wings from the crawling
+caterpillar; or of the respiring frog from the subnatant tadpole; from
+the boy to the bearded man, from the infant girl to the woman,--in both
+which cases mutilation will prevent due development.
+
+"Secondly, when we think over the great changes introduced into various
+animals by artificial or accidental cultivation, as in horses, which we
+have exercised for the different purposes of strength or swiftness, in
+carrying burthens or in running races, or in dogs which have been
+cultivated for strength and courage, as the bull-dog; or for acuteness
+of his sense of smell, as the hound or spaniel; or for the swiftness of
+his foot, as the greyhound; or for his swimming in the water or for
+drawing snow sledges, as the rough-haired dogs of the north; or, lastly,
+as a play dog for children, as the lapdog; with the changes of the forms
+of the cattle which have been domesticated from the greatest antiquity,
+as camels and sheep, which have undergone so total a transformation that
+we are now ignorant from what species of wild animal they had their
+origin. Add to these the great changes of shape and colour which we
+daily see produced in smaller animals from our domestication of them, as
+rabbits or pigeons, or from the difference of climates and even of
+seasons; thus the sheep of warm climates are covered with hair instead
+of wool; and the hares and partridges of the latitudes which are long
+buried in snow become white during the winter months; add to these the
+various changes produced in the forms of mankind by their early modes of
+exertion, or by the diseases occasioned by their habits of life, both of
+which become hereditary, and that through many generations. Those who
+labour at the anvil, the oar, or the loom, as well as those who carry
+sedan chairs or who have been educated to dance upon the rope, are
+distinguishable by the shape of their limbs; and the diseases occasioned
+by intoxication deform the countenance with leprous eruptions, or the
+body with tumid viscera, or the joints with knots and distortions.
+
+"Thirdly, when we enumerate the great changes produced in the species of
+animals before their nativity, as, for example, when the offspring
+reproduces the effects produced upon the parent by accident or
+cultivation; or the changes produced by the mixture of species, as in
+mules; or the changes produced probably by the exuberance of nourishment
+supplied to the fetus, as in monstrous births with additional limbs;
+many of these enormities of shape are propagated and continued as a
+variety at least, if not as a new species of animal. I have seen a breed
+of cats with an additional claw on every foot; of poultry also with an
+additional claw, and with wings to their feet; and of others without
+rumps. Mr. Buffon mentions a breed of dogs without tails which are
+common at Rome and Naples--which he supposes to have been produced by a
+custom long established of cutting their tails close off. There are many
+kinds of pigeons admired for their peculiarities which are more or less
+thus produced and propagated.[179]
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"When we consider all these changes of animal form and innumerable
+others which may be collected from the books of natural history, we
+cannot but be convinced that the fetus or embryon is formed by
+apposition of new parts, and not by the distention of a primordial nest
+of germs included one within another like the cups of a conjurer.
+
+"Fourthly, when we revolve in our minds the great similarity of
+structure which obtains in all the warm-blooded animals, as well
+quadrupeds, birds, and amphibious animals, as in mankind; from the mouse
+and bat to the elephant and whale; one is led to conclude that they have
+alike been produced from a similar living filament. In some this
+filament in its advance to maturity has acquired hands and fingers with
+a fine sense of touch, as in mankind. In others it has acquired claws or
+talons, as in tigers and eagles. In others, toes with an intervening web
+or membrane, as in seals and geese. In others it has acquired cloven
+hoofs, as in cows and swine; and whole hoofs in others, as in the horse:
+while in the bird kind this original living filament has put forth wings
+instead of arms or legs, and feathers instead of hair. In some it has
+protruded horns on the forehead instead of teeth in the fore part of the
+upper jaw; in others, tusks instead of horns; and in the others, beaks
+instead of either. And all this exactly as is seen daily in the
+transmutation of the tadpole, which acquires legs and lungs when he
+wants them, and loses his tail when it is no longer of service to him.
+
+"Fifthly, from their first rudiment or primordium to the termination of
+their lives, all animals undergo perpetual transformations; _which are
+in part produced by their own exertions in consequence of their desires
+and aversions, of their pleasures and their pains, or of irritations or
+of associations; and many of these acquired forms or propensities are
+transmitted to their posterity_.
+
+"As air and water are supplied to animals in sufficient profusion, the
+three great objects of desire which have changed the forms of many
+animals by their desires to gratify them are those of lust, hunger, and
+security. A great want of one part of the animal world has consisted in
+the desire of the exclusive possession of the females; and these have
+acquired weapons to combat each other for this purpose, as the very
+thick, shield-like, horny skin on the shoulder of the boar is a defence
+only against animals of his own species who strike obliquely upwards,
+nor are his tusks for other purposes except to defend himself, as he is
+not naturally a carnivorous animal. So the horns of the stag are sharp
+to offend his adversary, but are branched for the purpose of parrying or
+receiving the thrust of horns similar to his own, and have therefore
+been formed for the purpose of combating other stags, for the exclusive
+possession of the females; who are observed like the ladies in the times
+of chivalry to attend the car of the victor.
+
+"The birds which do not carry food to their young, and do not therefore
+marry, are armed with spurs for the purpose of fighting for the
+exclusive possession of the females, as cocks and quails. It is certain
+that these weapons are not provided for their defence against other
+adversaries, because the females of these species are without this
+armour. The final cause of this contest among the males seems to be
+_that the strongest and most active animal should propagate the species,
+which should thence become improved_."[180]
+
+Dr. Darwin would have been on stronger ground if he had said that the
+_effect_ of the contest among the males was that the fittest should
+survive, and hence transmit any fit modifications which had occurred to
+them as vitally true, rather than that the desire to attain this end had
+caused the contest; but either way the sentence just given is sufficient
+to show that he was not blind to the fact that the fittest commonly
+survive, and to the consequences of this fact. The use, however, of the
+word "thence," as well as of the expression "final cause," is loose, as
+Dr. Darwin would no doubt readily have admitted. Improvement in the
+species is due quite as much, by Dr. Darwin's own showing, to the causes
+which have led to such and such an animal's making itself the fittest,
+as to the fact that if fittest it will be more likely to survive and
+transmit its improvement. There have been two factors in modification;
+the one provides variations, the other accumulates them; neither can
+claim exclusive right to the word "thence," as though the modification
+was due to it and to it only. Dr. Darwin's use of the word "thence"
+here is clearly a slip, and nothing else; but it is one which brings him
+for the moment into the very error into which his grandson has fallen
+more disastrously.
+
+"Another great want," he continues, "consists in the means of procuring
+food, which has diversified the forms of all species of animals. Thus
+the nose of the swine has become hard for the purpose of turning up the
+soil in search of insects and of roots. The trunk of the elephant is an
+elongation of the nose for the purpose of pulling down the branches of
+trees for his food, and for taking up water without bending his knees.
+Beasts of prey have acquired strong jaws or talons. Cattle have acquired
+a rough tongue and a rough palate to pull off the blades of grass, as
+cows and sheep. Some birds have acquired harder beaks to crack nuts, as
+the parrot. Others have acquired beaks to break the harder seeds, as
+sparrows. Others for the softer kinds of flowers, or the buds of trees,
+as the finches. Other birds have acquired long beaks to penetrate the
+moister soils in search of insects or roots, as woodcocks, and others
+broad ones to filtrate the water of lakes and to retain aquatic insects.
+All which seem to have been gradually produced during many generations
+_by the perpetual endeavour of the creature to supply the want of food,
+and to have been delivered to their posterity with constant improvement
+of them for the purposes required_.
+
+"The third great want among animals is that of security, which seems to
+have diversified the forms of their bodies and the colour of them; these
+consist in the means of escaping other animals more powerful than
+themselves. Hence some animals have acquired wings instead of legs, as
+the smaller birds, for purposes of escape. Others, great length of fin
+or of membrane, as the flying fish and the bat. Others have acquired
+hard or armed shells, as the tortoise and the _Echinus marinus_.
+
+"Mr. Osbeck, a pupil of Linnaeus, mentions the American frog-fish,
+_Lophius Histrio_, which inhabits the large floating islands of sea-weed
+about the Cape of Good Hope, and has fulcra resembling leaves, that the
+fishes of prey may mistake it for the sea-weed, which it inhabits.[181]
+
+"The contrivances for the purposes of security extend even to
+vegetables, as is seen in the wonderful and various means of their
+concealing or defending their honey from insects and their seeds from
+birds. On the other hand, swiftness of wing has been acquired by hawks
+and swallows to pursue their prey; and a proboscis of admirable
+structure has been acquired by the bee, the moth, and the humming bird
+for the purpose of plundering the nectaries of flowers. _All which seem
+to have been formed by the original living filament, excited into action
+by the necessities of the creatures which possess them_, and on which
+their existence depends.
+
+"From thus meditating on the great similarity of the structure of the
+warm-blooded animals, and at the same time of the great changes they
+undergo both before and after their nativity; and by considering in how
+minute a portion of time many of the changes of animals above described
+have been produced; would it be too bold to imagine that in the great
+length of time since the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of ages
+before the commencement of the history of mankind--would it be too bold
+to imagine that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living
+filament, which the Great First Cause endued with animality, with the
+power of attaining new parts, attended with new propensities, directed
+by irritations, sensations, volitions, and associations; and thus
+possessing the faculty of continuing to improve, by its own inherent
+activity, and of delivering down those improvements by generation to its
+posterity world without end!
+
+"Sixthly, the cold-blooded animals, as the fish tribes, which are
+furnished with but one ventricle of the heart, and with gills instead of
+lungs, and with fins instead of feet or wings, bear a great similarity
+to each other; but they differ nevertheless so much in their general
+structure from the warm-blooded animals, that it may not seem probable
+at first view that the same living filament could have given origin to
+this kingdom of animals, as to the former. Yet are there some creatures
+which unite or partake of both these orders of animation, as the whales
+and seals; and more particularly the frog, who changes from an aquatic
+animal furnished with gills to an aerial one furnished with lungs.
+
+"The numerous tribes of insects without wings, from the spider to the
+scorpion, from the flea to the lobster; or with wings, from the gnat or
+the ant to the wasp and the dragon-fly, differ so totally from each
+other, and from the red-blooded classes above described, both in the
+forms of their bodies and in their modes of life; besides the organ of
+sense, which they seem to possess in their antennae or horns, to which
+it has been thought by some naturalists that other creatures have
+nothing similar; that it can scarcely be supposed that this nature of
+animals could have been produced by the same kind of living filament as
+the red-blooded classes above mentioned. And yet the changes which many
+of them undergo in their early state to that of their maturity, are as
+different as one animal can be from another. As those of the gnat, which
+passes his early state in water, and then stretching out his new wings
+and expanding his new lungs, rises in the air; as of the caterpillar and
+bee-nymph, which feed on vegetable leaves or farina, and at length
+bursting from their self-formed graves, become beautiful winged
+inhabitants of the skies, journeying from flower to flower, and
+nourished by the ambrosial food of honey.
+
+"There is still another class of animals which are termed vermes by
+Linnaeus, which are without feet or brain, and are hermaphrodites, as
+worms, leeches, snails, shell-fish, coralline insects, and sponges,
+which possess the simplest structure of all animals, and appear totally
+different from those already described. The simplicity of their
+structure, however, can afford no argument against their having been
+produced from a single living filament, as above contended.
+
+"Last of all, the various tribes of vegetables are to be enumerated
+amongst the inferior orders of animals. Of these the anthers and stigmas
+have already been shown to possess some organs of sense, to be nourished
+by honey, and to have the power of generation like insects, and have
+thence been announced amongst the animal kingdom in Section XIII.; and
+to these must be added the buds and bulbs, which constitute the
+viviparous offspring of vegetation. The former I suppose to be beholden
+to a single living filament for their seminal or amatorial procreation;
+and the latter to the same cause for their lateral or branching
+generation, which they possess in common with the polypus, taenia, and
+volvox, and the simplicity of which is an argument in favour of the
+similarity of its cause.
+
+"Linnaeus supposes, in the introduction to his natural orders, that very
+few vegetables were at first created, and that their numbers were
+increased by their intermarriages, and adds, 'Suaderet haec Creatoris
+leges a simplicibus ad composita.' Many other changes appear to have
+arisen in them by their perpetual contest for light and air above
+ground, and for food or moisture beneath the soil. As noted in the
+'Botanic Garden,' Part II., note on Cuscuta. Other changes of vegetables
+from climate or other causes are remarked in the note on Curcuma in the
+same work. From these one might be led to imagine that each plant at
+first consisted of a single bulb or flower to each root, as the
+gentianella and daisy, and that in the contest for air and light, new
+buds grew on the old decaying flower-stem, shooting down their elongated
+roots to the ground, and that in process of ages tall trees were thus
+formed, and an individual bulb became a swarm of vegetables. Other
+plants which in this contest for light and air were too slender to rise
+by their own strength, learned by degrees to adhere to their neighbours,
+either by putting forth roots like the ivy, or by tendrils like the
+vine, or by spiral contortions like the honeysuckle, or by growing upon
+them like the mistleto, and taking nourishment from their barks, or by
+only lodging or adhering on them and deriving nourishment from the air
+as tillandsia.
+
+"Shall we then say that the vegetable living filament was originally
+different from that of each tribe of animals above described? And that
+the productive living filament of each of those tribes was different
+from the other? Or as the earth and ocean were probably peopled with
+vegetable productions long before the existence of animals; and many
+families of these animals, long before other families of them, shall we
+conjecture _that one and the same kind of living filament is and has
+been the cause of all organic life_?[182]
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"The late Mr. David Hume in his posthumous works places the powers of
+generation much above those of our boasted reason, and adds, that reason
+can only make a machine, as a clock or a ship, but the power of
+generation makes the maker of the machine; and probably from having
+observed that the greatest part of the earth has been formed out of
+organic recrements, as the immense beds of limestone, chalk, marble,
+from the shells of fish; and the extensive provinces of clay, sandstone,
+ironstone, coals, from decomposed vegetables; all of which have been
+first produced by generation, or by the secretion of organic life; he
+concludes that the world itself might have been generated rather than
+created; that it might have been gradually produced from very small
+beginnings, increasing by the activity of its inherent principles,
+rather than by a sudden evolution of the whole by the Almighty fire.
+What a magnificent idea of the infinite power of the great Architect!
+The Cause of causes! Parent of parents! Ens entium!"[183]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[169] 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 484.
+
+[170] Ibid. p. 485.
+
+[171] Ibid. p. 493.
+
+[172] 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 494.
+
+[173] 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 497.
+
+[174] 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 498.
+
+[175] 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 500.
+
+[176] Ibid. p. 501.
+
+[177] Ibid. p. 502.
+
+[178] 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 503.
+
+[179] 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 505.
+
+[180] 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 507.
+
+[181] 'Voyage to China,' p. 113.
+
+[182] 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 511.
+
+[183] 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 513.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+MEMOIR OF LAMARCK.
+
+
+I take the following memoir of Lamarck entirely from the biographical
+sketch prefixed by M. Martins to his excellent edition of the
+'Philosophie Zoologique.'[184] From this sketch I find that "Lamarck was
+born August 1, 1744, at Barenton, in Picardy, being the eleventh child
+of Pierre de Monet, squire of the place, a man of old family, but poor.
+His father intended him for the Church, the ordinary resource of younger
+sons at that time, and accordingly placed him under the care of the
+Jesuits at Amiens. But this was not his vocation: the annals of his
+family spoke all to him of military glory; his eldest brother had died
+in the breaches at the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom; two others were still
+serving in the army, and France was exhausting her energies in an
+unequal struggle. His father would not yield to his wishes, but on his
+death, in 1760, Lamarck was left free to take his own line, and made his
+way at once--upon a very bad horse--to the army of Germany, then
+encamped at Lippstadt in Westphalia.
+
+"He was the bearer of a letter written by Madame de Lameth, one of his
+neighbours in the country, and recommending him to M. de Lastic, colonel
+of the regiment of Beaujolais. This gentleman, on seeing before him a
+lad of seventeen, whose somewhat stunted growth made him look still
+younger than he really was, sent the youth immediately to his own
+quarters. The next day a battle was immediately impending, and M. de
+Lastic, on passing his regiment in review, saw his protege in the first
+rank of a company of grenadiers. The French army was under the orders of
+the Marshal de Broglie and of the Prince de Soubise; the allied troops
+were commanded by Ferdinand of Brunswick. The two French generals were
+beaten owing to their divided counsels, and Lamarck's company, almost
+annihilated by the enemy's fire, was forgotten in the confusion of the
+retreat. All the officers, commissioned and non-commissioned, were
+killed, and only fourteen men out of the whole company remained alive:
+the eldest proposed to retreat, but Lamarck, improvising himself as
+commander, declared that they ought not to retire without orders.
+Presently the colonel seeing that this company did not rally sent an
+orderly officer who made his way up to it by protected paths. Next day
+Lamarck was made an officer, and shortly afterwards lieutenant.
+
+"Fortunately for science," continues M. Martins, "this brilliant _debut_
+was not to decide his career. After peace had been signed he was sent
+into garrison at Toulon and Monaco, where an inflammation of the
+lymphatic ganglions of the neck necessitated an operation which left him
+deeply scarred for life.
+
+"The vegetation in the neighbourhood of Toulon and Monaco now arrested
+the young officer's attention. He had already derived some little
+knowledge of botany from the '_Traite des Plantes usuelles_' of Chomel.
+Having retired from the service, and having nothing beyond his modest
+pension of four hundred francs a year, he took a situation at Paris with
+a banker; but drawn irresistibly to the study of nature, he used to
+study from his attic window the forms and movements of clouds, and made
+himself familiar with the plants in the Jardin du Roi or in the public
+gardens. He began to feel that he was on his right path, and understood,
+as Voltaire said of Condorcet, that discoveries of permanent value could
+make him no less illustrious than military glory.
+
+"Dissatisfied with the botanical systems of his time, in six months he
+wrote his '_Flore francaise_,' preceded by the '_Cle dichotomique_,'
+with the help of which it is easy even for a beginner to arrive with
+certainty at the name of the plant before him." Of this work, M. Martins
+tells us in a note, that the second edition, published by Candolle in
+1815, is still the standard work on French plants.
+
+"In 1778 Rousseau had brought botany into vogue. Women and men of
+fashion took to it. Buffon had the three volumes of '_Flore francaise_'
+printed at the royal press, and in the following year Lamarck entered
+the Academy of Sciences. Buffon being anxious that his son should
+travel, gave him Lamarck for his companion and tutor. He thus made a
+trip through Holland, Germany, and Hungary, and became acquainted with
+Gleditsch at Berlin, with Jacquin at Vienna, and with Murray at
+Gottingen.
+
+"The '_Encyclopedie methodique_,' begun by Diderot and D'Alembert, was
+not yet completed. For this work Lamarck wrote four volumes, describing
+all the then known plants whose names began with the letters from A to
+P. This great work was completed by Poiret, and comprises twelve
+volumes, which appeared between the years 1783 and 1817. A still more
+important work, also part of the Encyclopedia, and continually quoted by
+botanists, is the '_Illustration des Genres_.' In this work Lamarck
+describes two thousand _genera_, and illustrates them, according to the
+title-page, with nine hundred engravings. Only a botanist can form any
+idea of the research in collections, gardens, and books, which such a
+work must have involved. But Lamarck's activity was inexhaustible.
+Sonnerat returned from India in 1781 with a very large number of dried
+plants; no one except Lamarck thought it worth while to inspect them,
+and Sonnerat, charmed with his enthusiasm, gave him the whole
+magnificent collection.
+
+"In spite, however, of his incessant toil, Lamarck's position continued
+to be most precarious. He lived by his pen, as a publisher's hack, and
+it was with difficulty that he obtained even the poorly paid post of
+keeper of the king's cabinet of dried plants. Like most other
+naturalists he had thus to contend with incessant difficulties during a
+period of fifteen years.
+
+"At length fortune bettered his condition while changing the direction
+of his labours. France was now under the Convention; what Carnot had
+done for the army Lakanal undertook to do for the natural sciences. At
+his suggestion a museum of natural history was established. Professors
+had been found for all the chairs save that of Zoology; but in that time
+of enthusiasm, so different from the present, France could find men of
+war and men of science wherever and whenever she had need of them.
+Etienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire was twenty-one years old, and was engaged
+in the study of mineralogy under Hauey. Daubenton said to him, 'I will
+undertake the responsibility for your inexperience. I have a father's
+authority over you. Take this professorship, and let us one day say that
+you have made zoology a French science.' Geoffroy accepted, and
+undertook the higher animals. Lakanal knew that a single professor could
+not suffice for the task of arranging the collections of the entire
+animal kingdom, and as Geoffroy was to class the vertebrate animals
+only, there remained the invertebrata--that is to say, insects,
+molluscs, worms, zoophytes--in a word, what was then the chaos of the
+unknown. 'Lamarck,' says M. Michelet, 'accepted the unknown.' He had
+devoted some attention to the study of shells with Bruguieres, but he
+had still everything to learn, or I should perhaps say rather,
+everything to create in that unexplored territory into which Linnaeus had
+declined to enter, and into which he had thus introduced none of the
+order he had so well known how to establish among the higher animals.
+
+"Lamarck began his course of lectures at the museum in 1794, after a
+year's preparation, and at once established that great division of
+animals into vertebrate and invertebrate, which science has ever since
+recognized.
+
+"Dividing the vertebrate animals--as Linnaeus had already divided
+them--into mammals, birds, reptiles, and fishes, he divided the
+invertebrates into molluscs, insects, worms, echinoderms, and polyps. In
+1799 he separated the crustacea from the insects, with which they had
+been classed hitherto; in 1800 he established the arachnids as a class
+distinct from the insects; in 1802 that of the annelids, a subdivision
+of the worms, and that of the radiata as distinct from the polyps. Time
+has approved the wisdom of these divisions, founded all of them upon the
+organic type of the creatures themselves--that is to say, upon the
+rational method introduced into zoology by Cuvier, Lamarck, and Geoffroy
+St. Hilaire.
+
+"This introduction being devoted only to Lamarck's labours as a
+naturalist, we will pass over certain works in which he treats of
+physics and chemistry. These attempts--errors of a powerful mind which
+thought itself able by the help of pure reason to establish truths which
+rest only upon experience--attempts, moreover, which were some of them
+but resuscitations of exploded theories, such as that of
+'phlogistic'--had not even the honour of being refuted: they did not
+deserve to be so, and should be a warning to all those who would write
+upon a subject without the necessary practical knowledge.
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"At the beginning of this century there was not yet any such science as
+geology. People observed but little, and in lieu of observation made
+theories to embrace the entire globe. Lamarck made his in 1802, and
+twenty-three years later the judicious Cuvier still yielded to the
+prevailing custom in publishing his 'Discoveries on the Earth's
+Revolutions.'
+
+"Lamarck's merit was to have discovered that there had been no
+catastrophes, but that the gradual action of forces during thousands of
+ages accounted for the changes observable upon the face of the earth,
+better than any sudden and violent perturbations. 'Nature,' he writes,
+'has no difficulty on the score of time; she has it always at command;
+it is with her a boundless space in which she has room for the greatest
+as for the smallest operations.'"
+
+Here we must not forget Buffon's fine passage, "Nature's great workman
+is Time," &c. See page 103.
+
+"Lamarck," continues M. Martins, "was the first to distinguish littoral
+from ocean fossils, but no one accepts his theory that oceans make their
+beds deeper owing to the action of the tides, and distribute themselves
+differently over the earth's surface without any change of level of the
+different parts of that surface.
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"Settling down to a single branch of science, in consequence of his
+professorship, Lamarck now devoted himself to the twofold labour of
+lecturing and classifying the collections at the museum. In 1802 he
+published his 'Considerations on the Organization of Living Bodies'; in
+1809 his '_Philosophie Zoologique_,' a development of the
+'Considerations'; and from 1816 to 1822 his Natural History of the
+invertebrate animals, in seven volumes. This is his great work, and,
+being entirely a work of description and classification, was received
+with the unanimous approbation of the scientific world. His 'Fossil
+Shells of the Neighbourhood of Paris'--a work in which his profound
+knowledge of existing shells enabled him to class with certainty the
+remains of forms that had disappeared thousands of ages ago--met also
+with a favourable reception.
+
+"Lamarck was fifty years old before he began to study zoology; and
+prolonged microscopic examinations first fatigued and at length
+enfeebled his eyesight. The clouds which obscured it gradually
+thickened, and he became quite blind. Married four times, the father of
+seven children, he saw his small patrimony and even his earlier savings
+swallowed up by one of those hazardous investments with which promoters
+impose on the credulity of the public. His small endowment as professor
+alone protected him from destitution. Men of science whom his reputation
+as a botanist and zoologist had attracted near him, wondered at the
+manner in which he was neglected.
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"He passed the last ten years of his laborious life in darkness, tended
+only by the affectionate care of his two daughters. The eldest wrote
+from his dictation part of the sixth and seventh volumes of his work on
+the invertebrate animals. From the time her father became confined to
+his room his daughter never left the house; and when first she did so
+after his death, she was distressed by the fresh air to which she had
+been so long a stranger.
+
+"Lamarck died December 18, 1829, at the age of eighty-five. Latreille
+and Blainville were his successors at the museum. The incredible
+activity of the first professor had so greatly increased the number of
+the known invertebrata that it was found necessary to endow two
+professors, where one had originally been sufficient.
+
+"His two daughters were left penniless. In the year 1832 I myself saw
+Mlle. Cornelie de Lamarck earning a scanty pittance by fastening dried
+plants on to paper, in the museum of which her father had been a
+professor. Many a species named and described by him must have passed
+under her eyes and increased the bitterness of her regret."[185]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[184] Paris, 1873.
+
+[185] Introduction Biographique to M. Martins' edition of the 'Phil.
+Zool.,' pp. ix-xx.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+GENERAL MISCONCEPTION CONCERNING LAMARCK--HIS PHILOSOPHICAL POSITION.
+
+
+"If Cuvier," says M. Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire,[186] "is the modern
+successor of Linnaeus, so is Lamarck of Buffon. But Cuvier does not go so
+far as Linnaeus, and Lamarck goes much farther than Buffon. Lamarck,
+moreover, took his own line, and his conjectures are not only much
+bolder, or rather more hazardous, but they are profoundly different from
+Buffon's.
+
+"It is well known that the vast labours of Lamarck were divided between
+botany and physical science in the eighteenth century, and between
+zoology and natural philosophy in the nineteenth; it is, however, less
+generally known that Lamarck was long a partisan of the immutability of
+species. It was not till 1801, when he was already old, that he freed
+himself from the ideas then generally prevailing. But Lamarck, having
+once made up his mind, never changed it; in his ripe age he exhibits all
+the ardour of youth in propagating and defending his new convictions.
+
+"In the three years, 1801, 1802, 1803, he enounced them twice in his
+lectures, and three times in his writings.[187] He returns to the
+subject and states his views precisely in 1806,[188] and in 1809 he
+devotes a great part of his principal work, the 'Philosophie
+Zoologique,' to their demonstration.[189] Here he might have rested and
+have quietly awaited the judgment of his peers; but he is too much
+convinced; he believes the future of science to depend so much upon his
+doctrine that to his dying day he feels compelled to explain it further
+and insist upon it. When already over seventy years of age he enounces
+it again, and maintains it as firmly as ever in 1815, in his 'Histoire
+des Animaux sans Vertebres,' and in 1820 in his 'Systeme des
+Connaissances Positives.'[190]
+
+"This doctrine, so dearly cherished by its author, and the conception,
+exposition, and defence of which so laboriously occupied the second half
+of his scientific career, has been assuredly too much admired by some,
+who have forgotten that Lamarck had a precursor, and that that precursor
+was Buffon. It has, on the other hand, been too severely condemned by
+others who have involved it in its entirety in broad and sweeping
+condemnation. As if it were possible that so great labour on the part of
+so great a naturalist should have led him to 'a fantastic conclusion'
+only--to a 'flighty error,' and, as has been often said, though not
+written, to 'one absurdity the more.' Such was the language which
+Lamarck heard during his protracted old age, saddened alike by the
+weight of years and blindness; this was what people did not hesitate to
+utter over his grave yet barely closed, and what, indeed, they are still
+saying--commonly, too, without any knowledge of what Lamarck maintained,
+but merely repeating at second hand bad caricatures of his teaching.
+
+"When will the time come when we may see Lamarck's theory
+discussed--and, I may as well at once say, refuted in some important
+points--with at any rate the respect due to one of the most illustrious
+masters of our science? And when will this theory, the hardihood of
+which has been greatly exaggerated, become freed from the
+interpretations and commentaries by the false light of which so many
+naturalists have formed their opinion concerning it? If its author is to
+be condemned, let it be, at any rate, not before he has been
+heard."[191]
+
+It is not necessary for me to give the extracts from Lamarck which M.
+Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire quotes in order to show what he really
+maintained, inasmuch as they will be given at greater length in the
+following chapter; but I may perhaps say that I have not found M.
+Geoffroy refuting Lamarck in any essential point.
+
+Professor Haeckel says that to Lamarck "will always belong the immortal
+glory of having for the first time worked out the theory of descent as
+an independent scientific theory of the first order, and as the
+philosophical foundation of the whole science of Biology."
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"The 'Philosophie Zoologique,'" continues Professor Haeckel, "is the
+first connected exposition of the theory of descent carried out strictly
+into all its consequences; ... and with the exception of Darwin's work,
+which appeared exactly half a century later, we know of none which we
+could in this respect place by the side of the 'Philosophie Zoologique.'
+How far it was in advance of its time is perhaps best seen from the
+circumstance that it was not understood by most men, and for fifty years
+was not spoken of at all."[192]
+
+This is an exaggeration, both as regards the originality of Lamarck's
+work and the reception it has met with. It is probably more accurate to
+say with M. Martins that Lamarck's theory has "never yet had the honour
+of being discussed seriously,"[193] not, at least, in connection with
+the name of its originators.
+
+So completely has this been so that the author of the 'Vestiges of
+Creation,' even in the edition of 1860, in which he unreservedly
+acknowledges the adoption of Lamarck's views, not unfrequently speaks
+disparagingly of Lamarck himself, and never gives him his due meed of
+recognition. I am not, therefore, wholly displeased to find this author
+conceiving himself to have been treated by Mr. Charles Darwin with some
+of the injustice which he has himself inflicted on Lamarck.
+
+In the 1859 edition of the 'Origin of Species,' and in a very prominent
+place, Mr. Darwin says:--"The author of the 'Vestiges of Creation' would
+I presume say, that after a certain number of unknown generations, some
+bird had given birth to a woodpecker, and some plant to a misseltoe, and
+that these had been produced perfect as we now see them."[194] This is
+the only allusion to the 'Vestiges' which I have found in the first
+edition of the 'Origin of Species.'
+
+Those who have read the 1853 edition of the 'Vestiges' will not be
+surprised to find the author rejoining, in his edition of 1860, that it
+was to be regretted Mr. Darwin should have read the 'Vestiges' "nearly
+as much amiss as though, like its declared opponents, he had an interest
+in misunderstanding it." And a little lower he adds that Mr. Darwin's
+book in no essential respect contradicts the 'Vestiges'; "on the
+contrary, while adding to its explanations of nature, it expresses
+substantially the same general ideas."[195] It is right to say that the
+passage thus objected to is not to be found in later editions of the
+'Origin of Species,' while in the historical sketch we now read as
+follows:--"In my opinion it (the 'Vestiges of Creation') has done
+excellent service in this country by calling attention to the subject,
+removing prejudice, and in thus preparing the ground for the reception
+of analogous views."
+
+Mr. Darwin, the main part of whose work on the 'Origin of Species' is
+taken up with supporting the theory of descent with modification (which
+frequently in the recapitulation chapter of the 'Origin of Species' he
+seems to treat as synonymous with natural selection), has fallen into
+the common error of thinking that Lamarck can be ignored or passed over
+in a couple of sentences. I only find Lamarck's name twice in the 1859
+edition of the 'Origin,' once on p. 242, where Mr. Darwin writes: "I am
+surprised that no one has advanced this demonstrative case of neuter
+insects, against the well-known doctrine of Lamarck;" and again, p. 427,
+where Lamarck is stated to have been the first to call attention to the
+"very important distinction between real affinities and analogical or
+adaptive resemblances." How far from demonstrative is the particular
+case which in 1859 Mr. Darwin considered so fatal to "the well-known
+doctrine of Lamarck"--which should surely, one would have thought,
+include the doctrine of descent with modification, which Mr. Darwin is
+himself supporting--I have attempted to show in 'Life and Habit,' but
+had perhaps better recapitulate briefly here.
+
+Mr. Darwin writes: "In the simpler case of neuter insects all of one
+caste, _which, as I believe, have been rendered different from the
+fertile males and females through natural selection_...."[196] He thus
+attributes the sterility and peculiar characteristics, we will say, of
+the common hive working bees--"neuter insects all of one caste"--to
+natural selection. Now, nothing is more certain than that these
+characteristics--sterility, a cavity in the thigh for collecting wax, a
+proboscis for gathering honey, &c.--are due to the treatment which the
+eggs laid by the queen bee receive after they have left her body. Take
+an egg and treat it in a certain way, and it becomes a working bee;
+treat the same egg in a certain other way, and it becomes a queen. If
+the bees are in danger of becoming queenless they take eggs which were
+in the way of being developed into working bees, and change their food
+and cells, whereon they develop into queens instead. How Mr. Darwin
+could attribute the neutralization of the working bees--an act which is
+obviously one of abortion committed by the body politic of the hive on a
+balance of considerations--to the action of what he calls "natural
+selection," and how, again, he could suppose that what he was advancing
+had any but a confirmatory bearing upon Lamarck's position, is
+incomprehensible, unless the passage in question be taken as a mere
+slip. That attention has been called to it is plain, for the words "the
+well-known doctrine of Lamarck" have been changed in later editions into
+"the well-known doctrine of inherited habit as advanced by
+Lamarck,"[197] but this correction, though some apparent improvement on
+the original text, does little indeed in comparison with what is wanted.
+
+Mr. Darwin has since introduced a paragraph concerning Lamarck into the
+"historical sketch," already more than once referred to in these pages.
+In this he summarises the theory which I am about to lay before the
+reader, by saying that Lamarck "upheld the doctrine that all species,
+including man, are descended from other species." If Lamarck had been
+alive he would probably have preferred to see Mr. Darwin write that he
+upheld "the doctrine of descent with modification as the explanation of
+all differentiations of structure and instinct." Mr. Darwin continues,
+that Lamarck "seems" to have been chiefly led to his conclusion on the
+gradual change of species, "by the difficulty of distinguishing species
+and varieties, by the almost perfect gradation of forms in certain
+groups, and by the analogy of domestic productions."
+
+Lamarck would probably have said that though he did indeed turn--as Mr.
+Darwin has done, and as Buffon and Dr. Darwin had done before him--to
+animals and plants under domestication, in illustration and support of
+the theory of descent with modification; and that though he did also
+insist, as so many other writers have done, on the arbitrary and
+artificial nature of the distinction between species and varieties, he
+was mainly led to agree with Buffon and Dr. Darwin by a broad survey of
+the animal kingdom, with the details also of which few naturalists have
+ever been better acquainted.
+
+"Great," says Mr. Darwin, "is the power of steady
+misrepresentation,"--and greatly indeed has the just fame of Lamarck
+been eclipsed in consequence; "but," as Mr. Darwin finely continues,
+"the history of science shows that fortunately this power does not long
+endure."[198]
+
+That Lamarck anticipated it, was prepared to face it, and even felt that
+things were thus, after all, as they should be, will appear from the
+shrewd and pleasant passage which is to be found near the close of his
+preface:--
+
+"So great is the power of preconceived opinion, especially when any
+personal interest is enlisted on the same side as itself, that though
+it is hard to deduce new truths from the study of nature, it is still
+harder to get them recognized by other people.
+
+"These difficulties, however, are on the whole more beneficial than
+hurtful to the cause of science; for it is through them that a number of
+eccentric, though perhaps plausible speculations, perish in their
+infancy, and are never again heard of. Sometimes, indeed, valuable ideas
+are thus lost; but it is better that a truth, when once caught sight of,
+should have to struggle for a long time without meeting the attention it
+deserves, than that every outcome of a heated imagination should be
+readily received.
+
+"The more I reflect upon the numerous causes which affect our judgments,
+the more convinced I am that, with the exception of such physical and
+moral facts as no one can now throw doubt upon, all else is matter of
+opinion and argument; and we know well that there is hardly an argument
+to be found anywhere, against which another argument cannot plausibly be
+adduced. Hence, though it is plain that the various opinions of men
+differ greatly in probability and in the weight which should be attached
+to them, it seems to me that we are wrong when we blame those who differ
+from us.
+
+"Are we then to recognize no opinions as well founded but those which
+are generally received? Nay--experience teaches us plainly that the
+highest and most cultivated minds must be at all times in an exceedingly
+small minority. No one can dispute this. Authority should be told by
+weight and not by number--but in good truth authority is a hard thing
+to weigh.
+
+"Nor again--in spite of the many and severe conditions which a judgment
+must fulfil before it can be declared good--is it quite certain that
+those whom public opinion has declared to be authorities, are always
+right in the conclusions they arrive at.
+
+"Positive facts are the only solid ground for man; the deductions he
+draws from them are a very different matter. Outside the facts of nature
+all is a question of probabilities, and the most that can be said is
+that some conclusions are more probable than others."
+
+Lamarck's poverty was perhaps one main reason of the ease with which it
+was found possible to neglect his philosophical opinions. Science is not
+a kingdom into which a poor man can enter easily, if he happens to
+differ from a philosopher who gives good dinners, and has "his sisters
+and his cousins and his aunts" to play the part of chorus to him.
+Lamarck's two daughters do not appear to have been the kind of persons
+who could make effective sisters or cousins or aunts. Men of science are
+of like passions even with the other holy ones who have set themselves
+up in all ages as the pastors and prophets of mankind. The saint has
+commonly deemed it to be for the interests of saintliness that he should
+strain a point or two in his own favour--and the more so according as
+his reputation for an appearance of candour has been the better earned.
+If, then, Lamarck's opponents could keep choruses, while Lamarck had
+nothing to fall back upon but the merits of his case only, it is not
+surprising that he should have found himself neglected by the
+scientists of his own time. Moreover he was too old to have undertaken
+such an unequal contest. If he had been twenty years younger when he
+began it, he would probably have enjoyed his full measure of success
+before he died.
+
+Not that Lamarck can claim, as a thinker, to stand on the same level
+with Dr. Darwin, and still less so with Buffon. He attempted to go too
+fast and too far. Seeing that if we accept descent with modification,
+the question arises whether what we call life and consciousness may not
+themselves be evolved from some thing or things which looked at one time
+so little living and conscious that we call them inanimate--and being
+anxious to see his theory reach, and to follow it, as far back as
+possible, he speculates about the origin of life; having formed a theory
+thereon, he is more inclined to interpret the phenomena of lower animal
+life so as to make them fit in with his theory, than as he would have
+interpreted them if there had been no theory at stake.
+
+Thus his denial that sensation, and much more, intelligence and
+deliberate action, can exist without a brain and a nervous system, has
+led him to deny sensation, consciousness, and intelligence to many
+animals which act in such manner as would certainly have made him say
+that they feel and know what they are about, if he had formed no theory
+about brains and nervous systems.
+
+Nothing can be more different than the manners in which Lamarck and Dr.
+Darwin wrote on this head. Lamarck over and over again maintains that
+where there is no nervous system there can be no sensation. Combating,
+for example, the assertion of Cabanis, that to live is to feel, he says
+that "the greater number of the polypi and all the infusoria, having no
+nervous system, it must be said of them as also of worms, that to live
+is still not to feel; and so again of plants."[199]
+
+How different from this is the un-theory-ridden language of Dr. Darwin,
+quoted on p. 116 of this work.
+
+Lamarck again writes:--
+
+"The very imperfect animals of the lowest classes, having no nervous
+system, are simply irritable, have nothing but certain habits,
+experience no sensations, and never conceive ideas."
+
+This, in the face of the performances of the amoeba--a minute jelly
+speck, without any special organ whatever--in making its tests, cannot
+be admitted. Is it possible that Lamarck was in some measure misled by
+believing Buffon to be in earnest when he advanced propositions little
+less monstrous?
+
+"But," continues Lamarck, "the less imperfect animals which have a
+nervous system, though they have not the organ of intelligence, have
+instinct, habits, and proclivities; they feel sensations, and yet form
+no ideas whatever. I venture to say that where there is no organ for a
+faculty that faculty cannot exist."[200]
+
+Who can tell what ideas a worm does or does not form? We can watch its
+actions, and see that they are such as involve what we call design and a
+perception of its own interest. Under these circumstances it seems
+better to call the worm a reasonable creature with Dr. Darwin than to
+say with Lamarck that because worms do not appear to have that organ
+which he assumes to be the sole means of causing sensation and ideas,
+therefore they can neither feel nor think. Doubtless they cannot feel
+and think as many sensations and thoughts as we can, but our ideas of
+what they can and cannot feel must be formed through consideration of
+what we see them do, and must be biassed by no theories of what they
+ought to be able to feel or not feel.
+
+Again Lamarck, shortly after an excellent passage in which he points out
+that the lower animals gain by experience just as man does (and here
+probably he had in his mind the passage of Buffon referred to at p. 112
+of this work), nevertheless writes:--
+
+"If the facts and considerations put forward in this volume be held
+worthy of attention, it will follow necessarily that there are some
+animals which have neither reason nor instinct" (I should be glad to see
+one of these animals and to watch its movements), "such as those which
+have no power of feeling; that there are others which have instinct but
+no degree whatever of reason" (whereas from Dr. Darwin's premises it
+should follow, and would doubtless be readily admitted by him, that
+instinct is reason, but reason many times repeated made perfect, and
+finally repeated by rote; so that far from being prior to reason, as
+Lamarck here implies, it can only come long afterwards), "such as those
+which have a system enabling them to feel, but which still lack the
+organ of intelligence; and finally, that there are those which have not
+only instinct, but over and above this a certain degree of reasoning
+power, such as those creatures which have one system for sensations and
+another for acts involving intelligence. Instinct is with these last
+animals the motive power of almost all their actions, and they rarely
+use what little reason they have. Man, who comes next above them, is
+also possessed of instincts which inspire some of his actions, but he
+can acquire much reason, and can use it so as to direct the greater part
+of his actions."[201]
+
+All this will be felt to be less satisfactory than the simple directness
+of Dr. Darwin. It comes in great measure from following Buffon without
+being _en rapport_ with him. On the other hand, Lamarck must be admitted
+to have elaborated the theory of "descent with modification" with no
+less clearness than Dr. Darwin, and with much greater fulness of detail.
+There is no substantial difference between the points they wish to
+establish; Dr. Darwin has the advantage in that not content with
+maintaining that there will be a power of adaptation to the conditions
+of an animal's existence which will determine its organism, he goes on
+to say what the principal conditions are, and shows more lucidly than
+Lamarck has done (though Lamarck adopts the same three causes in a
+passage which will follow), that struggle, and consequently
+modification, will be chiefly conversant about the means of subsistence,
+of reproduction, and of self-protection. Nevertheless, though Dr. Darwin
+has said enough to show that he had the whole thing clearly before him,
+and could have elaborated it as finely as or better than Lamarck
+himself has done, if he had been so minded, yet the palm must be given
+to Lamarck on the score of what he actually did, and this I observe to
+be the verdict of history, for whereas Lamarck's name is still daily
+quoted, Dr. Darwin's is seldom mentioned, and never with the applause
+which it deserves.
+
+The resemblance between the two writers--that is to say, the complete
+coincidence of their views--is so remarkable that the question is forced
+upon us how far Lamarck knew the substance of Dr. Darwin's theory.
+Lamarck knew Buffon personally; he had been tutor to Buffon's son, and
+Buffon had three of Lamarck's volumes on the French Flora printed at the
+royal printing press;--how can we account for Lamarck's having had
+Buffon's theory of descent with modification before him for so many
+years, and yet remaining a partisan of immutability till 1801? Before
+this year we find no trace of his having accepted evolution;
+thenceforward he is one of the most ardent and constant exponents which
+this doctrine has ever had. What was it that repelled him in Buffon's
+system? How is it that in the 'Philosophie Zoologique' there is not, so
+far as I can remember, a single reference to Buffon, from whom, however,
+as we shall see, many paragraphs are taken with but very little
+alteration?
+
+I am inclined to think that the secret of this sudden conversion must be
+found in a French translation by M. Deleuze of Dr. Darwin's poem, 'The
+Loves of the Plants' which appeared in 1800. Lamarck--the most eminent
+botanist of his time--was sure to have heard of and seen this, and would
+probably know the translator, who would be able to give him a fair idea
+of the 'Zoonomia.'
+
+I will give a few of the passages which Lamarck would find in this
+translation. Speaking of Dr. Darwin, M. Deleuze says:--"Il falloit
+encore qu'un nouvel observateur, entrant dans la route qui venoit de
+s'ouvrir, s'y frayat des sentiers ignores; que liant la physique
+vegetale a la botanique il nous montrat dans les plantes, non seulement
+des corps organises soumis a des lois constantes, mais des etres doues
+sinon de sensibilite, au moins d'une irritabilite particuliere, d'un
+principe de vie _qui leur fait executer des mouvements analogues a leurs
+besoins_....[202]
+
+"Il est des animaux et des plantes qui par le laps du tems paroissent
+avoir eprouve des changemens dans leur organisation, _pour s'accommoder
+a de nouveaux genres de nourriture et aux moyens de se la procurer_.
+Peut-etre les productions de la nature font elles des progres vers la
+perfection. Cette idee appuyee par les observations modernes sur
+l'accroissement progressif des parties solides du globe, s'accorde avec
+la dignite et la providence du createur de l'univers."[203]
+
+"La nature semble s'etre fait un jeu d'etablir entre tous les etres
+organises une sorte de guerre qui entretient leur activite: si elle a
+donne aux uns des moyens de defense, elle a donne aux autres des moyens
+d'attaque."[204]
+
+Turning to the 'Botanic Garden' itself, I find that this admirable
+sentence belongs to M. Deleuze, and not to Dr. Darwin, who, however, has
+said what comes to much the same thing,[205] as may be seen p. 227 of
+this volume. But the authorship is immaterial; whether the passage was
+by Dr. Darwin or M. Deleuze, it was, in all probability, known to
+Lamarck before his change of front.
+
+     *     *     *     *     *
+
+The note on Trapa Natans again[206] suggests itself as the source from
+which the passage in the 'Philosophie Zoologique' about the Ranunculus
+aquatilis is taken,[207] while one of the most important passages in the
+work, a summary, in fact, of the principal means of modification, seems
+to be taken, the first half of it from Buffon, and the second from Dr.
+Darwin. I have called attention to it on pp. 300, 301.
+
+We may then suppose that Lamarck failed to understand Buffon, and
+conceived that he ought either to have gone much farther, or not so far;
+not being yet prepared to go the whole length himself, he opposed
+mutability till Dr. Darwin's additions to Buffon's ostensible theory
+reached him, whereon he at once adopted them, and having received
+nothing but a few notes and hints, felt himself at liberty to work the
+theory out independently and claim it. In so original a work as the
+'_Philosophie Zoologique_' must always be considered, this may be
+legitimate, but I find in it, as Isidore Geoffroy seems also to have
+found, a little more claim to complete independence than is acceptable
+to one who is fresh from Buffon and Dr. Darwin.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[186] 'Hist. Nat. Gen.,' tom. ii. p. 404, 1859.
+
+[187] 'Systeme des Animaux sans Vertebres,' Paris, in-8, an. ix. (1801);
+'Discours d'Ouverture,' p. 12, &c.; 'Recherches sur l'Organisation des
+Corps Vivants,' Paris, in-8, 1802, p. 50, &c.; 'Discours d'Ouverture
+d'un Cours de Zoologie pour l'an ix.,' Paris, in-8, 1803. This discourse
+is entirely devoted to the consideration of the question, "What is
+Species?"
+
+[188] 'Discours d'Ouverture d'un Cours de Zoologie,' 1806, Paris, in-8,
+p. 8, &c.
+
+[189] See following chapter.
+
+[190] 'Hist, des Anim. sans Verteb.,' tom, i., Introduction, 1^re ed.,
+1815; 'Syst. des Conn. Positives,' Paris, in-8, 1820, 1^re part,
+2^me sect. ch. ii. p. 114, &c.
+
+[191] 'Hist. Nat. Gen.,' tom. ii. p. 407.
+
+[192] 'History of Creation,' English translation, vol. i. pp. 111, 112.
+
+[193] M. Martins' edition of the 'Philosophie Zoologique,' Paris, 1873.
+Introd., p. vi.
+
+[194] 'Origin of Species,' p. 3, 1859.
+
+[195] 'Vestiges of Creation,' ed. 1860, Proofs, Illustrations, &c., p.
+lxiv.
+
+[196] 'Origin of Species,' ed. 1, p. 239; ed. 6, p. 231.
+
+[197] 'Origin of Species,' ed. 1, p. 242; ed. 6, 1876, p. 233.
+
+[198] 'Origin of Species,' p. 421, ed. 1876.
+
+[199] 'Phil. Zool.,' vol. i. p. 404.
+
+[200] Ibid. vol. ii. p. 324.
+
+[201] 'Phil. Zool.,' vol. ii. p. 410.
+
+[202] 'Les Amours des Plantes,' Discours Prelim., p. 7. Paris, 1800.
+
+[203] Ibid., Notes du chant i., p. 202.
+
+[204] Ibid. p. 238.
+
+[205] 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 507.
+
+[206] 'Les Amours des Plantes,' p. 360.
+
+[207] Vol. i. p. 231, ed. M. Martins, 1873.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+SUMMARY OF THE 'PHILOSOPHIE ZOOLOGIQUE.'
+
+
+The first part of the '_Philosophie Zoologique_' is the one which deals
+with the doctrine of evolution or descent with modification. It is to
+this, therefore, that our attention will be confined. Yet only a
+comparatively small part of the three hundred and fifty pages which
+constitute Lamarck's first part are devoted to setting forth the reasons
+which led him to arrive at his conclusions--the greater part of the
+volume being occupied with the classification of animals, which we may
+again omit, as foreign to our purpose.
+
+I shall condense whenever I can, but I do not think the reader will find
+that I have left out much that bears upon the argument. I shall also use
+inverted commas while translating with such freedom as to omit several
+lines together, where I can do so without suppressing anything essential
+to the elucidation of Lamarck's meaning. I shall, however, throughout
+refer the reader to the page of the original work from which I am
+translating.
+
+"The common origin of bodily and mental phenomena," says Lamarck in his
+preliminary chapter, "has been obscured, because we have studied them
+chiefly in man, who, as the most highly developed of living beings,
+presents the problem in its most difficult and complicated aspect. If we
+had begun our study with that of the lowest organisms, and had proceeded
+from these to the more complex ones, we should have seen the progression
+which is observable in organization, and the successive acquisition of
+various special organs, with new faculties for every additional organ.
+We should thus have seen that sense of needs--originally hardly
+perceptible, but gradually increasing in intensity and variety--has led
+to the attempt to gratify them; that the actions thus induced, having
+become habitual and energetic, have occasioned the development of organs
+adapted for their performance; that the force which excites organic
+movements can in the case of the lowest animals exist outside them and
+yet animate them; that this force was subsequently introduced into the
+animals themselves, and fixed within them; and, lastly, that it gave
+rise to sensibility and, in the end, to intelligence."[208] The reader
+had better be on his guard here, and whenever Lamarck is speculating
+about the lowest forms of action and sensation. I have thought it well,
+however, to give enough of these speculations, as occasion arises, to
+show their tendency.
+
+"Sensation is not the proximate cause of organic movements. It may be so
+with the higher animals, but it cannot be shown to be so with plants,
+nor even with all known animals. At the outset of life there was none of
+that sensation which could only arise where organic beings had already
+attained a considerable development. Nature has done all by slow
+gradations, both organs and faculties being the outcome of a progressive
+development.[209]
+
+"The mere composition of an animal is but a small part of what deserves
+study in connection with the animal itself. The effects of its
+surroundings in causing new wants, the effects of its wants in giving
+rise to actions, those of its actions in developing habits and
+tendencies, the effects of use and disuse as affecting any organ, the
+means which nature takes to preserve and make perfect what has been
+already acquired--these are all matters of the highest importance.[210]
+
+"In their bearing upon these questions the invertebrate animals are more
+important and interesting than the vertebrate, for they are more in
+number, and being more in number are more varied; their variations are
+more marked, and the steps by which they have advanced in complexity are
+more easily observed.[211]
+
+"I propose, therefore, to divide this work into three parts, of which
+the first shall deal with the conventions necessary for the treatment of
+the subject, the importance of analogical structures, and the meaning
+which should be attached to the word species. I will point out on the
+one hand the evidence of a graduated descending scale, as existing
+between the highest and the lowest organisms; and, on the other, the
+effect of surroundings and habits on the organs of living beings, as the
+cause of their development or arrest of development. Lastly, I will
+treat of the natural order of animals, and show what should be their
+fittest classification and arrangement."[212]
+
+It seems unnecessary to give Lamarck's intentions with regard to his
+second and third parts, as they do not here concern us; they deal with
+the origin of life and mind.
+
+The first chapter of the work opens with the importance of bearing in
+mind the difference between the conventional and the natural, that is to
+say, between words and things. Here, as indeed largely throughout this
+part of his work, he follows Buffon, by whom he is evidently influenced.
+
+"The conventional deals with systems of arrangement, classification,
+orders, families, genera, and the nomenclature, whether of different
+sections or of individual objects.
+
+"An arrangement should be called systematic, or arbitrary, when it does
+not conform to the genealogical order taken by nature in the development
+of the things arranged, and when, by consequence it is not founded upon
+well-considered analogies. There is such a thing as a natural order in
+every department of nature; it is the order in which its several
+component items have been successively developed.[213]
+
+"Some lines certainly seem to have been drawn by Nature herself. It was
+hard to believe that mammals, for example, and birds, were not
+well-defined classes. Nevertheless the sharpness of definition was an
+illusion, and due only to our limited knowledge. The ornithorhynchus and
+the echidna bridge the gulf.[214]
+
+"Simplicity is the main end of any classification. If all the races, or
+as they are called, species, of any kingdom were perfectly known, and if
+the true analogies between each species, and between the groups which
+species form, were also known, so that their approximations to each
+other and the position of the several groups were in conformity with the
+natural analogies between them--then classes, orders, sections, and
+genera would be families, larger or smaller; for each division would be
+a greater or smaller section of a natural order or sequence.[215] But in
+this case it would be very difficult to assign the limits of each
+division; they would be continually subjected to arbitrary alteration,
+and agreement would only exist where plain and palpable gaps were
+manifest in our series. Happily, however, for classifiers there are, and
+will always probably remain, a number of unknown forms."[216]
+
+That the foregoing is still felt to be true by those who accept
+evolution, may be seen from the following passage, taken from Mr.
+Darwin's 'Origin of Species':--
+
+"As all the organic beings which have ever lived can be arranged within
+a few great classes; and as all within each class have, according to our
+theory, been connected together by fine gradations, the best, and if our
+collections were nearly perfect, the only possible arrangement would be
+genealogical: descent being the hidden bond of connection which
+naturalists have been seeking under the term of the Natural System. On
+this view, we can understand how it is that in the eyes of most
+naturalists, the structure of the embryo is even more important for
+classifications than that of the adult."[217]
+
+In his second chapter Lamarck deals with the importance of comparative
+anatomy, and the study of homologous structures. These indicate a sort
+of blood relationship between the individuals in which they are found,
+and are our safest guide to any natural system of classification. Their
+importance is not confined to the study of classes, families, or even
+species; they must be studied also in the individuals of each species,
+as it is thus only, that we can recognize either identity or difference
+of species. The results arrived at, however, are only trustworthy over a
+limited period, for though the individuals of any species commonly so
+resemble one another at any given time, as to enable us to generalize
+from them, at the date of our observing them, yet species are not fixed
+and immutable through all time: they change, though with such extreme
+slowness that we do not observe their doing so, and when we come upon a
+species that _has_ changed, we consider it as a new one, and as having
+always been such as we now see it.[218]
+
+"It is none the less true that when we compare the same kind of organs
+in different individuals, we can quickly and easily tell whether they
+are very like each other or not, and hence, whether the animals or
+plants in which they are found, should be set down as members of the
+same or of a different species. It is only therefore the general
+inference drawn from the apparent immutability of species, that has
+been too inconsiderately drawn.[219]
+
+"The analogies and points of agreement between living organisms, are
+always incomplete when based upon the consideration of any single organ
+only. But though still incomplete, they will be much more important
+according as the organ on which they are founded is an essential one or
+otherwise.
+
+"With animals, those analogies are most important which exist between
+organs most necessary for the conservation of their life. With plants,
+between their organs of generation. Hence, with animals, it will be the
+interior structure which will determine the most important analogies:
+with plants it will be the manner in which they fructify.[220]
+
+"With animals we should look to nerves, organs of respiration, and those
+of the circulation; with plants, to the embryo and its accessories, the
+sexual organs of their flowers, &c.[221] To do this, will set us on to
+the Natural Method, which is as it were a sketch traced by man of the
+order taken by Nature in her productions.[222] Nevertheless the
+divisions which we shall be obliged to establish, will still be
+arbitrary and artificial, though presenting to our view sections
+arranged in the order which Nature has pursued.[223]
+
+"What, then," he asks,[224] "_is_ species--and can we show that species
+has changed--however slowly?" He now covers some of the ground since
+enlarged upon in Mr. Darwin's second chapter, in which the arbitrary
+nature of the distinction between species and varieties is so well
+exposed. "I shall show," says Lamarck (in substance, but I am compelled
+to condense much), "that the habits by which we now recognize any
+species, are due to the conditions of life [_circonstances_] under which
+it has for a long time existed, and that these habits have had such an
+influence upon the structure of each individual of the species, as to
+have at length modified this structure, and adapted it to the habits
+which have been contracted.[225]
+
+"The individuals of any species," he continues, "certainly resemble
+their parents; it is a universal law of nature that all offspring should
+differ but little from its immediate progenitors, but this does not
+justify the ordinary belief that species never vary. Indeed, naturalists
+themselves are in continual difficulty as regards distinguishing species
+from varieties; they do not recognize the fact that species are only
+constant as long as the conditions in which they are placed are
+constant. Individuals vary and form breeds which blend so insensibly
+into the neighbouring species, that the distinctions made by naturalists
+between species and varieties, are for the most part arbitrary, and the
+confusion upon this head is becoming day by day more serious.[226]
+
+"Not perceiving that species will not vary as long as the conditions in
+which they are placed remain essentially unchanged, naturalists have
+supposed that each species was due to a special act of creation on the
+part of the Supreme Author of all things. Assuredly, nothing can exist
+but by the will of this Supreme Author, but can we venture to assign
+rules to him in the execution of his will? May not his infinite power
+have chosen to create an order of things which should evolve in
+succession all that we know as well as all that we do not know? Whether
+we regard species as created or evolved, the boundlessness of his power
+remains unchanged, and incapable of any diminution whatsoever. Let us
+then confine ourselves simply to observing the facts around us, and if
+we find any clue to the path taken by Nature, let us say fearlessly that
+it has pleased her Almighty Author that she should take this path.[227]
+
+"What applies to species applies also to genera; the further our
+knowledge extends, the more difficult do we find it to assign its exact
+limits to any genus. Gaps in our collections are being continually
+filled up, to the effacement of our dividing lines of demarcation. We
+are thus compelled to settle the limits of species and variety
+arbitrarily, and in a manner about which there will be constant
+disagreement. Naturalists are daily classifying new species which blend
+into one another so insensibly that there can hardly be found words to
+express the minute differences between them. The gaps that exist are
+simply due to our not having yet found the connecting species.
+
+"I do not, however, mean to say that animal life forms a simple and
+continuously blended series. Life is rather comparable to a
+ramification. In life we should see, as it were, a ramified continuity,
+if certain species had not been lost. The species which, according to
+this illustration, stands at the extremity of each bough, should bear a
+resemblance, at least upon one side, to the other neighbouring species;
+and this certainly is what we observe in nature.
+
+"Having arranged living forms in such an order as this, let us take one,
+and then, passing over several boughs, let us take another at some
+distance from it; a wide difference will now be seen between the species
+which the forms selected represent. Our earliest collections supplied us
+with such distantly allied forms only; now, however, that we have such
+an infinitely greater number of specimens, we can see that many of them
+blend one into the other without presenting noteworthy differences at
+any step."[228]
+
+This has been well extended by Mr. Darwin in a passage which
+begins:--"The affinities of all beings of the same class have sometimes
+been represented by a great tree. I believe that this simile largely
+speaks the truth."[229]
+
+"What, then," continues Lamarck, "can be the cause of all this? Surely
+the following: namely, that when individuals of any species change their
+situation, climate, mode of existence, or habits [conditions of life],
+their structure, form, organization, and in fact their whole being
+becomes little by little modified, till in the course of time it
+responds to the changes experienced by the creature."[230]
+
+In his preface Lamarck had already declared that "the thread which gives
+us a clue to the causes of the various phenomena of animal
+organization, in the manifold diversity of its developments, is to be
+found in the fact that Nature conserves in offspring all that their life
+and environments has developed in parents." Heredity--"the hidden bond
+of common descent"--tempered with the modifications induced by changed
+habits--which changed habits are due to new conditions and
+surroundings--this with Lamarck, as with Buffon and Dr. Darwin, is the
+explanation of the diversity of forms which we observe in nature. He now
+goes on to support this--briefly, in accordance with his design--but
+with sufficient detail to prevent all possibility of mistake about his
+meaning.
+
+"In the same climate differences in situation, and a greater or less
+degree of exposure, affect simply, in the first instance, the
+individuals exposed to them; but in the course of time, these repeated
+differences of surroundings in individuals which reproduce themselves
+continually under similar circumstances, induce differences which become
+part of their very nature; so that after many successive generations,
+these individuals, which were originally, we will say, of any given
+species, become transformed into a different one."[231]
+
+"Let us suppose that a grass growing in a low-lying meadow gets carried
+by some accident to the brow of a neighbouring hill, where the soil is
+still damp enough for the plant to be able to exist. Let it live here
+for many generations, till it has become thoroughly accustomed to its
+position, and let it then gradually find its way to the dry and almost
+arid soil of a mountain side; if the plant is able to stand the change
+and to perpetuate itself for many generations, it will have become so
+changed that botanists will class it as a new species."[232]
+
+"The same sort of process goes on in the animal kingdom, but animals are
+modified more slowly than plants."[233]
+
+The sterility of hybrids, to which Mr. Darwin devotes a great part of
+the ninth chapter of his 'Origin of Species,'[234] is then touched
+on--briefly, but sufficiently--as follows:--
+
+"The idea that species were fixed and immutable involved the belief that
+distinct species could not be fertile _inter se_. But unfortunately
+observation has proved, and daily proves, that this supposition is
+unfounded. Hybrids are very common among plants, and quite sufficiently
+so among animals to show that the boundaries of these so-called
+immutable species are not so well defined as has been supposed. Often,
+indeed, there is no offspring between the individuals of what are called
+distinct species, especially when they are widely different, and again,
+the offspring when produced is generally sterile; but when there is less
+difference between the parents, both the difficulty of breeding the
+hybrid, and its sterility when produced, are found to disappear. In this
+very power of crossing we see a source from which breeds, and ultimately
+species, may arise."[235]
+
+Mr. Darwin arrives at the same conclusion. He writes:--
+
+"We must, therefore, either give up the belief of the universal
+sterility of species when crossed, or we must look at this sterility in
+animals, not as an indelible characteristic, but as one capable of being
+removed by domestication.
+
+"Finally, on considering all the ascertained facts on the intercrossing
+of plants and animals, it may be concluded that some degree of
+sterility, both in first crosses and in hybrids, is an exceedingly
+general result, but that it cannot, under our present state of
+knowledge, be considered as absolutely universal."[236]
+
+Returning to Lamarck, we find him saying:--
+
+"The limits, therefore, of so-called species are not so constant and
+unvarying as is commonly supposed. Consider also the following. All
+living forms upon the face of the globe have been brought forth in the
+course of infinite time by the process of generation only. Nature has
+directly created none but the lowest organisms; these she is still
+producing every day, they being, as it were, the first sketches of life,
+and produced by what is called spontaneous generation. Organs have been
+gradually developed in these low forms, and these organs have in the
+course of time increased in diversity and complexity. The power of
+growth in each living body has given rise to various modes of
+reproduction, and thus progress, already acquired, has been preserved
+and handed down to offspring.[237] With sufficient time, favourable
+conditions of life [_circonstances_], successive changes in the surface
+of the globe, and the power of new surroundings and habits to modify the
+organs of living bodies, all animal and vegetable forms have been
+imperceptibly rendered such as we now see them. It follows that species
+will be constant only in relation to their environments, and cannot be
+as old as Nature herself.
+
+"But what are we to say of instinct? Can we suppose that all the tricks,
+cunning, artifices, precautions, patience, and skill of animals are due
+to evolution only? Must we not see here the design of an all-powerful
+Creator? No one certainly will assign limits to the Creator's power, but
+it is a bold thing to say that he did not choose to work in this way or
+that way, when his own handiwork declares to us that this is the way he
+chose. I find proof in Nature--meaning by nature the _ensemble_ of all
+that is,[238] but regarding her as herself the effect of an unknown
+first cause[239]--that she is the author of organization, life, and even
+sensation; that she has multiplied and diversified the organs and mental
+powers of the creatures which she sustains and reproduces; that she has
+developed in animals, through the sole instrumentality of sense of need
+as establishing and directing their habits, all actions and all habits,
+from the simplest up to those which constitute instinct, industry, and
+finally reason.[240]
+
+"Against this it is alleged that we have no reason to believe species to
+have changed within any known era. The skeletons of some Egyptian birds,
+preserved two or three thousand years ago, differ in no particular from
+the same kind of creatures at the present day. But this is what we
+should expect, inasmuch as the position and climate of Egypt itself do
+not appear to have changed. If the conditions of life have not varied,
+why should the species subjected to those conditions have done so?
+Moreover, birds can move about freely, and if one place does not suit
+them they can find another that does. All that these Egyptian mummies
+really prove is, that there were animals in Egypt two or three thousand
+years ago which are like the animals of to-day; but how short a space is
+two or three thousand years, as compared with the time which Nature has
+had at her disposal! A time infinitely great _qua_ man, is still
+infinitely short _qua_ Nature.[241]
+
+"If, however, we turn to animals under confinement, we find immediate
+proof that the most startling changes are capable of being produced
+after some generations of changed habits. In the sixth chapter we shall
+have occasion to observe the power of changed conditions
+[_circonstances_] to develop new desires in animals, and to induce new
+courses of action; we shall see the power which these new actions will
+have, after a certain amount of repetition, to engender new habits and
+tendencies; and we shall also note the effects of use and disuse in
+either fortifying and developing an organ, or in diminishing it and
+causing it to disappear. With plants under domestication, we shall find
+corresponding phenomena. Species will thus appear to be unchangeable for
+comparatively short periods only."[242]
+
+It is interesting to see that Mr. Darwin lays no less stress on the
+study of animals and plants under domestication than Buffon, Dr. Darwin,
+and Lamarck. Indeed, all four writers appear to have been in great
+measure led to their conclusions by this very study. "At the
+commencement of my investigations," writes Mr. Darwin, "it seemed to me
+probable that a careful study of domesticated animals and of cultivated
+plants would offer the best chance of making out this obscure problem.
+Nor have I been disappointed; in this and in all other perplexing cases,
+I have invariably found that our knowledge, imperfect though it be, of
+variation under domestication, afforded the best and safest clue. I may
+venture to express my conviction of the high value of such studies,
+though they have been very commonly neglected by naturalists."[243]
+
+In justice to the three writers whom I have named, it should be borne in
+mind that they also ventured to express their conviction of the high
+value of these studies. Buffon, indeed, as we have seen, gives animals
+under domestication the foremost place in his work. He does not treat of
+wild animals till he has said all he has to say upon our most important
+domesticated breeds,--on whose descent from one or two wild stocks he is
+never weary of insisting. It was doubtless because of the opportunities
+they afforded him for demonstrating the plasticity of living organism
+that the most important position in his work was assigned to them.
+
+Lamarck professes himself unable to make up his mind about extinct
+species; how far, that is to say, whole breeds must be considered as
+having died out, or how far the difference between so many now living
+and fossil forms is due to the fact that our living species are
+modified descendants of the fossil ones. Such large parts of the globe
+were still practically unknown in Lamarck's time, and the recent
+discovery of the ornithorhynchus has raised such hopes as to what might
+yet be found in Australia, that he was inclined to think that only such
+creatures as man found hurtful to him, as, for example, the megatherium
+and the mastodon, had become truly extinct, nor was he, it would seem,
+without a hope that these would yet one day be discovered. The climatic
+and geological changes that have occurred in past ages, would, he
+believed, account for all the difference which we observe between living
+and fossil forms, inasmuch as they would have changed the conditions
+under which animals lived, and therefore their habits and organs would
+have become correspondingly modified. He therefore rather wondered to
+find so much, than so little, resemblance between existing and fossil
+forms.
+
+Buffon took a juster view of this matter; it will be remembered that he
+concluded his remarks upon the mammoth by saying that many species had
+doubtless disappeared without leaving any living descendants, while
+others had left descendants which had become modified.
+
+Lamarck anticipated Lyell in supposing geological changes to have been
+due almost entirely to the continued operation of the causes which we
+observe daily at work in nature: thus he writes:--
+
+"Every observer knows that the surface of the earth has changed; every
+valley has been exalted, the crooked has been made straight, and the
+rough places plain; not even is climate itself stable. Hence changed
+conditions; and these involve changed needs and habits of life; if such
+changes can give rise to modifications or developments, it is clear that
+every living body must vary, especially in its outward character, though
+the variation can only be perceptible after several generations.
+
+"It is not surprising then that so few living species should be
+represented in the geologic record. It is surprising rather that we
+should find any living species represented at all.[244]
+
+"Catastrophes have indeed been supposed, and they are an easy way of
+getting out of the difficulty; but unfortunately, they are not supported
+by evidence. Local catastrophes have undoubtedly occurred, as
+earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, of which the effects can be
+sufficiently seen; but why suppose any universal catastrophe, when the
+ordinary progress of nature suffices to account for the phenomena?
+Nature is never _brusque_. She proceeds slowly step by step,
+and this with occasional local catastrophes will remove all our
+difficulties."[245]
+
+In his fourth chapter Lamarck points out that animals move themselves,
+or parts of themselves, not through impulsion or movement communicated
+to them as from one billiard ball to another, but by reason of a cause
+which excites their irritability, which cause is within some animals and
+forms part of them, while it is wholly outside of others.[246]
+
+I should again warn the reader to be on his guard against the opinion
+that any animals can be said to live if they have no "inward motion" of
+their own which prompts them to act. We cannot call anything alive which
+moves only as wind and water may make it move, but without any impulse
+from within to execute the smallest action and without any capacity of
+feeling. Such a creature does not look sufficiently like the other
+things which we call alive; it should be first shown to us, so that we
+may make up our minds whether the facts concerning it have been truly
+stated, and if so, what it most resembles; we may then classify it
+accordingly.
+
+"Some animals change their place by creeping, some by walking, some by
+running or leaping; others again fly, while others live in the water and
+swim.
+
+"The origin of these different kinds of locomotion is to be found in the
+two great wants of animal life: 1, the means of procuring food; 2, the
+search after mates with a view to reproduction.
+
+"Since then the power of locomotion was a matter affecting their
+individual self-preservation, as well as that of their race, the
+existence of the want led to the means of its being gratified."[247]
+
+Lamarck is practically at one with Dr. Erasmus Darwin, that modification
+will commonly travel along three main lines which spring from the need
+of reproduction, of procuring food, and (Dr. Darwin has added) the power
+of self-protection; but Dr. Darwin's treatment of this part of his
+subject is more lucid and satisfactory than Lamarck's, inasmuch as he
+immediately brings forward instances of various modifications which have
+in each case been due to one of the three main desires above specified,
+namely, reproduction, subsistence, and self-defence.
+
+Lamarck concludes the chapter with some passages which show that he was
+alive--as what Frenchman could fail to be after Buffon had written?--to
+the consequences which must follow from the geometrical ratio of
+increase, and to the struggle for existence, with consequent survival of
+the fittest, which must always be one of the conditions of any wild
+animal's existence. The paragraphs, indeed, on this subject are taken
+with very little alteration from Buffon's work. As Lamarck's theory is
+based upon the fact that it is on the nature of these conditions that
+the habits and consequently the structure of any animal will depend, he
+must have seen that the shape of many of its organs must vary greatly in
+correlation to the conditions to which it was subjected in the matter of
+self-protection. I do not see, then, that there is any substantial
+difference between the positions taken by Dr. Erasmus Darwin and by
+Lamarck in this respect.
+
+"Let us conclude," he writes, "by showing the means employed by nature
+to prevent the number of her creatures from injuring the conservation of
+what has been produced already, and of the general order which should
+subsist.[248]
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"In consequence of the extremely rapid rate of increase of the smaller,
+and especially of the most imperfect, animals, their numbers would
+become so great as to prove injurious to the conservation of breeds, and
+to the progress already made towards more perfect organization, unless
+nature had taken precautions to keep them down within certain fixed
+limits which she cannot exceed."[249]
+
+This seems to contain, and in a nutshell, as much of the essence of what
+Mr. Herbert Spencer and Mr. Charles Darwin have termed the survival of
+the fittest in the struggle for existence, as was necessary for
+Lamarck's purpose.
+
+To Lamarck, as to Dr. Darwin and Buffon, it was perfectly clear that the
+facts, that animals have to find their food under varying circumstances,
+and that they must defend themselves in all manner of varying ways
+against other creatures which would eat them if they could, were simply
+some of the conditions of their existence. In saying that the
+surrounding circumstances--which amount to the conditions of
+existence--determined the direction in which any plant or animal should
+be slowly modified, Lamarck includes as a matter of course the fact that
+the "stronger and better armed should eat the weaker," and thus survive
+and bear offspring which would inherit the strength and better armour of
+its parents. Nothing therefore can be more at variance with the truth
+than to represent Lamarck and the other early evolutionists as ignoring
+the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest; these are
+inevitably implied whenever they use the word "_circonstances_" or
+environment, as I will more fully show later on, and are also expressly
+called attention to by the greater number of them.[250]
+
+"Animals, except those which are herbivorous, prey upon one another; and
+the herbivorous are exposed to the attacks of the flesh-eating races.
+
+"_The strongest and best armed for attack eat the weaker_, and the
+greater kinds eat the smaller. Individuals of the same race rarely eat
+one another; they war only with other races than their own."[251]
+
+Dr. Darwin here again has the advantage over Lamarck; for he has pointed
+out how the males contend with one another for the possession of the
+females, which I do not find Lamarck to have done, though he would at
+once have admitted the fact. Lamarck continues:--
+
+"The smaller kinds of animals breed so numerously and so rapidly that
+they would people the globe to the exclusion of other forms of life, if
+nature had not limited their inconceivable multitude. As, however, they
+are the prey of a number of other creatures, live but a short time, and
+perish easily with cold, they are kept always within the proportions
+necessary for the maintenance both of their own and of other races.[252]
+
+"As regards the larger and stronger animals, they would become dominant,
+and be injurious to the conservation of many other races, if they could
+multiply in too great numbers. But as it is, they devour one another,
+and breed but slowly, and few at a birth, so that equilibrium is duly
+preserved among them. Man alone is the unquestionably dominant animal,
+but men war among themselves, so that it may be safely said the world
+will never be peopled to its utmost capacity."[253]
+
+In his fifth chapter Lamarck returns to the then existing arrangement
+and classification of animals.
+
+"Naturalists having remarked that many species, and some genera and even
+families present characters which as it were isolate them, it has been
+imagined that these approached or drew further from each other according
+as their points of agreement or difference seemed greater or less when
+set down as it were on a chart or map. They regard the small well-marked
+series which have been styled natural families, as groups which should
+be placed between the isolated species and their nearest neighbours so
+as to form a kind of reticulation. This idea, which some of our modern
+naturalists have held to be admirable, is evidently mistaken, and will
+be discarded on a profounder and more extended knowledge of
+organization, and more especially when the distinction has been duly
+drawn between what is due to the action of special conditions and to
+general advance of organization."[254]
+
+I take it that Lamarck is here attempting to express what Mr. Charles
+Darwin has rendered much more clearly in the following excellent
+passage:--
+
+"It should always be borne in mind what sort of intermediate forms must,
+on the theory [what theory?], have formerly existed. I have found it
+difficult when looking at any two species to avoid picturing to myself
+forms _directly_ intermediate between them. But this is a wholly false
+view; we should always look for forms intermediate between each species
+and a common but unknown progenitor; and the progenitor will generally
+have differed in some respects from all its modified descendants. To
+give a simple illustration: the fantail and pouter pigeons are both
+descended from the rock pigeon. If we possessed all the intermediate
+varieties which have ever existed, we should have an extremely close
+series, between both and the rock pigeon; but we should have no
+varieties directly intermediate between the fantail and the pouter;
+none, for instance, combining a tail somewhat expanded with a crop
+somewhat enlarged, the characteristic features of these two breeds.
+These two breeds, moreover, have become so much modified that, if we had
+no historical or indirect evidence regarding their origin, it would not
+have been possible to have determined, from a mere comparison of their
+structure with that of the rock pigeon C. livia, whether they had
+descended from this species, or from some other allied form, as C.
+oenas.
+
+"So with natural species, if we look to forms very distinct--for
+instance, to the horse and the tapir--we have no reason to suppose that
+links directly intermediate between them ever existed, but between each
+and an unknown common parent. The common parent will have had in its
+whole organization much general resemblance to the tapir and the horse;
+but in some points of structure it may have differed considerably from
+both, even perhaps more than they differ from each other. Hence in all
+such cases we should be unable to recognize the parent form of any two
+or more species, even if we closely compared the structure of the parent
+with that of its modified descendants, unless at the same time we had a
+nearly perfect chain of the intermediate links.
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"By the theory of natural selection [surely this is a slip for "by the
+theory of descent with modification"] all living species have been
+connected with the parent species of each genus, by differences not
+greater than we see between the natural and domestic varieties of the
+same species at the present day; and their parent species, now generally
+extinct, have in their turn been similarly connected with more ancient
+forms, and so on backwards, always converging to the common ancestor of
+each great class; so that the number of intermediate and transitional
+links between all living and extinct species must have been
+inconceivably great. But assuredly if this theory [the theory of descent
+with modification or that of "natural selection"?] be true, such have
+lived upon the earth."[255]
+
+To return, however, to Lamarck.
+
+"Though Nature," he continues, "in the course of long time has evolved
+all animals and plants in a true scale of progression, the steps of this
+scale can be perceived only in the principal groups of living forms; it
+cannot be perceived in species nor even in genera. The reason of this
+lies in the extreme diversity of the surroundings in which each
+different race of animals and plants has existed. These surroundings
+have often been out of harmony with the growing organization of the
+plants and animals themselves; this has led to anomalies, and, as it
+were, digressions, which the mere development of organization by itself
+could not have occasioned."[256] Or, in other words, to that divergency
+of type which is so well insisted on by Mr. Charles Darwin.
+
+"It is only therefore the principal groups of animal and vegetable life
+which can be arranged in a vertical line of descent; species and even
+genera cannot always be so--for these contain beings whose organization
+has been dependent on the possession of such and such a special system
+of essential organs.
+
+"Each great and separate group has its own system of essential organs,
+and it is these systems which can be seen to descend, within the limits
+of the group, from their most complex to their simplest form. But each
+organ, considered individually, does not descend by equally regular
+gradation; the gradations are less and less regular according as the
+organ is of less importance, and is more susceptible of modification by
+the conditions which surround it. Organs of small importance, and not
+essential to existence, are not always either perfected or degraded at
+an equal rate, so that in observing all the species of any class we find
+an organ in one species in the highest degree of perfection, while
+another organ, which in this same species is impoverished or very
+imperfect, is highly developed in another species of the same
+group."[257]
+
+The facts maintained in the preceding paragraph are in great measure
+supported by Mr. Charles Darwin, who, however, assigns their cause to
+natural selection.
+
+Mr. Darwin writes, "Ordinary specific characters are more variable than
+generic;" and again, a little lower down, "The points in which all the
+species of a genus resemble each other, and in which they differ from
+allied genera, are called generic characters; and these characters may
+be attributed to inheritance from a common progenitor, for it can rarely
+happen that natural selection will have modified several distinct
+species fitted to more or less widely different habits, in exactly the
+same manner; and as these so called generic characters have been
+inherited from before the period when the several species first branched
+off from their common progenitor, and subsequently have not varied or
+come to differ in any degree, or only in a slight degree, it is not
+probable that they should vary at the present day. On the other hand,
+the points in which species differ from other species of the same genus
+are called specific characters; and as these specific characters have
+varied and come to differ since the period when the species branched off
+from a common progenitor, it is probable that they should still often be
+in some degree variable, or at least more variable than those parts of
+the organization which have for a very long time remained
+constant."[258]
+
+The fact, then, that it is specific characters which vary most is agreed
+upon by both Lamarck and Mr. Darwin. Lamarck, however, maintains that it
+is these specific characters which are most capable of being affected by
+the habits of the creature, and that it is for this reason they will be
+most variable, while Mr. Darwin simply says they _are_ most variable,
+and that, this being so, the favourable variations will be preserved and
+accumulated--an assertion which Lamarck would certainly not demur to.
+
+"Irregular degrees of perfection," says Lamarck, "and degradation in the
+less essential organs, are due to the fact that these are more liable
+than the more essential ones to the influence of external circumstances:
+these induce corresponding differences in the more outward parts of the
+animal, and give rise to such considerable and singular difference in
+species, that instead of being able to arrange them in a direct line of
+descent, as we can arrange the main groups, these species often form
+lateral ramifications round about the main groups to which they belong,
+and in their extreme development are truly isolated."[259]
+
+In his summary of the second chapter of his 'Origin of Species,' Mr.
+Darwin well confirms this when he says, "In large genera the species are
+apt to be closely, but unequally, allied together, forming little
+clusters round other species."
+
+"A longer time," says Lamarck, "and a greater influence of surrounding
+conditions, is necessary in order to modify interior organs.
+Nevertheless we see that Nature does pass from one system to another
+without any sudden leap, when circumstances require it, provided the
+systems are not too far apart. Her method is to proceed from the more
+simple to the more complex.[260]
+
+"She does this not only in the race, but in the individual." Here
+Lamarck, like Dr. Erasmus Darwin, shows his perception of the importance
+of embryology in throwing light on the affinities of animals--as since
+more fully insisted on by the author of the 'Vestiges of Creation,' and
+by Mr. Darwin,[261] as well as by other writers. "Breathing through
+gills is nearer to breathing through lungs than breathing through
+trachea is. Not only do we see Nature pass from gills to lungs in
+families which are not too far apart, as may be seen by considering the
+case of fishes and reptiles; but she does so during the existence of a
+single individual, which may successively make use both of the one and
+of the other system. The frog while yet a tadpole breathes through
+gills; on becoming a frog it breathes through lungs; but we cannot find
+that Nature in any case passes from trachea to lungs."[262]
+
+Lamarck now rapidly reviews previous classifications, and propounds his
+own, which stands thus:--I. Vertebrata, consisting of Mammals, Birds,
+Fishes, and Reptiles. II. Invertebrata, consisting of Molluscs,
+Centipedes, Annelids, Crustacea, Arachnids, Insects, Worms, Radiata,
+Polyps, Infusoria.
+
+"The degradation of organism," he concludes, "in this descending scale
+is not perfectly even, and cannot be made so by any classification,
+nevertheless there is such evidence of sustained degradation in the
+principal groups as must point in the direction of some underlying
+general principle."[263]
+
+Lamarck's sixth chapter is headed "Degradation and Simplification of the
+Animal Chain as we proceed downwards from the most complex to the most
+simple Organisms."
+
+"This is a positive fact, and results from the operation of a constant
+law of nature; but a disturbing cause, which can be easily recognized,
+varies the regular operation of the law from one end to the other of the
+chain of life.[264]
+
+"We can see, nevertheless, that special organs become more and more
+simple the lower we descend; that they become changed, impoverished, and
+attenuated little by little; that they lose their local centres, and
+finally become definitely annihilated before we reach the lowest
+extremity of the chain.[265]
+
+"As has been said already, the degradation of organism is not always
+regular; such and such an organ often fails or changes suddenly, and
+sometimes in its changes assumes forms which are not allied with any
+others by steps that we can recognize. An organ may disappear and
+reappear several times before being entirely lost: but this is what we
+might expect, for the cause which has led to the evolution of living
+organisms has evolved many varieties, due to external influences.
+Nevertheless, looking at organization broadly, we observe a descending
+scale."[266]
+
+"If the tendency to progressive development was the only cause which had
+influenced the forms and organs of animals, development would have been
+regular throughout the animal chain; but it has not been so: Nature is
+compelled to submit her productions to an environment which acts upon
+them, and variation in environment will induce variation in organism:
+this is the true cause of the sometimes strange deviations from the
+direct line of progression which we shall have to observe.[267]
+
+"If Nature had only called aquatic beings into existence, and if these
+beings had lived always in the same climate, in the same kind of water,
+and at the same depth, the organization of these animals would doubtless
+have presented an even and regular scale of development. But there has
+been fresh water, salt water, running and stagnant water, warm and cold
+climates, an infinite variety of depth: animals exposed to these and
+other differences in their surroundings have varied in accordance with
+them.[268] In like manner those animals which have been gradually fitted
+for living in air instead of water have been subjected to an endless
+diversity in their surroundings. The following law, then, may be now
+propounded, namely:--
+
+"_That anomalies in the development of organism are due to the
+influences of the environment and to the habits of the creature._[269]
+
+"Some have said that the anomalies above mentioned are so great
+as to disprove the existence of any scale which should indicate
+descent; but the nearer we approach species, the smaller we see
+differences become, till with species itself we find them at times
+almost imperceptible."[270]
+
+Lamarck here devotes about seventy pages to a survey of the animal
+kingdom in its entirety, beginning with the mammals and ending with the
+infusoria. He points out the manner in which organ after organ
+disappears as we descend the scale, till we are left with a form which,
+though presenting all the characteristics of life, has yet no special
+organ whatever. I am obliged to pass this classification over, but do so
+very unwillingly, for it is illustrative of Lamarck, both at his best
+and at his worst.
+
+The seventh chapter is headed--
+
+"On the influence of their surroundings on the actions and habits of
+animals, and on the effect of these habits and actions in modifying
+their organization."
+
+"The effect of different conditions of our organization upon our
+character, tendencies, actions, and even our ideas, has been often
+remarked, but no attention has yet been paid to that of our actions and
+habits upon our organization itself. These actions and habits depend
+entirely upon our relations to the surroundings in which we habitually
+exist; we shall have occasion, therefore, to see how great is the effect
+of environment upon organization.
+
+"But for our having domesticated plants and animals we should never have
+arrived at the perception of this truth; for though the influence of the
+environment is at all times and everywhere active upon all living
+bodies, its effects are so gradual that they can only be perceived over
+long periods of time.[271]
+
+"Taking the chain of life in the inverse order of nature--that is to
+say, from man downwards--we certainly perceive a sustained but irregular
+degradation of organism, with an increasing simplicity both in organism
+and faculties.
+
+"This fact should throw light upon the order taken by nature, but it
+does not show us why the gradation is so irregular, nor why throughout
+its extent we find so many anomalies or digressions which have
+apparently no order at all in their manifold varieties.[272] The
+explanation of this must be sought for in the infinite diversity of
+circumstances under which organisms have been developed. On the one
+hand, there is a tendency to a regular progressive development; on the
+other, there is a host of widely different surroundings which tend
+continually to destroy the regularity of development.
+
+"It is necessary to explain what is meant by such expressions as 'the
+effect of its environment upon the form and organization of an animal.'
+It must not be supposed that its surroundings directly effect any
+modification whatever in the form and organization of an animal.[273]
+Great changes in surroundings involve great changes in the wants of
+animals, and these changes in their wants involve corresponding changes
+in their actions. If these new wants become permanent, or of very long
+duration, the animals contract new habits, which last as long as the
+wants which gave rise to them.[274] A great change in surroundings, if
+it persist for a long time, must plainly, therefore, involve the
+contraction of new habits. These new habits in their turn involve a
+preference for the employment of such and such an organ over such and
+such another organ, and in certain cases the total disuse of an organ
+which is no longer wanted. This is perfectly self-evident.[275]
+
+"On the one hand, new wants have rendered a part necessary, which part
+has accordingly been created by a succession of efforts: use has kept it
+in existence, gradually strengthening and developing it till in the end
+it attains a considerable degree of perfection. On the other, new
+circumstances having in some cases rendered such or such a part useless,
+disuse has led to its gradually ceasing to receive the development which
+the other parts attain to; on this it becomes reduced, and in time
+disappears.[276]
+
+"Plants have neither actions nor habits properly so called, nevertheless
+they change in a changed environment as much as animals do. This is due
+to changes in nutrition, absorption and transpiration, to degrees of
+heat, light, and moisture, and to the preponderance over others which
+certain of the vital functions attain to."
+
+Lamarck is led into the statement that plants have neither actions nor
+habits, by his theories about the nervous system and the brain. Plain
+matter-of-fact people will prefer the view taken by Buffon, Dr. Darwin,
+and, more recently, by Mr. Francis Darwin, that there is no radical
+difference between plants and animals.
+
+"The differences between well-nourished and ill-nourished plants become
+little by little very noticeable. If individuals, whether animal or
+vegetable, are continually ill-fed and exposed to hardships for several
+generations, their organization becomes eventually modified, and the
+modification is transmitted until a race is formed which is quite
+distinct from those descendants of the common parent stock which have
+been placed in favourable circumstances.[277] In a dry spring the meagre
+and stunted herbage seeds early. When, on the other hand, the spring is
+warm but with occasional days of rain, there is an excellent hay-crop.
+If, however, any cause perpetuates unfavourable circumstances, plants
+will vary correspondingly, first in appearance and general conditions,
+and then in several particulars of their actual character, certain
+organs having received more development than others, these differences
+will in the course of time become hereditary.[278]
+
+"Nature changes a plant or animal's surroundings gradually--man
+sometimes does so suddenly. All botanists know that plants vary so
+greatly under domestication that in time they become hardly
+recognizable. They undergo so much change that botanists do not at all
+like describing domesticated varieties. Wheat itself is an example.
+Where can wheat be found as a wild plant, unless it have escaped from
+some neighbouring cultivation? Where are our cauliflowers, our lettuces,
+to be found wild, with the same characters as they possess in our
+kitchen gardens?
+
+"The same applies to our domesticated breeds of animals. What a variety
+of breeds has not man produced among fowls and pigeons, of which we can
+find no undomesticated examples!"[279]
+
+The foregoing remarks on the effects of domestication seem to have been
+inspired by those given p. 123 and pp. 168, 169 of this volume.[280]
+
+"Some, doubtless, have changed less than others, owing to their having
+undergone a less protracted domestication, and a less degree of change
+in climate; nevertheless, though our ducks and geese, for example, are
+of the same type as their wild progenitors, they have lost the power of
+long and sustained flight, and have become in other respects
+considerably modified.[281]
+
+"A bird, after having been kept five or six years in a cage, cannot on
+being liberated fly like its brethren which have been always free. Such
+a change in a single lifetime has not effected any transmissible
+modification of type; but captivity, continued during many successive
+generations, would undoubtedly do so. If to the effects of captivity
+there be added also those of changed climate, changed food, and changed
+actions for the purpose of laying hold of food, these, united together
+and become constant, would in the course of time develop an entirely new
+breed."
+
+This, again, is almost identical with the passage from Buffon,[282] p.
+148 of this volume. See also pp. 169, 170.
+
+"Where can our many domestic breeds of dogs be found in a wild state?
+Where are our bulldogs, greyhounds, spaniels, and lapdogs, breeds
+presenting differences which, in wild animals, would be certainly called
+specific? These are all descended from an animal nearly allied to the
+wolf, if not from the wolf itself. Such an animal was domesticated by
+early man, taken at successive intervals into widely different climates,
+trained to different habits, carried by man in his migrations as a
+precious capital into the most distant countries, and crossed from time
+to time with other breeds which had been developed in similar ways.
+Hence our present multiform breeds."[283]
+
+Here, also, it is impossible to forget Buffon's passages on the dog,
+given pp. 121, 122. See also p. 223.
+
+"Observe the gradations which are found between the _ranunculus
+aquatilis_ and the _ranunculus hederaceus_: the latter--a land
+plant--resembles those parts of the former which grow above the surface
+of the water, but not those that grow beneath it.[284]
+
+"The modifications of animals arise more slowly than those of plants;
+they are therefore less easily watched, and less easily assignable to
+their true causes, but they arise none the less surely. As regards these
+causes, the most potent is diversity of the surroundings in which they
+exist, but there are also many others.[285]
+
+"The climate of the same place changes, and the place itself changes
+with changed climate and exposure, but so slowly that we imagine all
+lands to be stable in their conditions. This, however, is not true;
+climatic and other changes induce corresponding changes in environment
+and habit, and these modify the structure of the living forms which are
+subjected to them. Indeed, we see intermediate forms and species
+corresponding to intermediate conditions.
+
+"To the above causes must be ascribed the infinite variety of existing
+forms, independently of any tendency towards progressive
+development."[286]
+
+The reader has now before him a fair sample of "the well-known doctrine
+of inherited habit as advanced by Lamarck."[287] In what way, let me ask
+in passing, does "the case of neuter insects" prove "demonstrative"
+against it, unless it is held equally demonstrative against Mr. Darwin's
+own position? Lamarck continues:--
+
+"The character of any habitable quarter of the globe is _qua_ man
+constant: the constancy of type in species is therefore also _qua_ man
+persistent. But this is an illusion. We establish, therefore, the three
+following propositions:--
+
+"1. That every considerable and sustained change in the surroundings of
+any animal involves a real change in its needs.
+
+"2. That such change of needs involves the necessity of changed action
+in order to satisfy these needs, and, in consequence, of new
+habits.[288]
+
+"3. It follows that such and such parts, formerly less used, are now
+more frequently employed, and in consequence become more highly
+developed; new parts also become insensibly evolved in the creature by
+its own efforts from within.
+
+"From the foregoing these two general laws may be deduced:--
+
+"_Firstly. That in every animal which has not passed its limit of
+development, the more frequent and sustained employment of any organ
+develops and aggrandizes it, giving it a power proportionate to the
+duration of its employment, while the same organ in default of constant
+use becomes insensibly weakened and deteriorated, decreasing
+imperceptibly in power until it finally disappears._[289]
+
+"_Secondly. That these gains or losses of organic development, due to
+use or disuse, are transmitted to offspring, provided they have been
+common to both sexes, or to the animals from which the offspring have
+descended._"[290]
+
+Lamarck now sets himself to establish the fact that animals have
+developed modifications which have been transmitted to their offspring.
+
+"Naturalists," he says, "have believed that the possession of certain
+organs has led to their employment. This is not so: it is need and use
+which have developed the organs, and even called them into existence."
+[I have already sufficiently insisted that it is impossible to dispense
+with either of these two views. Demand and Supply have gone hand in
+hand, each reacting upon the other.] "Otherwise a special act of
+creation would be necessary for every different combination of
+conditions; and it would be also necessary that the conditions should
+remain always constant.
+
+"If this were really so we should have no racehorses like those of
+England, nor drayhorses so heavy in build and so unlike the racehorse;
+for there are no such breeds in a wild state. For the same reason, we
+should have no turnspit dogs with crooked legs, no greyhounds nor
+water-spaniels; we should have no tailless breed of fowls nor fantail
+pigeons, &c. Nor should we be able to cultivate wild plants in our
+gardens, for any length of time we please, without fear of their
+changing.
+
+"'Habit,' says the proverb, 'is a second nature'; what possible meaning
+can this proverb have, if descent with modification is unfounded?[291]
+
+"As regards the circumstances which give rise to variation, the
+principal are climatic changes, different temperatures of any of a
+creature's environments, differences of abode, of habit, of the most
+frequent actions; and lastly, of the means of obtaining food,
+self-defence, reproduction, &c., &c."[292]
+
+Here we have absolute agreement with Dr. Erasmus Darwin,[293] except
+that there seems a tendency in this passage to assign more effect to the
+direct action of conditions than is common with Lamarck. He seems to be
+mixing Buffon and Dr. Darwin.
+
+"In consequence of change in any of these respects, the faculties of an
+animal become extended and enlarged by use: they become diversified
+through the long continuance of the new habits, until little by little
+their whole structure and nature, as well as the organs originally
+affected, participate in the effects of all these influences, and are
+modified to an extent which is capable of transmission to
+offspring."[294]
+
+This sentence alone would be sufficient to show that Lamarck was as much
+alive as Buffon and Dr. Darwin were before him, to the fact that one of
+the most important conditions of an animal's life, is the relation in
+which it stands to the other inhabitants of the same neighbourhood--from
+which the survival of the fittest follows as a self-evident proposition.
+Nothing, therefore, can be more unfounded than the attempt, so
+frequently made by writers who have not read Lamarck, or who think
+others may be trusted not to do so, to represent him as maintaining
+something perfectly different from what is maintained by modern writers
+on evolution. The difference, in so far as there is any difference, is
+one of detail only. Lamarck would not have hesitated to admit, that, if
+animals are modified in a direction which is favourable to them, they
+will have a better chance of surviving and transmitting their
+favourable modifications. In like manner, our modern evolutionists
+should allow that animals are modified not because they subsequently
+survive, but because they have done this or that which has led to their
+modification, and hence to their surviving.
+
+Having established that animals and plants are capable of being
+materially changed in the course of a few generations, Lamarck proceeds
+to show that their modification is due to changed distribution of the
+use and disuse of their organs at any given time.
+
+"_The disuse of an organ_," he writes, "_if it becomes constant in
+consequence of new habits, gradually reduces the organ, and leads
+finally to its disappearance_."[295]
+
+"Thus whales have lost their teeth, though teeth are still found in the
+embryo. So, again, M. Geoffroy has discovered in birds the groove where
+teeth were formerly placed. The ant-eater, which belongs to a genus that
+has long relinquished the habit of masticating its food, is as toothless
+as the whale."[296]
+
+Then are adduced further examples of rudimentary organs, which will be
+given in another place, and need not be repeated here. Speaking of the
+fact, however, that serpents have no legs, though they are higher in the
+scale of life than the batrachians, Lamarck attributes this "to the
+continued habit of trying to squeeze through very narrow places, where
+four feet would be in the way, and would be very little good to them,
+inasmuch as more than four would be wanted in order to turn bodies that
+were already so much elongated."[297]
+
+If it be asked why, on Lamarck's theory, if serpents wanted more legs
+they could not have made them, the answer is that the attempt to do this
+would be to unsettle a question which had been already so long settled,
+that it would be impossible to reopen it. The animal must adapt itself
+to four legs, or must get rid of all or some of them if it does not like
+them; but it has stood so long committed to the theory that if there are
+to be legs at all, there are to be not more than four, that it is
+impossible for it now to see this matter in any other light.
+
+The experiments of M. Brown Sequard on guinea pigs, quoted by Mr.
+Darwin,[298] suggest that the form of the serpent may be due to its
+having lost its legs by successive accidents in squeezing through narrow
+places, and that the wounds having been followed by disease, the
+creature may have bitten the limbs off, in which case the loss might
+have been very readily transmitted to offspring; the animal would
+accordingly take to a sinuous mode of progression that would doubtless
+in time elongate the body still further. M. Brown Sequard "carefully
+recorded" thirteen cases, and saw even a greater number, in which the
+loss of toes by guinea pigs which had gnawed their own toes off, was
+immediately transmitted to offspring. Accidents followed by disease seem
+to have been somewhat overlooked as a possible means of modification.
+The missing forefinger to the hand of the potto[299] would appear at
+first sight to have been lost by some such mishap. Returning to Lamarck,
+we find him saying:--
+
+"Even in the lifetime of a single individual we can see organic changes
+in consequence of changed habits. Thus M. Tenon has constantly found the
+intestinal canal of drunkards to be greatly shorter than that of people
+who do not drink. This is due to the fact that habitual drunkards eat
+but little solid food, so that the stomach and intestines are more
+rarely distended. The same applies to people who lead studious and
+sedentary lives. The stomachs of such persons and of drunkards have
+little power, and a small quantity will fill them, while those of men
+who take plenty of exercise remain in full vigour and are even
+increased."[300]
+
+It becomes now necessary to establish the converse proposition, namely
+that:--
+
+"_The frequent use of an organ increases its power; it even develops the
+organ itself, and makes it acquire dimensions and powers which it is not
+found to have in animals which make no use of such an organ._
+
+"In support of this we see that the bird whose needs lead it to the
+water, in which to find its prey, extends the toes of its feet when it
+wants to strike the water, and move itself upon the surface. The skin at
+the base of the toes of such a bird contracts the habit of extending
+itself from continual practice. To this cause, in the course of time,
+must be attributed the wide membrane which unites the toes of ducks,
+geese, &c. The same efforts to swim, that is to say, to push the water
+for the purpose of moving itself forward, has extended the membrane
+between the toes of frogs, turtles, the otter, and the beaver."[301]
+
+[This is taken, I believe, from Dr. Darwin or Buffon, but I have lost
+the passage, if, indeed, I ever found it. It had been met by Paley some
+years earlier (1802) in the following:--
+
+"There is nothing in the action of swimming as carried on by a bird upon
+the surface of the water that should generate a membrane between the
+toes. As to that membrane it is an action of constant resistance.... The
+web feet of amphibious quadrupeds, seals, otters, &c., fall under the
+same observation."[302]]
+
+"On the other hand those birds whose habits lead them to perch on trees,
+and which have sprung from parents that have long contracted this habit,
+have their toes shaped in a perfectly different manner. Their claws
+become lengthened, sharpened, and curved, so as to enable the creature
+to lay hold of the boughs on which it so often rests. The shore bird
+again, which does not like to swim, is nevertheless continually obliged
+to enter the water when searching after its prey. Not liking to plunge
+its body in the water, it makes every endeavour to extend and lengthen
+its lower limbs. In the course of long time these birds have come to be
+elevated, as it were, on stilts, and have got long legs bare of feathers
+as far as their thighs, and often still higher. The same bird is
+continually trying to extend its neck in order to fish without wetting
+its body, and in the course of time its neck has become modified
+accordingly.[303]
+
+"Swans, indeed, and geese have short legs and very long necks, but this
+is because they plunge their heads as low in the water as they can in
+their search for aquatic larvae and other animalcules, but make no effort
+to lengthen their legs."[304]
+
+This too is taken from some passage which I have either never seen or
+have lost sight of. Paley never gives a reference to an opponent, though
+he frequently does so when quoting an author on his own side, but I can
+hardly doubt that he had in his mind the passage from which Lamarck in
+1809 derived the foregoing, when in 1802 he wrote Sec. 5 of chapter xv. and
+the latter half of chapter xxiii. of his 'Natural Theology.'
+
+"The tongues of the ant-eater and the woodpecker," continues Lamarck,
+"have become elongated from similar causes. Humming birds catch hold of
+things with their tongues; serpents and lizards use their tongues to
+touch and reconnoitre objects in front of them, hence their tongues have
+come to be forked.
+
+"Need--always occasioned by the circumstances in which an animal is
+placed, and followed by sustained efforts at gratification--can not only
+modify an organ, that is to say, augment or reduce it, but can change
+its position when the case requires its removal.[305]
+
+"Ocean fishes have occasion to see what is on either side of them, and
+have their eyes accordingly placed on either side their head. Some
+fishes, however, have their abode near coasts on submarine banks and
+inclinations, and are thus forced to flatten themselves as much as
+possible in order to get as near as they can to the shore. In this
+situation they receive more light from above than from below, and find
+it necessary to pay attention to whatever happens to be above them; this
+need has involved the displacement of their eyes, which now take the
+remarkable position which we observe in the case of soles, turbots,
+plaice, &c. The transfer of position is not even yet complete in the
+case of these fishes, and the eyes are not, therefore, symmetrically
+placed; but they are so with the skate, whose head and whole body are
+equally disposed on either side a longitudinal section. Hence the eyes
+of this fish are placed symmetrically upon the uppermost side.[306]
+
+"The eyes of serpents are placed on the sides and upper portions of the
+head, so that they can easily see what is on one side of them or above
+them; but they can only see very little in front of them, and supplement
+this deficiency of power with their tongue, which is very long and
+supple, and is in many kinds so divided that it can touch more than one
+object at a time; the habit of reconnoitring objects in front of them
+with their tongues has even led to their being able to pass it through
+the end of their nostrils without being obliged to open their jaws.[307]
+
+"Herbivorous mammals, such as the elephant, rhinoceros, ox, buffalo,
+horse, &c., owe their great size to their habit of daily distending
+themselves with food and taking comparatively little exercise. They
+employ their feet for standing, walking, or running, but not for
+climbing trees. Hence the thick horn which covers their toes. These toes
+have become useless to them, and are now in many cases rudimentary only.
+Some pachyderms have five toes covered with horn; some four, some
+three. The ruminants, which appear to be the earliest mammals that
+confined themselves to a life upon the ground, have but two hooves,
+while the horse has only one.[308]
+
+"Some herbivorous animals, especially among the ruminants, have been
+incessantly preyed upon by carnivorous animals, against which their only
+refuge is in flight. Necessity has therefore developed the light and
+active limbs of antelopes, gazelles, &c. Ruminants, only using their
+jaws to graze with, have but little power in them, and therefore
+generally fight with their heads. The males fight frequently with one
+another, and their desires prompt an access of fluids to the parts of
+their heads with which they fight; thus the horns and bosses have arisen
+with which the heads of most of these animals are armed.[309] The
+giraffe owes its long neck to its continued habit of browsing upon
+trees, whence also the great length of its fore legs as compared with
+its hinder ones. Carnivorous animals, in like manner, have had their
+organs modified in correlation with their desires and habits. Some
+climb, some scratch in order to burrow in the earth, some tear their
+prey; they therefore have need of toes, and we find their toes separated
+and armed with claws. Some of them are great hunters, and also plunge
+their claws deeply into the bodies of their victims, trying to tear out
+the part on which they have seized; this habit has developed a size and
+curvature of claw which would impede them greatly in travelling over
+stony ground; they have therefore been obliged to make efforts to draw
+back their too projecting claws, and so, little by little, has arisen
+the peculiar sheath into which cats, tigers, lions, &c., withdraw their
+claws when they no longer wish to use them.[310]
+
+"We see then that the long-sustained and habitual exercise of any part
+of a living organism, in consequence of the necessities engendered by
+its environment, develops such part, and gives it a form which it would
+never have attained if the exercise had not become an habitual action.
+All known animals furnish us with examples of this.[311] If anyone
+maintains that the especially powerful development of any organ has had
+nothing to do with its habitual use--that use has added nothing, and
+disuse detracted nothing from its efficiency, but that the organ has
+always been as we now see it from the creation of the particular species
+onwards--I would ask why cannot our domesticated ducks fly like wild
+ducks? I would also quote a multitude of examples of the effects of use
+and disuse upon our own organs, effects which, if the use and disuse
+were constant for many generations, would become much more marked.
+
+"A great number of facts show, as will be more fully insisted on, that
+when its will prompts an animal to this or that action, the organs which
+are to execute it receive an excess of nervous fluid, and this is the
+determinant cause of the movements necessary for the required action.
+Modifications acquired in this way eventually become permanent in the
+breed that has acquired them, and are transmitted to offspring, without
+the offspring's having itself gone through the processes of acquisition
+which were necessary in the case of the ancestor.[312] Frequent crosses,
+however, with unmodified individuals, destroy the effect produced. It is
+only owing to the isolation of the races of man through geographical and
+other causes, that man himself presents so many varieties, each with a
+distinctive character.
+
+"A review of all existing classes, orders, genera, and species would
+show that their structure, organs, and faculties, are in all cases
+solely attributable to the surroundings to which each creature has been
+subjected by nature, and to the habits which individuals have been
+compelled to contract; and that they are not at all the result of a form
+originally bestowed, which has imposed certain habits upon the
+creature.[313]
+
+"It is unnecessary to multiply instances; the fact is simply this, that
+all animals have certain habits, and that their organization is always
+in perfect harmony with these habits.[314] The conclusion hitherto
+accepted is that the Author of Nature, when he created animals, foresaw
+all the possible circumstances in which they would be placed, and gave
+an unchanging organism to each creature, in accordance with its future
+destiny. The conclusion, on the other hand, here maintained is that
+nature has evolved all existing forms of life successively, beginning
+with the simplest organisms and gradually proceeding to those which are
+more complete. Forms of life have spread themselves throughout all the
+habitable parts of the earth, and each species has received its habits
+and corresponding modification of organs, from the influence of the
+surroundings in which it found itself placed.[315]
+
+"The first conclusion supposes an unvarying organism and unvarying
+conditions. The second, which is my theory (_la mienne propre_),
+supposes that each animal is capable of modifications which in the
+course of generations amount to a wide divergence of type.
+
+"If a single animal can be shown to have varied considerably under
+domestication, the first conclusion is proved to be inadmissible, and
+the second to be in conformity with the laws of nature."
+
+This is a milder version of Buffon's conclusion (see _ante_, pp. 90,
+91). It is a little grating to read the words "la mienne propre,"
+and to recall no mention of Buffon in the 'Philosophie Zoologique.'
+
+"Animal forms then are the result of conditions of life and of the
+habits engendered thereby. With new forms new faculties are developed,
+and thus nature has little by little evolved the existing
+differentiations of animal and vegetable life."[316]
+
+Lamarck makes no exception in man's favour to the rule of descent with
+modification. He supposes that a race of quadrumanous apes gradually
+acquired the upright position in walking, with a corresponding
+modification of the feet and facial angle. Such a race having become
+master of all the other animals, spread itself over all parts of the
+world that suited it. It hunted out the other higher races which were in
+a condition to dispute with it for enjoyment of the world's
+productions, and drove them to take refuge in such places as it did not
+desire to occupy. It checked the increase of the races nearest itself,
+and kept them exiled in woods and desert places, so that their further
+development was arrested, while itself, able to spread in all
+directions, to multiply without opposition, and to lead a social life,
+it developed new requirements one after another, which urged it to
+industrial pursuits, and gradually perfected its capabilities.
+Eventually this pre-eminent race, having acquired absolute supremacy,
+came to be widely different from even the most perfect of the lower
+animals.
+
+"Certain apes approach man more nearly than any other animal approaches
+him; nevertheless, they are far inferior to him, both in bodily and
+mental capacity. Some of them frequently stand upright, but as they do
+not habitually maintain this attitude, their organization has not been
+sufficiently modified to prevent it from being irksome to them to stand
+for long together. They fall on all fours immediately at the approach of
+danger. This reveals their true origin.[317]
+
+"But is the upright position altogether natural, even to man? He uses it
+in moving from place to place, but still standing is a fatiguing
+position, and one which can only be maintained for a limited time, and
+by the aid of muscular contraction. The vertebrate column does not pass
+through the axis of the head so as to maintain it in like equilibrium
+with other limbs. The head, chest, stomach, and intestines weigh almost
+entirely on the anterior part of the vertebrate column, and this column
+itself is placed obliquely, so that, as M. Richerand has observed,
+continual watchfulness and muscular exertion are necessary to avoid the
+falls towards which the weight and disposition of our parts are
+continually inclining us. 'Children,' he remarks, 'have a constant
+tendency to assume the position of quadrupeds.'"[318]
+
+"Surely these facts should reveal man's origin as analogous to that of
+the other mammals, if his organization only be looked to. But the
+following consideration must be added. New wants, developed in societies
+which had become numerous, must have correspondingly multiplied the
+ideas of this dominant race, whose individuals must have therefore
+gradually felt the need of fuller communication with each other. Hence
+the necessity for increasing and varying the number of the signs
+suitable for mutual understanding. It is plain therefore that incessant
+efforts would be made in this direction.[319]
+
+"The lower animals, though often social, have been kept in too great
+subjection for any such development of power. They continue, therefore,
+stationary as regards their wants and ideas, very few of which need be
+communicated from one individual to another. A few movements of the
+body, a few simple cries and whistles, or inflexions of voice, would
+suffice for their purpose. With the dominant race, on the other hand,
+the continued multiplication of ideas which it was desirable to
+communicate rapidly, would exhaust the power of pantomimic gesture and
+of all possible inflexions of the voice--therefore by a succession of
+efforts this race arrived at the utterance of articulate sounds. A few
+only would be at first made use of, and these would be supplemented by
+inflexions of the voice: presently they would increase in number,
+variety, and appropriateness, with the increase of needs and of the
+efforts made to speak. Habitual exercise would increase the power of the
+lips and tongue to articulate distinctly.
+
+"The diversity of language is due to geographical distribution, with
+consequent greater or less isolation of certain races, and corruption of
+the signs originally agreed upon for each idea. Man's own wants,
+therefore, will have achieved the whole result. They will have given
+rise to endeavour, and habitual use will have developed the organs of
+articulation."[320]
+
+How, let me ask again, is "the case of neuter insects" "demonstrative"
+against the "well-known" theory put forward in the foregoing chapter?
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[208] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i., edited by M. Martins, 1873, pp. 25, 26.
+
+[209] 'Phil. Zool.' tom. i. pp. 26, 27.
+
+[210] Page 28.
+
+[211] Pages 28-31.
+
+[212] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. pp. 34, 35.
+
+[213] Page 42.
+
+[214] Page 46.
+
+[215] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 50.
+
+[216] Pages 50, 51.
+
+[217] 'Origin of Species,' p. 395, ed. 1876.
+
+[218] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 61.
+
+[219] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 62.
+
+[220] Page 63.
+
+[221] Page 64.
+
+[222] Page 65.
+
+[223] Page 67.
+
+[224] Chap. iii.
+
+[225] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 72.
+
+[226] Pages 71-73.
+
+[227] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 74, 75.
+
+[228] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. pp. 75-77.
+
+[229] 'Origin of Species,' p. 104, ed. 1876.
+
+[230] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 79.
+
+[231] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. pp. 79, 80.
+
+[232] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 80.
+
+[233] Page 80.
+
+[234] Ed. 1876.
+
+[235] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 81.
+
+[236] 'Origin of Species,' p. 241.
+
+[237] 'Phil. Zool.,' p. 82.
+
+[238] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 83.
+
+[239] Pages 349-351.
+
+[240] Page 84.
+
+[241] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 88.
+
+[242] Page 90.
+
+[243] 'Origin of Species,' p. 3.
+
+[244] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 94.
+
+[245] Pages 95-96.
+
+[246] Page 97.
+
+[247] Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 98.
+
+[248] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 111.
+
+[249] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 112.
+
+[250] See pp. 227 and 259 of this book.
+
+[251] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 113.
+
+[252] Page 113.
+
+[253] 'Phil Zool.,' tom. i. p. 113.
+
+[254] This passage is rather obscure. I give it therefore in the
+original:--
+
+"Ainsi les naturalistes ayant remarque que beaucoup d'especes, certains
+genres, et meme quelques familles paraissent dans une sorte d'isolement,
+quant a leurs caracteres, plusieurs se sont imagines que les etres
+vivants, dans l'un ou l'autre regne, s'avoisinaient, ou s'eloignaient
+entre eux, relativement a leurs _rapports naturels_, dans une
+disposition semblable aux differents points d'une carte de geographie ou
+d'une mappemonde. Ils regardent les petites series bien prononcees qu'on
+a nommees familles naturelles, comme devant etre disposees entre elles
+de maniere a former une reticulation. Cette idee qui a paru sublime a
+quelques modernes, est evidemment une erreur, et, sans doute, elle se
+dissipera des qu'on aura des connaissances plus profondes et plus
+generales de l'organisation, et surtout lorsqu'on distinguera ce qui
+appartient a l'influence des lieux d'habitation et des habitudes
+contractees, de ce qui resulte des progres plus ou moins avances dans la
+composition ou le perfectionnement de l'organisation."--(p. 120).
+
+[255] 'Origin of Species,' pp. 265, 266.
+
+[256] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 121.
+
+[257] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 122.
+
+[258] 'Origin of Species,' pp. 122, 123.
+
+[259] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 123.
+
+[260] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 123.
+
+[261] 'Origin of Species,' chap. xiv.
+
+[262] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 123.
+
+[263] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 140.
+
+[264] Page 142.
+
+[265] Page 143.
+
+[266] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 143.
+
+[267] Page 144.
+
+[268] Ibid.
+
+[269] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 145.
+
+[270] Page 146.
+
+[271] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 221.
+
+[272] Page 222.
+
+[273] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 223.
+
+[274] Page 224.
+
+[275] Page 223.
+
+[276] Page 225.
+
+[277] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 225.
+
+[278] Page 226.
+
+[279] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 228.
+
+[280] See Buffon, 'Hist. Nat.,' tom. v. pp. 196, 197, and Supp. tom. v.
+pp. 250-253.
+
+[281] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 229.
+
+[282] 'Hist. Nat.,' tom. xi. p. 290.
+
+[283] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 231.
+
+[284] Page 231. See Dr. Darwin's note on _Trapa natans_, 'Botanic
+Garden,' part ii. canto 4, l. 204.
+
+[285] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 232.
+
+[286] Page 233. See Buffon on Climate, tom. ix., 'The Animals of the Old
+and New Worlds.'
+
+[287] 'Origin of Species,' p. 233, ed. 1876.
+
+[288] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p 234.
+
+[289] Page 235.
+
+[290] Page 236.
+
+[291] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 237.
+
+[292] Page 238.
+
+[293] See _ante_, pp. 220-228.
+
+[294] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 239.
+
+[295] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p 240.
+
+[296] Page 241.
+
+[297] Page 245.
+
+[298] 'Animals and Plants under Domestication,' vol. i. p. 467, &c.
+
+[299] See frontispiece to Professor Mivart's 'Genesis of Species.'
+
+[300] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 247.
+
+[301] Page 248.
+
+[302] 'Nat. Theol.,' vol. xii., end of Sec. viii.
+
+[303] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 249.
+
+[304] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 250.
+
+[305] Page 250.
+
+[306] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 251.
+
+[307] Page 252.
+
+[308] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 253.
+
+[309] Page 254.
+
+[310] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 256.
+
+[311] Page 257.
+
+[312] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 259.
+
+[313] Page 260.
+
+[314] Page 263.
+
+[315] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 263.
+
+[316] Page 265.
+
+[317] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 343.
+
+[318] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 343.
+
+[319] Page 346.
+
+[320] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 347.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+MR. PATRICK MATTHEW, MM. ETIENNE AND ISIDORE GEOFFROY ST. HILAIRE, AND
+MR. HERBERT SPENCER.
+
+
+The same complaint must be made against Mr. Matthew's excellent survey
+of the theory of evolution, as against Dr. Erasmus Darwin's original
+exposition of the same theory, namely, that it is too short. It may be
+very true that brevity is the soul of wit, but the leaders of science
+will generally succeed in burking new-born wit, unless the brevity of
+its soul is found compatible with a body of some bulk.
+
+Mr. Darwin writes thus concerning Mr. Matthew in the historical sketch
+to which I have already more than once referred.
+
+"In 1831 Mr. Patrick Matthew published his work on 'Naval Timber and
+Arboriculture,' in which he gives precisely the same view on the origin
+of species as that (presently to be alluded to) propounded by Mr.
+Wallace and myself in the 'Linnean Journal,' and as that enlarged in the
+present volume. Unfortunately the view was given by Mr. Matthew very
+briefly, in scattered passages in an appendix to a work on a different
+subject, so that it remained unnoticed until Mr. Matthew himself drew
+attention to it in the 'Gardener's Chronicle' for April 7, 1860. The
+differences of Mr. Matthew's view from mine are not of much importance;
+he seems to consider that the world was nearly depopulated at successive
+periods, and then re-stocked, and he gives as an alternative, that new
+forms may be generated 'without the presence of any mould or germ of
+former aggregates.' I am not sure that I understand some passages; but
+it seems that he attributes much influence to the direct action of the
+conditions of life. He clearly saw, however, the full force of the
+principle of natural selection."[321]
+
+Nothing could well be more misleading. If Mr. Matthew's view of the
+origin of species is "precisely the same as that" propounded by Mr.
+Darwin, it is hard to see how Mr. Darwin can call those of Lamarck and
+Dr. Erasmus Darwin "erroneous"; for Mr. Matthew's is nothing but an
+excellent and well-digested summary of the conclusions arrived at by
+these two writers and by Buffon. If, again, Mr. Darwin is correct in
+saying that Mr. Matthew "clearly saw the full force of the principle of
+natural selection," he condemns the view he has himself taken of it in
+his 'Origin of Species,' for Mr. Darwin has assigned a far more
+important and very different effect to the fact that the fittest
+commonly survive in the struggle for existence, than Mr. Matthew has
+done. Mr. Matthew sees a cause underlying all variations; he takes the
+most teleological or purposive view of organism that has been taken by
+any writer (not a theologian) except myself, while Mr. Darwin's view, if
+not the least teleological, is certainly nearly so, and his confession
+of inability to detect any general cause underlying variations, leaves,
+as will appear presently, less than common room for ambiguity. Here are
+Mr. Matthew's own words:--
+
+"There is a law universal in nature, tending to render every
+reproductive being the best possibly suited to the condition that its
+kind, or that organized matter is susceptible of, and which appears
+intended to model the physical and mental or instinctive, powers to
+their highest perfection, and to continue them so. This law sustains the
+lion in his strength, the hare in her swiftness, and the fox in his
+wiles. As nature in all her modifications of life has a power of
+increase far beyond what is needed to supply the place of what falls by
+Time's decay, those individuals who possess not the requisite strength,
+swiftness, hardihood, or cunning, fall prematurely without
+reproducing--either a prey to their natural devourers, or sinking under
+disease, generally induced by want of nourishment, their place being
+occupied by the more perfect of their own kind, who are pressing on the
+means of existence.
+
+"Throughout this volume, we have felt considerable inconvenience from
+the adopted dogmatical classification of plants, and have all along been
+floundering between species and variety, which certainly under culture
+soften into each other. A particular conformity, each after its own
+kind, when in a state of nature, termed species, no doubt exists to a
+considerable degree. This conformity has existed during the last forty
+centuries; geologists discover a like particular conformity--fossil
+species--through the deep deposition of each great epoch; but they also
+discover an almost complete difference to exist between the species or
+stamp of life of one epoch from that of every other. We are therefore
+led to admit either a repeated miraculous conception, or _a power of
+change under change of circumstances_ to belong to living organized
+matter, or rather to the congeries of inferior life which appears to
+form superior." (By this I suppose Mr. Matthew to imply his assent to
+the theory, that our personality or individuality is but as it were "the
+consensus, or full flowing river of a vast number of subordinate
+individualities or personalities, each one of which is a living being
+with thoughts and wishes of its own.") "The derangements and changes in
+organized existence, induced by a change of circumstances from the
+interference of man, afford us proof of the plastic quality of superior
+life; and the likelihood that circumstances have been very different in
+the different epochs, though steady in each, tend strongly to heighten
+the probability of the latter theory.
+
+"When we view the immense calcareous and bituminous formations,
+principally from the waters and atmosphere, and consider the oxidations
+and depositions which have taken place, either gradually or during some
+of the great convulsions, it appears at least probable that the liquid
+elements containing life have varied considerably at different times in
+composition and weight; that our atmosphere has contained a much greater
+proportion of carbonic acid or oxygen; and our waters, aided by excess
+of carbonic acid, and greater heat resulting from greater density of
+atmosphere, have contained a greater quantity of lime, and other mineral
+solutions. Is the inference, then, unphilosophic that living things
+which are proved to have _a circumstance-suiting power_ (a very slight
+change of circumstance by culture inducing a corresponding change of
+character), may have gradually accommodated themselves to the variations
+of the elements containing them, and without new creation, have
+presented the diverging changeable phenomena of past and present
+organized existence?
+
+"The destructive liquid currents before which the hardest mountains have
+been swept and comminuted into gravel, sand, and mud, which intervened
+between and divided these epochs, probably extending over the whole
+surface of the globe and destroying nearly all living things, must have
+reduced existence so much that an unoccupied field would be formed for
+new diverging ramifications of life, which from the connected sexual
+system of vegetables, and the natural instinct of animals to herd and
+combine with their own kind, would fall into specific groups--these
+remnants in the course of time moulding and accommodating their being
+anew to the change of circumstances, and to every possible means of
+subsistence--and the millions of ages of regularity which appear to have
+followed between the epochs, probably after this accommodation was
+completed, affording fossil deposit of regular specific character.
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"In endeavouring to trace ... the principle of these changes of fashion
+which have taken place in the domiciles of life the following questions
+occur: Do they arise from admixture of species nearly allied producing
+intermediate species? Are they the diverging ramifications of the
+living principle under modification of circumstance? or have they
+resulted from the combined agency of both?
+
+"_Is there only one living principle? Does organized existence, and
+perhaps all material existence, consist of one Proteus principle of
+life_ capable of gradual circumstance-suited modifications and
+aggregations without bound, under the solvent or motion-giving principle
+of heat or light? There is more beauty and unity of design in this
+continual balancing of life to circumstance, and greater conformity to
+those dispositions of nature that are manifest to us, than in total
+destruction and new creation. It is improbable that much of this
+diversification is owing to commixture of species nearly allied; all
+change by this appears very limited and confined within the bounds of
+what is called species; the progeny of the same parents under great
+difference of circumstance, might in several generations even become
+distinct species, incapable of co-reproduction.
+
+"The self-regulating adaptive disposition of organized life may, in
+part, be traced to the extreme fecundity of nature, who, as before
+stated, has in all the varieties of her offspring a prolific power much
+beyond (in many cases a thousand fold) what is necessary to fill up the
+vacancies caused by senile decay. As the field of existence is limited
+and preoccupied, it is only the hardier, more robust, better suited to
+circumstance individuals, who are able to struggle forward to maturity,
+these inhabiting only the situations to which they have _superior
+adaptation and greater power of occupancy than any other kind; the
+weaker and less circumstance-suited being prematurely destroyed_. This
+principle is in constant action; it regulates the colour, the figure,
+the capacities, and instincts; those individuals in each species whose
+colour and covering are best suited to concealment or protection from
+enemies, or defence from inclemencies and vicissitudes of climate, whose
+figure is best accommodated to health, strength, defence, and support;
+whose capacities and instincts can best regulate the physical energies
+to self-advantage according to circumstances--in such immense waste of
+primary and youthful life those only come forward to maturity from the
+strict ordeal by which nature tests their adaptation to her standard of
+perfection and fitness to continue their kind by reproduction.
+
+"From the unremitting operation of this law acting in concert with the
+tendency which the progeny have to take the more particular qualities of
+the parents, together with the connected sexual system in vegetables and
+instinctive limitation to its own kind in animals, a considerable
+uniformity of figure, colour, and character is induced constituting
+species; the breed gradually acquiring the very best possible adaptation
+of these to its condition which it is susceptible of, and when
+alteration of circumstance occurs, thus changing in character to suit
+these, as far as its nature is susceptible of change.
+
+"This circumstance-adaptive law operating upon the slight but continued
+natural disposition to sport in the progeny (seedling variety) _does not
+preclude the supposed influence which volition or sensation may have had
+over the configuration of the body_. To examine into the disposition to
+sport in the progeny, even when there is only one parent as in many
+vegetables, and to investigate how much variation is modified by the
+mind or nervous sensation of the parents, or of the living thing itself
+during its progress to maturity; how far it depends upon external
+circumstance, and how far on the will, irritability, and muscular
+exertion, is open to examination and experiment. In the first place, we
+ought to examine its dependency upon the preceding links of the
+particular chain of life, variety being often merely types or
+approximations of former parentage; thence the variation of the family
+as well as of the individual must be embraced by our experiments.
+
+"This continuation of family type, not broken by casual particular
+aberration, is mental as well as corporeal, and is exemplified in many
+of the dispositions or instincts of particular races of men. _These
+innate or continuous ideas or habits seem proportionally greater in the
+insect tribes, and in those especially of shorter revolution; and
+forming an abiding memory, may resolve much of the enigma of instinct,
+and the foreknowledge which these tribes have of what is necessary to
+completing their round of life, reducing this to knowledge or
+impressions and habits acquired by a long experience._
+
+"This greater continuity of existence, or rather continuity of
+perceptions and impressions in insects, is highly probable; _it is even
+difficult in some to ascertain the particular steps when each individual
+commences_, under the different phases of egg, larva, pupa, or if much
+consciousness of individuality exists. The continuation of reproduction
+for several generations by the females alone in some of these tribes,
+_tends to the probability of the greater continuity of existence; and
+the subdivisions of life by cuttings (even in animal life), at any rate,
+must stagger the advocate of individuality_.
+
+"Among the millions of specific varieties of living things which occupy
+the humid portions of the surface of our planet, as far back as can be
+traced, there does not appear, with the exception of man, to have been
+any particular engrossing race, but a pretty fair balance of power of
+occupancy--or rather most wonderful variation of circumstance parallel
+to the nature of every species, _as if circumstance and species had
+grown up together_. There are, indeed, several races which have
+threatened ascendancy in some particular regions; but it is man alone
+from whom any general imminent danger to the existence of his brethren
+is to be dreaded.
+
+"As far back as history reaches, man had already had considerable
+influence, and had made encroachments upon his fellow denizens, probably
+occasioning the destruction of many species, and the production and
+continuation of a number of varieties, and even species, which he found
+more suited to supply his wants, but which from the infirmity of their
+condition--_not having undergone selection by the law of nature_, of
+which we have spoken--cannot maintain their ground without culture and
+protection.
+
+"It is only however in the present age that man has begun to reap the
+fruits of his tedious education, and has proven how much 'knowledge is
+power.' He has now acquired a dominion over the material world, and a
+consequent power of increase, so as to render it probable that the whole
+surface of the earth may soon be overrun by this engrossing anomaly, to
+the annihilation of every wonderful and beautiful variety of animal
+existence which does not administer to his wants, principally as
+laboratories of preparation to befit cruder elemental matter for
+assimilation by his organs.
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"The consequences are being now developed of our deplorable ignorance
+of, or inattention to, one of the most evident traits of natural
+history--that vegetables, as well as animals, are generally liable to an
+almost unlimited diversification, regulated by climate, soil,
+nourishment, and new commixture of already-formed varieties. In those
+with which man is most intimate, and where his agency in throwing them
+from their natural locality and disposition has brought out this power
+of diversification in stronger shades, it has been forced upon his
+notice, as in man himself, in the dog, horse, cow, sheep, poultry,--in
+the apple, pear, plum, gooseberry, potato, pea, which sport in infinite
+varieties, differing considerably in size, colour, taste, firmness of
+texture, period of growth, almost in every recognizable quality. In all
+these kinds man is influential in preventing deterioration, by careful
+selection of the largest or most valuable as breeders."[322]
+
+
+_Etienne and Isidore Geoffroy._
+
+"Both Cuvier and Etienne Geoffroy," says Isidore Geoffroy, "had early
+perceived the philosophical importance of a question (evolution) which
+must be admitted as--with that of unity of composition--the greatest in
+natural history. We find them laying it down in the year 1795 in one of
+their joint 'Memoirs' (on the Orangs), in the very plainest terms, in
+the following question, 'Must we see,' they inquire, 'what we commonly
+call species, as the modified descendants of the same original form?'
+
+"Both were at that time doubtful. Some years afterwards Cuvier not only
+answered this question in the negative, but declared, and pretended to
+prove, that the same forms have been perpetuated from the beginning of
+things. Lamarck, his antagonist _par excellence_ on this point,
+maintained the contrary position with no less distinctness, showing that
+living beings are unceasingly variable with change of their
+surroundings, and giving with some boldness a zoological genesis in
+conformity with this doctrine.
+
+"Geoffroy St. Hilaire had long pondered over this difficult subject. The
+doctrine which in his old age he so firmly defended, does not seem to
+have been conceived by him till after he had completed his 'Philosophie
+Anatomique,' and except through lectures delivered orally to the museum
+and the faculty, it was not published till 1828; nor again in the work
+then published do we find his theory in its neatest expression and
+fullest development."
+
+Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire tells us in a note that the work referred
+to as first putting his father's views before the public in a printed
+form, was a report to the Academy of Sciences on a memoir by M. Roulin;
+but that before this report some indications of them are to be found in
+a paper on the Gavials, published in 1825. Their best rendering,
+however, and fullest development is in several memoirs, published in
+succession, between the years 1828 and 1837.
+
+"This doctrine," he continues, "is diametrically opposed to that of
+Cuvier, and is not entirely the same as Lamarck's. Geoffroy St. Hilaire
+refutes the one, he restrains and corrects the other. Cuvier, according
+to him, sums up against the facts, while Lamarck goes further than they
+will bear him out. Essentially however on questions of this nature he is
+a follower of Lamarck, and took pleasure on several occasions in
+describing himself as the disciple of his illustrious _confrere_."[323]
+
+I have been unable to detect any substantial difference of opinion
+between Geoffroy St. Hilaire and Lamarck, except that the first
+maintained that a line must be drawn somewhere--and did not draw
+it--while the latter said that no line could be drawn, and therefore
+drew none. Mr. Darwin is quite correct in saying that Geoffroy St.
+Hilaire "relied chiefly on the conditions of life, or the 'monde
+ambiant,' as the cause of change." But this is only Lamarck over again,
+for though Lamarck attributes variation directly to change of habits in
+the creature, he is almost wearisome in his insistence on the fact that
+the habit will not change, unless the conditions of life also do so.
+With both writers then it is change in the relative positions of the
+exterior circumstances, and of the organism, which results in variation,
+and finally in specific modification.
+
+Here is another sketch of Etienne Geoffroy, also by his son Isidore.
+
+In 1795, while Lamarck was still a believer in immutability, Etienne
+Geoffroy St. Hilaire "had ventured to say that species might well be
+'degenerations from a single type,'" but, though he never lost sight of
+the question, he waited more than a quarter of a century before passing
+from meditation to action. "He at length put forward his opinion in
+1825, he returned to it, but still briefly, in 1828 and 1829, and did
+not set himself to develop and establish it till the year 1831--the year
+following the memorable discussion in the Academy, on the unity of
+organic composition."[324]
+
+"If," says his son, "he began by paying homage to his illustrious
+precursor, and by laying it down as a general axiom, that there is no
+such thing as fixity in nature, and especially in animated nature, he
+follows this adhesion to the general doctrine of variability by a
+dissent which goes to the very heart of the matter. And this dissent
+becomes deeper and deeper in his later works. Not only is Geoffroy St.
+Hilaire at pains to deny the unlimited extension of variability which
+is the foundation of the Lamarckian system, but he moreover and
+particularly declines to explain those degenerations which he admits as
+possible, by changes of action and habit on the part of the creature
+varying--Lamarck's favourite hypothesis, which he laboured to
+demonstrate without even succeeding in making it appear probable."[325]
+
+Isidore Geoffroy then declares that his father, "though chronologically
+a follower of Lamarck, should be ranked philosophically as having
+continued the work of Buffon, to whom all his differences of opinion
+with Lamarck serve to bring him nearer."[326] If he had understood
+Buffon he would not have said so.
+
+His conclusions are thus summed up:--"Geoffroy St. Hilaire maintains
+that species are variable if the environment varies in character;
+differences, then, more or less considerable according to the power of
+the modifying causes _may have_ been produced in the course of time, and
+the living forms of to-day _may be_ the descendants of more ancient
+forms."[327]
+
+It is not easy to see that much weight should be attached to Geoffroy
+St. Hilaire's opinion. He seems to have been a person of hesitating
+temperament, under an impression that there was an opening just then
+through which a judicious trimmer might pass himself in among men of
+greater power. If his son has described his teaching correctly, it
+amounts practically to a _bona fide_ endorsement of what Buffon can only
+be considered to have pretended to believe. The same objection that must
+be fatal to the view pretended by Buffon, is so in like manner to those
+put forward seriously of both the Geoffroys--for Isidore Geoffroy
+followed his father, but leant a little more openly towards Lamarck. He
+writes:--
+
+"The characters of species are neither absolutely fixed, as has been
+maintained by some; nor yet, still more, indefinitely variable as
+according to others. They are fixed for each species as long as that
+species continues to reproduce itself in an unchanged environment; but
+they become modified if the environment changes."[328]
+
+This is all that Lamarck himself would expect, as no one could be more
+fully aware than M. Geoffroy, who, however, admits that degeneration may
+extend to generic differences.[329]
+
+I have been unable to find in M. Isidore Geoffroy's work anything like a
+refutation of Lamarck's contention that the modifications in animals and
+plants are due to the needs and wishes of the animals and plants
+themselves; on the contrary, to some extent he countenances this view
+himself, for he says, "hence arise notable differences of habitation and
+climate, and these in their turn induce secondary differences in diet
+_and even in habits_."[330] From which it must follow, though I cannot
+find it said expressly, that the author attributes modification in some
+measure to changed habits, and therefore to the changed desires from
+which the change of habits has arisen; but in the main he appears to
+refer modification to the direct action of a changed environment.
+
+
+_Mr. Herbert Spencer._
+
+"Those who cavalierly reject the theory of Lamarck and his followers as
+not adequately supported by facts," wrote Mr. Herbert Spencer,[331]
+"seem quite to forget that their own theory is supported by no facts at
+all"--inasmuch as no one pretends to have seen an act of direct
+creation. Mr. Spencer points out that, according to the best
+authorities, there are some 320,000 species of plants now existing, and
+about 2,000,000 species of animals, including insects, and that if the
+extinct forms which have successively appeared and disappeared be added
+to these, there cannot have existed in all less than some ten million
+species. "Which," asks Mr. Spencer, "is the most rational theory about
+these ten millions of species? Is it most likely that there have been
+ten millions of special creations? or, is it most likely that by
+continual modification _due to change of circumstances_, ten millions of
+varieties may have been produced as varieties are being produced still?"
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"Even could the supporters of the development hypothesis merely show
+that the production of species by the process of modification is
+conceivable, they would be in a better position than their opponents.
+But they can do much more than this; they can show that the process of
+modification has effected and is effecting great changes in all
+organisms, subject to modifying influences ... they can show that any
+existing species--animal or vegetable--when placed under conditions
+different from its previous ones, _immediately begins to undergo certain
+changes of structure_ fitting it for the new conditions. They can show
+that in successive generations these changes continue until ultimately
+the new conditions become the natural ones. They can show that in
+cultivated plants and domesticated animals, and in the several races of
+men, these changes have uniformly taken place. They can show that the
+degrees of difference, so produced, are often, as in dogs, greater than
+those on which distinctions of species are in other cases founded. They
+can show that it is a matter of dispute whether some of these modified
+forms _are_ varieties or modified species. They can show too that the
+changes daily taking place in ourselves; the facility that attends long
+practice, and the loss of aptitude that begins when practice ceases; the
+strengthening of passions habitually gratified, and the weakening of
+those habitually curbed; the development of every faculty, bodily, moral
+or intellectual, according to the use made of it, are all explicable on
+this same principle. And thus they can show that throughout all organic
+nature there _is_ at work a modifying influence of the kind they assign
+as the cause of these specific differences, an influence which, though
+slow in its action, does in time, if the circumstances demand it,
+produce marked changes; an influence which, to all appearance, would
+produce in the millions of years, and under the great varieties of
+condition which geological records imply, any amount of change."
+
+This leaves nothing to be desired. It is Buffon, Dr. Darwin, and
+Lamarck, well expressed. Those were the days before "Natural Selection"
+had been discharged into the waters of the evolution controversy, like
+the secretion of a cuttle fish. Changed circumstances immediately induce
+changed habits, and hence a changed use of some organs, and disuse of
+others: as a consequence of this, organs and instincts become changed,
+"and these changes continue in successive generations, until ultimately
+the new conditions become the natural ones." This is the whole theory of
+"development," "evolution," or "descent with modification." Volumes may
+be written to adduce the details which warrant us in accepting it, and
+to explain the causes which have brought it about, but I fail to see how
+anything essential can be added to the theory itself, which is here so
+well supported by Mr. Spencer, and which is exactly as Lamarck left it.
+All that remains is to have a clear conception of the oneness of
+personality between parents and offspring, of the eternity, and latency,
+of memory, and of the unconsciousness with which habitual actions are
+repeated, which last point, indeed, Mr. Spencer has himself touched
+upon.
+
+Mr. Spencer continues--"That by any series of changes a zoophyte should
+ever become a mammal, seems to those who are not familiar with zoology,
+and who have not seen how clear becomes the relationship between the
+simplest and the most complex forms, when all intermediate forms are
+examined, a very grotesque notion ... they never realize the fact that
+by small increments of modification, any amount of modification may in
+time be generated. That surprise which they feel on finding one whom
+they last saw as a boy, grown into a man, becomes incredulity when the
+degree of change is greater. Nevertheless, abundant instances are at
+hand of the mode in which we may pass to the most diverse forms by
+insensible gradations."
+
+Nothing can be more satisfactory and straightforward. I will make one
+more quotation from this excellent article:--
+
+"But the blindness of those who think it absurd to suppose that complex
+organic forms may have arisen by successive modifications out of simple
+ones, becomes astonishing when we remember that complex organic forms
+are daily being thus produced. A tree differs from a seed immeasurably
+in every respect--in bulk, in structure, in colour, in form, in specific
+gravity, in chemical composition--differs so greatly that no visible
+resemblance of any kind can be pointed out between them. Yet is the one
+changed in the course of a few years into the other--changed so
+gradually that at no moment can it be said, 'Now the seed ceases to be,
+and the tree exists.' What can be more widely contrasted than a
+newly-born child, and the small, semi-transparent gelatinous spherule
+constituting the human ovum? The infant is so complex in structure that
+a cyclopaedia is needed to describe its constituent parts. The germinal
+vesicle is so simple, that a line will contain all that can be said of
+it. Nevertheless, a few months suffices to develop the one out of the
+other, and that too by a series of modifications so small, that were
+the embryo examined at successive minutes, not even a microscope would
+disclose any sensible changes. That the uneducated and ill-educated
+should think the hypothesis that all races of beings, man inclusive, may
+in process of time have been evolved from the simplest monad a ludicrous
+one is not to be wondered at. But for the physiologist, who knows that
+every individual being _is_ so evolved--who knows further that in their
+earliest condition the germs of all plants and animals whatsoever are so
+similar, 'that there is no appreciable distinction among them which
+would enable it to be determined whether a particular molecule is the
+germ of a conferva or of an oak, of a zoophyte or of a man'[332]--for
+him to make a difficulty of the matter is inexcusable. Surely, if a
+single structureless cell may, when subjected to certain influences,
+become a man in the space of twenty years, there is nothing absurd in
+the hypothesis that under certain other influences a cell may, in the
+course of millions of years, give origin to the human race. The two
+processes are generically the same, and differ only in length and
+complexity."
+
+     *     *     *     *     *
+
+The very important extract from Professor Hering's lecture should
+perhaps have been placed here. The reader will, however, find it on page
+199.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[321] 'Origin of Species,' Hist. Sketch, p. xvi.
+
+[322] See 'Naval Timber and Arboriculture,' by Patrick Matthew,
+published by Adam and C. Black, Edinburgh, and Longmans and Co., London,
+1831, pp. 364, 365, 381-388, and also 106-108, 'Gardeners' Chronicle,'
+April 7, 1860.
+
+[323] 'Vie et Doctrine Scientifique de Geoffroy Etienne St. Hilaire,'
+Paris, Strasbourg, 1847, pp. 344-346.
+
+[324] 'Hist. Nat. Gen.,' tom. ii. 413.
+
+[325] 'Hist. Nat. Gen.,' tom. ii. p. 415.
+
+[326] Ibid.
+
+[327] Ibid. p. 421.
+
+[328] 'Hist. Nat. Gen.,' vol. ii. p. 431, 1859.
+
+[329] 'Origin of Species,' Hist. Sketch, p. xix.
+
+[330] 'Hist. Nat. Gen.,' vol. ii. p. 432.
+
+[331] See 'The Leader,' March 20, 1852, "The Haythorne Papers."
+
+[332] Carpenter's 'Principles of Physiology', 3rd ed., p. 867.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+MAIN POINTS OF AGREEMENT AND OF DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE OLD AND NEW
+THEORIES OF EVOLUTION.
+
+
+Having put before the reader with some fulness the theories of the three
+writers to whom we owe the older or teleological view of evolution, I
+will now compare that view more closely with the theory of Mr. Darwin
+and Mr. Wallace, to whom, in spite of my profound difference of opinion
+with them on the subject of natural selection, I admit with pleasure
+that I am under deep obligation. For the sake of brevity, I shall take
+Lamarck as the exponent of the older view, and Mr. Darwin as that of the
+one now generally accepted.
+
+We have seen, that up to a certain point there is very little difference
+between Lamarck and Mr. Darwin. Lamarck maintains that animals and
+plants vary: so does Mr. Darwin. Lamarck maintains that variations
+having once arisen have a tendency to be transmitted to offspring and
+accumulated: so does Mr. Darwin. Lamarck maintains that the accumulation
+of variations, so small, each one of them, that it cannot be, or is not
+noticed, nevertheless will lead in the course of that almost infinite
+time during which life has existed upon earth, to very wide differences
+in form, structure, and instincts: so does Mr. Darwin. Finally, Lamarck
+declares that all, or nearly all, the differences which we observe
+between various kinds of animals and plants are due to this exceedingly
+gradual and imperceptible accumulation, during many successive
+generations, of variations each one of which was in the outset small: so
+does Mr. Darwin. But in the above we have a complete statement of the
+fact of evolution, or descent with modification--wanting nothing, but
+entire, and incapable of being added to except in detail, and by way of
+explanation of the causes which have brought the fact about. As regards
+the general conclusion arrived at, therefore, I am unable to detect any
+difference of opinion between Lamarck and Mr. Darwin. They are both bent
+on establishing the theory of evolution in its widest extent.
+
+The late Sir Charles Lyell, in his 'Principles of Geology,' bears me out
+here. In a note to his _resume_ of the part of the 'Philosophie
+Zoologique' which bears upon evolution, he writes:--
+
+"I have reprinted in this chapter word for word my abstract of Lamarck's
+doctrine of transmutation, as drawn up by me in 1832 in the first
+edition of the 'Principles of Geology.'[333] I have thought it right to
+do this in justice to Lamarck, in order to show how nearly the opinions
+taught by him at the commencement of this century resembled those now in
+vogue amongst a large body of naturalists respecting the infinite
+variability of species, and the progressive development in past time of
+the organic world. The reader must bear in mind that when I made this
+analysis of the 'Philosophie Zoologique' in 1832, I was altogether
+opposed to the doctrine that the animals and plants now living were the
+lineal descendants of distinct species, only known to us in a fossil
+state, and ... so far from exaggerating, I did not do justice to the
+arguments originally adduced by Lamarck and Geoffroy St. Hilaire,
+especially those founded on the occurrence of rudimentary organs. There
+is therefore no room for suspicion that my account of the Lamarckian
+hypothesis, written by me thirty-five years ago, derived any colouring
+from my own views tending to bring it more into harmony with the theory
+since propounded by Darwin."[334] So little difference did Sir Charles
+Lyell discover between the views of Lamarck and those of his successors.
+
+With the identity, however, of the main proposition which, both Lamarck
+and Mr. Darwin alike endeavour to establish, the points of agreement
+between the two writers come to an end. Lamarck's great aim was to
+discover the cause of those variations whose accumulation results in
+specific, and finally in generic, differences. Not content with
+establishing the fact of descent with modification, he, like his
+predecessors, wishes to explain how it was that the fact came about. He
+finds its explanation in changed surroundings--that is to say, in
+changed conditions of existence--as the indirect cause, and in the
+varying needs arising from these changed conditions as the direct cause.
+
+According to Lamarck, there is a broad principle which underlies
+variation generally, and this principle is the power which all living
+beings possess of slightly varying their actions in accordance with
+varying needs, coupled with the fact observable throughout nature that
+use develops, and disuse enfeebles an organ, and that the effects,
+whether of use or disuse, become hereditary after many generations.
+
+This resolves itself into the effect of the mutual interaction of mind
+on body and of body on mind. Thus he writes:--
+
+"The physical and the mental are to start with undoubtedly one and the
+same thing; this fact is most easily made apparent through study of the
+organization of the various orders of known animals. From the common
+source there proceeded certain effects, and these effects, in the outset
+hardly separated, have in the course of time become so perfectly
+distinct, that when looked at in their extremest development they appear
+to have little or nothing in common.
+
+"The effect of the body upon the mind has been already sufficiently
+recognized; not so that of the mind upon the body itself. The two, one
+in the outset though they were, interact upon each other more and more
+the more they present the appearance of having become widely sundered,
+and it can be shown that each is continually modifying the other and
+causing it to vary."[335]
+
+And again, later:--
+
+"I shall show that the habits by which we now recognize any creature
+are due to the environment (_circonstances_) under which it has for a
+long while existed, _and that these habits have had such an influence
+upon the structure of each individual of the species as to have at
+length_" (that is to say, through many successive slight variations,
+each due to habit engendered by the wishes of the animal itself),
+"modified this structure and adapted it to the habits contracted."[336]
+
+These quotations must suffice, for the reader has already had Lamarck's
+argument sufficiently put before him.
+
+Variation, and consequently modification, are, according to Lamarck, the
+outward and visible signs of the impressions made upon animals and
+plants in the course of their long and varied history, each organ
+chronicling a time during which such and such thoughts and actions
+dominated the creature, and specific changes being the effect of certain
+long-continued wishes upon the body, and of certain changed surroundings
+upon the wishes. Plants and animals are living forms of faith, or faiths
+of form, whichever the reader pleases.
+
+Mr. Darwin, on the other hand, repeatedly avows ignorance, and profound
+ignorance, concerning the causes of those variations which, or nothing,
+must be the fountain-heads of species. Thus he writes of "the complex
+and _little known_ laws of variation."[337] "There is also _some
+probability_ in the view propounded by Andrew Knight, that variability
+_may be partly_ connected with excess of food."[338] "Many laws regulate
+variation, _some few of which_ can be _dimly seen_."[339] "The results
+of the _unknown_, or _but dimly understood_, laws of variation are
+infinitely complex and diversified."[340] "We are _profoundly ignorant_
+of the cause of each slight variation or individual difference."[341]
+"We are _far too ignorant_ to speculate on the relative importance of
+the several known and unknown causes of variation."[342] He admits,
+indeed, the effects of use and disuse to have been important, but how
+important we have no means of knowing; he also attributes considerable
+effect to the action of changed conditions of life--but how considerable
+again we know not; nevertheless, he sees no great principle underlying
+the variations generally, and tending to make them appear for a length
+of time together in any definite direction advantageous to the creature
+itself, but either expressly, as at times, or by implication, as
+throughout his works, ascribes them to accident or chance.
+
+In other words, he admits his ignorance concerning them, and dwells only
+on the accumulation of variations the appearance of which for any length
+of time in any given direction he leaves unaccounted for.
+
+Lamarck, again, having established his principle that sense of need is
+the main direct cause of variation, and having also established that the
+variations thus engendered are inherited, so that divergences accumulate
+and result in species and genera, is comparatively indifferent to
+further details. His work is avowedly an outline. Nevertheless, we have
+seen that he was quite alive to the effects of the geometrical ratio of
+increase, and of the struggle for existence which thence inevitably
+follows.
+
+Mr. Darwin, on the other hand, comparatively indifferent to, or at any
+rate silent concerning the causes of those variations which appeared so
+all-important to Lamarck, inasmuch as they are the raindrops which unite
+to form the full stream of modification, goes into very full detail upon
+natural selection, or the survival of the fittest, and maintains it to
+have been "the most important but not the exclusive means of
+modification."[343]
+
+It will be readily seen that, according to Lamarck, the variations which
+when accumulated amount to specific and generic differences, will have
+been due to causes which have been mainly of the same kind for long
+periods together. Conditions of life change for the most part slowly,
+steadily, and in a set direction; as in the direction of steady, gradual
+increase or decrease of cold or moisture; of the steady, gradual
+increase of such and such an enemy, or decrease of such and such a kind
+of food; of the gradual upheaval or submergence of such and such a
+continent, and consequent drying up or encroachment of such and such a
+sea, and so forth. The thoughts of the creature varying will thus have
+been turned mainly in one direction for long together; and hence the
+consequent modifications will also be mainly in fixed and definite
+directions for many successive generations; as in the direction of a
+warmer or cooler covering; of a better means of defence or of attack in
+relation to such and such another species; of a longer neck and longer
+legs, or of whatever other modification the gradually changing
+circumstances may be rendering expedient. It is easy to understand the
+accumulation of slight successive modifications which thus make their
+appearance in given organs and in a set direction.
+
+With Mr. Darwin, on the contrary, the variations being accidental, and
+due to no special and uniform cause, will not appear for any length of
+time in any given direction, nor in any given organ, but will be just as
+liable to appear in one organ as in another, and may be in one
+generation in one direction, and in another in another.
+
+In confirmation of the above, and in illustration of the important
+consequences that will follow according as we adopt the old or the more
+recent theory, I would quote the following from Mr. Mivart's 'Genesis of
+Species.'
+
+Shortly before maintaining that two similar structures have often been
+developed independently of one another, Mr. Mivart points out that if we
+are dependent upon indefinite variations only, as provided for us by Mr.
+Darwin, this would be "so improbable as to be practically
+impossible."[344] The number of possible variations being indefinitely
+great, "it is therefore an indefinitely great number to one against a
+similar series of variations occurring and being similarly preserved in
+any two independent instances." It will be felt (as Mr. Mivart presently
+insists) that this objection does not apply to a system which maintains
+that in case an animal feels any given want it will gradually develop
+the structure which shall meet the want--that is to say, if the want be
+not so great and so sudden as to extinguish the creature to which it has
+become a necessity. For if there be such a power of self-adaptation as
+thus supposed, two or more very widely different animals feeling the
+same kind of want might easily adopt similar means to gratify it, and
+hence develop eventually a substantially similar structure; just as two
+men, without any kind of concert, have often hit upon like means of
+compassing the same ends. Mr. Spencer's theory--so Mr. Mivart tells
+us--and certainly that of Lamarck, whose disciple Mr. Spencer would
+appear to be,[345] admits "a certain peculiar, but limited power of
+response and adaptation in each animal and plant"--to the conditions of
+their existence. "Such theories," says Mr. Mivart, "have not to contend
+against the difficulty proposed, and it has been urged that even very
+complex extremely similar structures have again and again been developed
+quite independently one of the other, and this because the process has
+taken place not by merely haphazard, indefinite variations in all
+directions, but by the concurrence of some other internal natural law or
+laws co-operating with external influences and with Natural Selection in
+the evolution of organic forms.
+
+"_It must never be forgotten that to admit any such constant operation
+of any such unknown natural cause is to deny the purely Darwinian theory
+which relies upon the survival of the fittest by means of minute
+fortuitous indefinite variations._
+
+"Among many other obligations which the author has to acknowledge to
+Professor Huxley, are the pointing out of this very difficulty, and the
+calling his attention to the striking resemblance between certain teeth
+of the dog, and of the thylacine, as one instance, and certain ornithic
+peculiarities of pterodactyles as another."[346]
+
+In brief then, changed distribution of use and disuse in consequence of
+changed conditions of the environment is with Lamarck the main cause of
+modification. According to Mr. Darwin natural selection, or the survival
+of favourable but accidental variations, is the most important means of
+modification. In a word, with Lamarck the variations are definite; with
+Mr. Darwin indefinite.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[333] Vol. ii. chap. i.
+
+[334] Vol. ii. chap, xxxiv., ed. 1872.
+
+[335] 'Philosophie Zoologique,' ed. M. Martins, Paris, Lyons, 1873, tom.
+i. p. 24.
+
+[336] 'Philosophie Zoologique,' tom. i. p. 72.
+
+[337] 'Origin of Species,' p. 3.
+
+[338] Ibid. p. 5.
+
+[339] 'Origin of Species,' p. 8.
+
+[340] Ibid. p. 9.
+
+[341] Ibid. p. 158.
+
+[342] Ibid. p. 159.
+
+[343] 'Origin of Species,' p. 4.
+
+[344] 'Genesis of Species,' p. 74, 1871.
+
+[345] See _ante_, p. 330, line 1 after heading.
+
+[346] 'Genesis of Species,' p. 76, ed. 1871.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+NATURAL SELECTION CONSIDERED AS A MEANS OF MODIFICATION. THE CONFUSION
+WHICH THIS EXPRESSION OCCASIONS.
+
+
+When Mr. Darwin says that natural selection is the most important
+"means" of modification, I am not sure that I understand what he wishes
+to imply by the word "means." I do not see how the fact that those
+animals which are best fitted for the conditions of their existence
+commonly survive in the struggle for life, can be called in any special
+sense a "means" of modification.
+
+"Means" is a dangerous word; it slips too easily into "cause." We have
+seen Mr. Darwin himself say that Buffon did not enter on "the _causes or
+means_"[347] of modification, as though these two words were synonymous,
+or nearly so. Nevertheless, the use of the word "means" here enables Mr.
+Darwin to speak of Natural Selection as if it were an active cause
+(which he constantly does), and yet to avoid expressly maintaining that
+it is a cause of modification. This, indeed, he has not done in express
+terms, but he does it by implication when he writes, "Natural Selection
+_might be most effective in giving_ the proper colour to each kind of
+grouse, and in _keeping_ that colour when once acquired." Such language,
+says the late Mr. G. H. Lewes, "is misleading;" it makes "selection an
+agent."[348]
+
+It is plain that natural selection cannot be considered a cause of
+variation; and if not of variation, which is as the rain drop, then not
+of specific and generic modification, which are as the river; for the
+variations must make their appearance before they can be selected.
+Suppose that it is an advantage to a horse to have an especially hard
+and broad hoof, then a horse born with such a hoof will indeed probably
+survive in the struggle for existence, but he was not born with the
+larger and harder hoof _because of his subsequently surviving_. He
+survived because he was born fit--not, he was born fit because he
+survived. The variation must arise first and be preserved afterwards.
+
+Mr. Darwin therefore is in the following dilemma. If he does not treat
+natural selection as a cause of variation, the 'Origin of Species' will
+turn out to have no _raison d'etre_. It will have professed to have
+explained to us the manner in which species has originated, but it will
+have left us in the dark concerning the origin of those variations
+which, when added together, amount to specific and generic differences.
+Thus, as I said in 'Life and Habit,' Mr. Darwin will have made us think
+we know the whole road, in spite of his having almost ostentatiously
+blindfolded us at every step in the journey. The 'Origin of Species'
+would thus prove to be no less a piece of intellectual sleight-of-hand
+than Paley's 'Natural Theology.'
+
+If, on the other hand, Mr. Darwin maintains natural selection to be a
+cause of variation, this comes to saying that when an animal has varied
+in an advantageous direction, the fact of its subsequently surviving in
+the struggle for existence is the cause of its having varied in the
+advantageous direction--or more simply still--that the fact of its
+having varied is the cause of its having varied.
+
+And this is what we have already seen Mr. Darwin actually to say, in a
+passage quoted near the beginning of this present book. When writing of
+the eye he says, "Variation will cause the slight alterations;"[349] but
+the "slight alterations" _are_ the variations; so that Mr. Darwin's
+words come to this--that "variation will cause the variations."
+
+There does not seem any better way out of this dilemma than that which
+Mr. Darwin has adopted--namely, to hold out natural selection as "a
+means" of modification, and thenceforward to treat it as an efficient
+cause; but at the same time to protest again and again that it is
+not a cause. Accordingly he writes that "Natural Selection _acts
+only by the preservation and accumulation_ of small inherited
+modifications,"[350]--that is to say, it has had no share in inducing or
+causing these modifications. Again, "What applies to one animal will
+apply throughout all time to all animals--_that is, if they vary, for
+otherwise natural selection can effect nothing_"[351]; and again, "for
+natural selection only _takes advantage of such variations as
+arise_"[352]--the variations themselves arising, as we have just seen,
+from variation.
+
+Nothing, then, can be clearer from these passages than that natural
+selection is not a cause of modification; while, on the other hand,
+nothing can be clearer, from a large number of such passages, as, for
+instance, "natural selection may be _effective_ in _giving_ and
+_keeping_ colour,"[353] than that natural selection is an efficient
+cause; and in spite of its being expressly declared to be only a "means"
+of modification, it will be accepted as cause by the great majority of
+readers.
+
+Mr. Darwin explains this apparent inconsistency thus:--He maintains that
+though the advantageous modification itself is fortuitous, or without
+known cause or principle underlying it, yet its becoming the predominant
+form of the species in which it appears is due to the fact that those
+animals which have been advantageously modified commonly survive in
+times of difficulty, while the unmodified individuals perish: offspring
+therefore is more frequently left by the favourably modified animal, and
+thus little by little the whole species will come to inherit the
+modification. Hence the survival of the fittest becomes a means of
+modification, though it is no cause of variation.
+
+It will appear more clearly later on how much this amounts to. I will
+for the present content myself with the following quotation from the
+late Mr. G. H. Lewes in reference to it. Mr. Lewes writes:--
+
+"Mr. Darwin seems to imply that the external conditions which cause a
+variation are to be distinguished from the conditions which accumulate
+and perfect such variation, that is to say, he implies a radical
+difference between the process of variation and the process of
+selection. This I have already said does not seem to me acceptable; the
+selection I conceive to be simply the variation which has
+survived."[354]
+
+Certainly those animals and plants which are best fitted for their
+environment, or, as Lamarck calls it, "_circonstances_"--those animals,
+in fact, which are best fitted to comply with the conditions of their
+existence--are most likely to survive and transmit their especial
+fitness. No one would admit this more readily than Lamarck. This is no
+theory; it is a commonly observed fact in nature which no one will
+dispute, but it is not more "a means of modification" than many other
+commonly observed facts concerning animals.
+
+Why is "the survival of the fittest" more a means of modification than,
+we will say, the fact that animals live at all, or that they live in
+successive generations, being born, continuing their species, and dying,
+instead of living on for ever as one single animal in the common
+acceptation of the term; or than that they eat and drink?
+
+The heat whereby the water is heated, the water which is turned into
+steam, the piston on which the steam acts, the driving wheel, &c., &c.,
+are all one as much as another a means whereby a train is made to go
+from one place to another; it is impossible to say that any one of them
+is the main means. So (_mutatis mutandis_) with modification. There is
+no reason therefore why "the survival of the fittest" should claim to
+be an especial "means of modification" rather than any other necessary
+adjunct of animal or vegetable life.
+
+I find that the late Mr. G. H. Lewes has insisted on this objection in
+his 'Physical Basis of Mind.' I observe, also, that in the very passage
+in which he does so, Mr. Lewes appears to have been misled by Mr.
+Darwin's use of that dangerous word "means," and, at the same time, by
+his frequent treatment of natural selection as though it were an active
+cause; so that Mr. Lewes supposes Mr. Darwin to have fallen into the
+very error of which, as I have above shown, he is evidently struggling
+to keep clear--namely, that of maintaining natural selection to be a
+"cause" of variation. Mr. Lewes then continues:--
+
+"He [Mr. Darwin] separates Natural Selection from all the primary causes
+of variation either internal or external--either as results of the laws
+of growth, of the correlations of variation, of use and disuse, &c., and
+limits it to the slow accumulation of such variations as are profitable
+in the struggle with competitors. And for his purpose this separation is
+necessary. But biological philosophy must, I think, regard the
+distinction as artificial, _referring only to one of the great factors
+in the production of species_."[355]
+
+The fact that one in a brood or litter is born fitter for the conditions
+of its existence than its brothers and sisters, and, again, the causes
+that have led to this one's having been born fitter--which last is what
+the older evolutionists justly dwelt upon as the most interesting
+consideration in connection with the whole subject--are more noteworthy
+factors of modification than the factor that an animal, if born fitter
+for its conditions, will commonly survive longer in the struggle for
+existence. If the first of these can be explained in such a manner as to
+be accepted as true, or highly probable, we have a substantial gain to
+our knowledge. The second is little--if at all--better than a truism.
+Granted, if it were not generally the case that those forms are most
+likely to survive which are best fitted for the conditions of their
+existence, no adaptation of form to conditions of existence could ever
+have come about. "The survival of the fittest" therefore, or, perhaps
+better, "the fertility of the fittest," is thus a _sine qua non_ for
+modification. But, as we have just insisted, this does not render "the
+fertility of the fittest" an especial "means of modification," rather
+than any other _sine qua non_ for modification.
+
+But, to look at the matter in another light. Mr. Darwin maintains
+natural selection to be "the most important but not the exclusive means
+of modification."
+
+For "natural selection" substitute the words "survival of the fittest,"
+which we may do with Mr. Darwin's own consent abundantly given.
+
+To the words "survival of the fittest" add what is elided, but what is,
+nevertheless, unquestionably as much implied as though it were said
+openly whenever these words are used, and without which "fittest" has no
+force--I mean, "for the conditions of their existence."
+
+We thus find that when Mr. Darwin says that natural selection is the
+most important, but not exclusive means of modification, he means that
+the survival in the struggle for existence of those creatures which are
+best fitted to comply with the conditions of their existence is the most
+important, but not exclusive means whereby the descendants of a
+creature, we will say, A, have become modified, so as to be now
+represented by a creature, we will say, B.
+
+But the word "_circonstances_," so frequently used by Lamarck for the
+conditions of an animal's existence, contains, by implication, the idea
+of animals _which shall exist or not according as they fulfil those
+conditions or fail to fulfil them_. Conditions of existence are
+conditions which something capable of existing must fulfil if it would
+exist at all, and nothing is a condition of an animal's existence which
+that animal need not comply with and may yet continue to exist. Again,
+the words "animals" and "plants" comprehend the ideas of "fit,"
+"fitter," and "fittest," "unfit," "unfitter," and "unfittest" for
+certain conditions, for we know of no animals or plants in which we do
+not observe degrees of fitness or unfitness for their "_circonstances_"
+or environment, or conditions of existence.
+
+The use, therefore, of the term "conditions of existence" is sufficient
+to show that the person using it intends to imply that those animals and
+plants will live longest (or survive) and thrive best which are best
+able to fulfil those conditions. Hence it implies neither more nor less
+than what is implied by the words "struggle for existence, with
+consequent survival of the fittest"--that is to say, if we hold the
+complying with any condition of life to which difficulty is attached to
+be part of "the struggle" for life, and this we should certainly do.
+
+The words "conditions of existence" may, then, be used instead of the
+"struggle for existence with consequent survival of the fittest," for as
+they cannot imply any less than the "struggle, &c.," when they are set
+out in full, and without suppression, so neither do they imply more; for
+nothing is a condition of existence, in so far as its power of effecting
+the modification of any animal is concerned, which does not also involve
+more or less difficulty or struggle; for if there is no difficulty or
+struggle there will be nothing to bring about change of habit, and hence
+of structure. This identity of meaning may be also seen if we call to
+mind that the conditions of existence can be only a synonym for "the
+conditions of continuing to live," and "the conditions of continuing to
+live" a synonym for "the conditions of continuing to live a longer
+time," and "the conditions of continuing to live a longer time," for
+"the conditions of survival," and "the conditions of survival," for "the
+survival of the fittest," inasmuch as the being fittest is the condition
+of being the longest survivor.
+
+But we have already seen that "the survival of the fittest," is,
+according to Mr. Darwin, a synonym for "natural selection"; hence it
+follows that "the conditions of existence" imply neither more nor less
+than what is implied by "natural selection" when this expression is
+properly explained, and may be used instead of it; so that when Mr.
+Darwin says that "natural selection" is the main but not exclusive means
+of modification, he must mean, consciously or unconsciously, that "the
+conditions of existence" are the main but not exclusive means of
+modification. But this is only falling in with "the views and erroneous
+grounds of opinion," as Mr. Darwin briefly calls them, of Lamarck
+himself; a fact which Mr. Darwin's readers would have seen more readily
+if he had kept to the use of the words "survival of the fittest" instead
+of "natural selection." Of that expression Mr. Darwin says[356] that it
+is "more accurate" than natural selection, but naively adds, "and
+sometimes equally convenient."
+
+I have said that there is a practical identity of meaning between
+"natural selection" and "the conditions of existence," when both
+expressions are fully extended. I say this, however, without prejudice
+to my right of maintaining that, of the two expressions, the one is
+accurate, lucid, and calculated to keep the thread of the argument well
+in sight of the reader, while the other is inaccurate, and always, if I
+may say so, less "convenient," as being always liable to lead the reader
+astray. Nor should it be lost sight of that Lamarck and Dr. Erasmus
+Darwin maintain that species and genera have arisen _because animals can
+fashion themselves into accord with_ their conditions, so that, as
+Lamarck is so continually insisting, the action of the conditions is
+indirect only--changed use and disuse being the direct causes; while,
+according to Mr. Darwin, it is natural selection itself (which, as we
+have seen, is but another way of saying conditions of existence) that is
+the most important means of modification.
+
+The identity of meaning above insisted on was, on the face of it, almost
+as obscure as that between "_eveque_ and bishop." Yet we know that
+"_eveque_" is "episc" and "bishop" "piscop," and that "episcopus" is the
+Latin for bishop; the words, therefore, are really one and the same, in
+spite of the difference in their appearance. I think I can show,
+moreover, that Mr. Darwin himself holds natural selection and the
+conditions of existence to be one and the same thing. For he writes, "in
+one sense," and it is hard to see any sense but one in what follows,
+"the conditions of life may be said not only to cause variability" (so
+that here Mr. Darwin appears to support Lamarck's main thesis) "either
+directly or indirectly, but likewise to include natural selection; for
+the conditions determine whether this or that variety shall
+survive."[357] But later on we find that "the expression of conditions
+of existence, so often insisted upon by the illustrious Cuvier" (and
+surely also by the illustrious Lamarck, though he calls them
+"_circonstances_") "is fully embraced by the principle of natural
+selection."[358] So we see that the conditions of life "_include_"
+natural selection, and yet the conditions of existence "_are fully
+embraced by_" natural selection, which, I take it, is an enigmatic way
+of saying that they are one and the same thing, for it is not until two
+bodies absolutely coincide and occupy the same space that the one can be
+said both to include and to be embraced by the other.
+
+The difficulty, again, of understanding Mr. Darwin's meaning is enhanced
+by his repeatedly writing of "natural selection," or the fact that the
+fittest survive in the struggle for existence, as though it were the
+same thing as "evolution" or the descent, through the accumulation of
+small modifications in many successive generations, of one species from
+another and different one. In the concluding and recapitulatory chapter
+of the 'Origin of Species,' he writes:--
+
+"Turning to geographical distribution, the difficulties encountered _on
+the theory of descent with modification_ are serious enough;"[359] and
+in the next paragraph, "As, according to _the theory of natural
+selection, &c._," the context showing that in each case descent with
+modification is intended.
+
+Again:--
+
+"On the theory of the _natural selection_ of successive, slight, but
+profitable, modifications,"[360] that is to say, on the theory of the
+survival of the fittest; while on the next page we find "_the theory of
+descent with modification_," and "_the principle of natural selection_,"
+used as though they were convertible terms.
+
+Again:--
+
+"The existence of closely allied or representative species in any two
+areas implies, _on the theory of descent with modification, &c._;"[361]
+and, in the next paragraph, "_the theory of natural selection_, with its
+contingencies of extinction and divergence of character," is substituted
+as though the two expressions were identical.
+
+This is calculated to mislead. Independently of the fact that "natural
+selection," or "the survival of the fittest," is in no sense a theory,
+but simply an observed fact, yet even if the words are allowed to stand
+for "descent with modification by means of natural selection," it is
+still misleading to write as though this were synonymous with "the
+theory of evolution," or "the theory of descent with modification." To
+do this prevents the reader from bearing in mind that "evolution by
+means of the circumstance-suiting power of plants and animals" as
+advanced by the earlier evolutionists; and "evolution by means of lucky
+accidents" with comparatively little circumstance-suiting power, are two
+very different things, of which the one may be true and the other
+untrue. It leads the reader to forget that evolution by no means stands
+or falls with evolution by means of natural selection, and makes him
+think that if he accepts evolution at all, he is bound to Mr. Darwin's
+view of it. Hence, when he falls in with such writers as Professor
+Mivart and the Rev. J. J. Murphy, who show, and very plainly, that the
+survival of the fittest, unsupplemented by something which shall give a
+definite aim to the variations which successively occur, fails to
+account for the coadaptations of need and structure, he imagines that
+evolution has much less to say for itself than it really has. If Mr.
+Darwin, instead of taking the line which he has thought fit to adopt
+towards Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck, and the author of the
+'Vestiges,' had shown us what these men taught, why they taught it,
+wherein they were wrong, and how he proposed to set them right, he would
+have taken a course at once more agreeable with ordinary practice, and
+more likely to clear misconception from his own mind and from those of
+his readers.
+
+Mr. Darwin says,[362] "it is easy to hide our ignorance under such
+expressions as 'the plan of creation' and 'unity of design.'" Surely,
+also, it is easy to hide want of precision of thought, and the absence
+of any fundamental difference between his own main conclusion and that
+of Dr. Darwin and Lamarck whom he condemns, under the term "natural
+selection."
+
+I assure the reader that I find the task of forming a clear,
+well-defined conception of Mr. Darwin's meaning, as expressed in his
+'Origin of Species,' comparable only to that of one who has to act on
+the advice of a lawyer who has obscured the main issue as far as he can,
+and whose chief aim has been to make as many loopholes as possible for
+himself to escape through in case of his being called to account. Or,
+again, to that of one who has to construe an Act of Parliament which was
+originally framed so as to throw dust in the eyes of those who would
+oppose the measure, and which, having been since found unworkable, has
+had clauses repealed and inserted up and down it, till it is in an
+inextricable tangle of confusion and contradiction.
+
+As an example of my meaning, I will quote a passage to which I called
+attention in 'Life and Habit.' It runs:--
+
+"In the earlier editions of this work I underrated, as now seems
+probable, the frequency and importance of modifications due to
+spontaneous variability. But it is impossible to attribute to _this
+cause_" (i. e. spontaneous variability, which is itself only an
+expression for unknown causes) "the innumerable structures which are so
+well adapted to the habits of life of each species. I can no more
+believe in _this_" (i. e. that the innumerable structures, &c., can be
+due to unknown causes) "than that the well adapted form of a racehorse
+or greyhound, which, before the principle of selection by man was well
+understood, excited so much surprise in the minds of the older
+naturalists, can _thus_" (i. e. by attributing them to unknown causes)
+"be explained."[363]
+
+This amounts to saying that unknown causes can do so much, but cannot do
+so much more. On this passage I wrote, in 'Life and Habit':--
+
+"It is impossible to believe that, after years of reflection upon his
+subject, Mr. Darwin should have written as above, especially in such a
+place, if his mind was clear about his own position. Immediately after
+the admission of a certain amount of miscalculation there comes a more
+or less exculpatory sentence, which sounds so right that ninety-nine
+people out of a hundred would walk through it, unless led by some
+exigency of their own position to examine it closely, but which yet,
+upon examination, proves to be as nearly meaningless as a sentence can
+be."[364]
+
+No one, to my knowledge, has impugned the justice of this criticism, and
+I may say that further study of Mr. Darwin's works has only strengthened
+my conviction of the confusion and inaccuracy of thought, which detracts
+so greatly from their value.
+
+So little is it generally understood that "evolution" and what is called
+"Darwinism" convey indeed the same main conclusion, but that this
+conclusion has been reached by two distinct roads, one of which is
+impregnable, while the other has already fallen into the hands of the
+enemy, that in the last November number of the 'Nineteenth Century'
+Professor Tyndall, while referring to descent with modification or
+evolution, speaks of it as though it were one and inseparable from Mr.
+Darwin's theory that it has come about mainly by means of natural
+selection. He writes:--
+
+"_Darwin's theory_, as pointed out nine or ten years ago by Helmholtz
+and Hooker, was then exactly in this condition of growth; and had they
+to speak of the subject to-day they would be able to announce an
+enormous strengthening of the theoretic fibre. Fissures in continuity
+which then existed, and which left little hope of being ever spanned,
+have been since bridged over, so that the further _the theory_ is tested
+the more fully does it harmonize with progressive experience and
+discovery. We shall never probably fill all the gaps; but this will not
+prevent a profound belief in the truth of _the theory_ from taking root
+in the general mind. Much less will it justify a total denial of _the
+theory_. The man of science, who assumes in such a case the position of
+a denier, is sure to be stranded and isolated."
+
+This is in the true vein of the professional and orthodox scientist; of
+that new orthodoxy which is clamouring for endowment, and which would
+step into the Pope's shoes to-morrow, if we would only let it. If
+Professor Tyndall means that those who deny evolution will find
+themselves presently in a very small minority, I agree with him; but if
+he means that evolution is Mr. Darwin's theory, and that he who rejects
+what Mr. Darwin calls "the theory of natural selection" will find
+himself stranded, his assertion will pass muster with those only who
+know little of the history and literature of evolution.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[347] 'Origin of Species,' Hist. Sketch, p. xiii.
+
+[348] 'Physical Basis of Mind,' p. 108.
+
+[349] 'Origin of Species,' p. 146.
+
+[350] Ibid. p. 75.
+
+[351] Ibid. p. 88.
+
+[352] 'Origin of Species,' p. 98.
+
+[353] Ibid. p. 66.
+
+[354] 'Physical Basis of the Mind,' p. 109, 1878.
+
+[355] 'Physical Basis of the Mind,' p. 107, 1878.
+
+[356] 'Origin of Species,' p. 49.
+
+[357] 'Origin of Species,' p. 107.
+
+[358] Ibid. p. 166.
+
+[359] 'Origin of Species,' p. 406.
+
+[360] Ibid, p. 416.
+
+[361] Ibid. p. 419.
+
+[362] 'Origin of Species,' p. 422.
+
+[363] 'Origin of Species,' p. 171, ed. 1876.
+
+[364] 'Life and Habit,' p. 260.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+MR. DARWIN'S DEFENCE OF THE EXPRESSION, NATURAL SELECTION--PROFESSOR
+MIVART AND NATURAL SELECTION.
+
+
+So important is it that we should come to a clear understanding upon the
+positions taken by Mr. Darwin and Lamarck respectively, that at the risk
+of wearying the reader I will endeavour to exhaust this subject here. In
+order to do so, I will follow Mr. Darwin's answer to those who have
+objected to the expression, "natural selection."
+
+Mr. Darwin says:--
+
+"Several writers have misapprehended or objected to the term 'natural
+selection.' Some have even imagined that natural selection induces
+variability."[365]
+
+And small wonder if they have; but those who have fallen into this error
+are hardly worth considering. The true complaint is that Mr. Darwin has
+too often written of "natural selection" as though it does induce
+variability, and that his language concerning it is so confusing that
+the reader is not helped to see that it really comes to nothing but a
+cloak of difference from his predecessors, under which there lurks a
+concealed identity of opinion as to the main facts. The reader is thus
+led to look upon it as something positive and special, and, in spite of
+Mr. Darwin's disclaimer, to think of it as an actively efficient cause.
+
+Few will deny that this complaint is a just one, or that ninety-nine out
+of a hundred readers of average intelligence, if asked, after reading
+Mr. Darwin's 'Origin of Species,' what was the most important cause of
+modification, would answer "natural selection." Let the same readers
+have read the 'Zoonomia' of Dr. Erasmus Darwin, or the 'Philosophie
+Zoologique' of Lamarck, and they would at once reply, "the wishes of an
+animal or plant, as varying with its varying conditions," or more
+briefly, "sense of need."
+
+"Whereas," continues Mr. Darwin, "it" (natural selection) "implies only
+the preservation of such variations as arise, and are beneficial to the
+being under its conditions of life. No one objects to agriculturists
+speaking of the potent effects of man's selection."
+
+Of course not; for there _is_ an actual creature man, who actually does
+select with a set purpose in order to produce such and such a result,
+which result he presently produces.
+
+"And in this case the individual differences given by nature, which man
+for some object selects, must first occur."
+
+This shows that the complaint has already reached Mr. Darwin, that in
+not showing us how "the individual differences first occur," he is
+really leaving us absolutely in the dark as to the cause of all
+modification--giving us an 'Origin of Species' with "the origin" cut
+out; but I do not think that any reader who has not been compelled to go
+somewhat deeply into the question would find out that this is the real
+gist of the objection which Mr. Darwin is appearing to combat. A general
+impression is left upon the reader that some very foolish objectors are
+being put to silence, that Mr. Darwin is the most candid literary
+opponent in the world, and as just as Aristides himself; but if the
+unassisted reader will cross-question himself what it is all about, I
+shall be much surprised if he is ready with his answer.
+
+"Others"--to resume our criticism on Mr. Darwin's defence--"have
+objected that the term implies conscious choice in the animals which
+become modified, and it has been even urged that as plants have no
+volition, natural selection is not applicable to them!"
+
+This--unfortunately--must have been the objection of a slovenly, or
+wilfully misapprehending reader, and was unworthy of serious notice. But
+its introduction here tends to draw the reader from the true ground of
+complaint, which is that at the end of Mr. Darwin's book we stand much
+in the same place as we did when we started, as regards any knowledge of
+what is the "origin of species."
+
+"In the literal sense of the word, no doubt, natural selection is a
+false term."
+
+Then why use it when another, and, by Mr. Darwin's own admission, a
+"more accurate" one is to hand in "the survival of the fittest"?[366]
+This term is not appreciably longer than natural selection. Mr. Darwin
+may say, indeed, that it is "sometimes" as convenient a term as natural
+selection; but the kind of men who exercise permanent effect upon the
+opinions of other people will bid such a passage as this stand aside
+somewhat sternly. If a term is not appreciably longer than another, and
+if at the same time it more accurately expresses the idea which is
+intended to be conveyed, it is not sometimes only, but always, more
+convenient, and should immediately be substituted for the less accurate
+one.
+
+No one complains of the use of what is, strictly speaking, an inaccurate
+expression, when it is nevertheless the best that we can get. It may be
+doubted whether there is any such thing possible as a perfectly accurate
+expression. All words that are not simply names of things are apt to
+turn out little else than compendious false analogies; but we have a
+right to complain when a writer tells us that he is using a less
+accurate expression when a more accurate one is ready to his hand.
+Hence, when Mr. Darwin continues, "Who ever objected to chemists
+speaking of the elective affinities of the various elements? and yet an
+acid cannot strictly be said to elect the base with which it by
+preference combines," he is beside the mark. Chemists do not speak of
+"elective affinities" in spite of there being a more accurate and not
+appreciably longer expression at their disposal.
+
+"It has been said," continues Mr. Darwin, "that I speak of natural
+selection as an active power or deity. But who objects to an author
+speaking of the attraction of gravity? Everyone knows what is meant and
+implied by such metaphorical expressions, and they are almost necessary
+for brevity."
+
+Mr. Darwin certainly does speak of natural selection "acting,"
+"accumulating," "operating"; and if "every-one knew what was meant and
+implied by this metaphorical expression," as they now do, or think they
+do, in the case of the attraction of gravity, there might be less ground
+of complaint; but the expression was known to very few at the time Mr.
+Darwin introduced it, and was used with so much ambiguity, and with so
+little to protect the reader from falling into the error of supposing
+that it was the cause of the modifications which we see around us, that
+we had a just right to complain, even in the first instance; much more
+should we do so on the score of the retention of the expression when a
+more accurate one had been found.
+
+If the "survival of the fittest" had been used, to the total excision of
+"natural selection" from every page in Mr. Darwin's book--it would have
+been easily seen that "the survival of the fittest" is no more a cause
+of modification, and hence can give no more explanation concerning the
+origin of species, than the fact of a number of competitors in a race
+failing to run the whole course, or to run it as quickly as the winner,
+can explain how the winner came to have good legs and lungs. According
+to Lamarck, the winner will have got these by means of sense of need,
+and consequent practice and training, on his own part, and on that of
+his forefathers; according to Mr. Darwin, the "most important means" of
+his getting them is his "happening" to be born with them, coupled, with
+the fact that his uncles and aunts for many generations could not run
+so well as his ancestors in the direct line. But can the fact of his
+uncles and aunts running less well than his fathers and mothers be a
+means of his fathers and mothers coming to run _better than they used to
+run_?
+
+If the reader will bear in mind the idea of the runners in a race, it
+will help him to see the point at issue between Mr. Darwin and Lamarck.
+Perhaps also the double meaning of the word race, as expressing equally
+a breed and a competition, may not be wholly without significance. What
+we want to be told is, not that a runner will win the prize if he can
+run "ever such a little" faster than his fellows--we know this--but by
+what process he comes to be able to run ever such a little faster.
+
+"So, again," continues Mr. Darwin, "it is difficult to avoid
+personifying nature, but I mean by nature only the aggregate action and
+product of many natural laws, and by laws the sequence of events as
+ascertained by us."
+
+This, again, is raising up a dead man in order to knock him down. Nature
+has been personified for more than two thousand years, and every one
+understands that nature is no more really a woman than hope or justice,
+or than God is like the pictures of the mediaeval painters; no one whose
+objection was worth notice could have objected to the personification of
+nature.
+
+Mr. Darwin concludes:--
+
+"With a little familiarity, such superficial objections will be
+forgotten."[367]
+
+As a matter of fact, I do not see any greater tendency to acquiesce in
+Mr. Darwin's claim on behalf of natural selection than there was a few
+years ago, but on the contrary, that discontent is daily growing. To say
+nothing of the Rev. J. J. Murphy and Professor Mivart, the late Mr. G.
+H. Lewes did not find the objection a superficial one, nor yet did he
+find it disappear "with a little familiarity"; on the contrary, the more
+familiar he became with it the less he appeared to like it. I may even
+go, without fear, so far as to say that any writer who now uses the
+expression "natural selection," writes himself down thereby as behind
+the age. It is with great pleasure that I observe Mr. Francis Darwin in
+his recent lecture[368] to have kept clear of it altogether, and to have
+made use of no expression, and advocated no doctrine to which either Dr.
+Erasmus Darwin or Lamarck would not have readily assented. I think I may
+affirm confidently that a few years ago any such lecture would have
+contained repeated reference to Natural Selection. For my own part I
+know of few passages in any theological writer which please me less than
+the one which I have above followed sentence by sentence. I know of few
+which should better serve to show us the sort of danger we should run if
+we were to let men of science get the upper hand of us.
+
+Natural Selection, then, is only another way of saying "Nature." Mr.
+Darwin seems to be aware of this when he writes, "Nature, if I may be
+allowed to personify the natural preservation or survival of the
+fittest." And again, at the bottom of the same page, "It may
+metaphorically be said that _natural selection is daily and hourly
+scrutinizing_ throughout the world the slightest variations."[369] It
+may be metaphorically said that _Nature_ is daily and hourly
+scrutinizing, but it cannot be said consistently with any right use of
+words, metaphorical or otherwise, that natural selection scrutinizes,
+unless natural selection is merely a somewhat cumbrous synonym for
+Nature. When, therefore, Mr. Darwin says that natural selection is the
+"most important, but not the exclusive means" whereby any modification
+has been effected, he is really saying that Nature is the most important
+means of modification--which is only another way of telling us that
+variation causes variations, and is all very true as far as it goes.
+
+I did not read Professor Mivart's 'Lessons from Nature,' until I had
+written all my own criticism on Mr. Darwin's position. From that work,
+however, I now quote the following:--
+
+"It cannot then be contested that the far-famed 'Origin of Species,'
+that, namely, by 'Natural Selection,' has been repudiated in fact,
+though not expressly even by its own author. This circumstance, which is
+simply undeniable, might dispense us from any further consideration of
+the hypothesis itself. But the "conspiracy of silence," which has
+accompanied the repudiation tends to lead the unthinking many to suppose
+that the same importance still attaches to it as at first. On this
+account it may be well to ask the question, what, after all, _is_
+'Natural Selection'?
+
+"The answer may seem surprising to some, but it is none the less true,
+that 'Natural Selection' is simply nothing. It is an apparently positive
+name for a really negative effect, and is therefore an eminently
+misleading term. By 'Natural Selection' is meant the result of all the
+destructive agencies of Nature, destructive to individuals and to races
+by destroying their lives or their powers of propagation. Evidently,
+_the cause of the distinction of species_ (supposing such distinction to
+be brought about in natural generation) _must be that which causes
+variation, and variation in one determinate direction in at least
+several individuals simultaneously_." I should like to have added here
+the words "and during many successive generations," but they will go
+very sufficiently without saying.
+
+"At the same time," continues Professor Mivart, "it is freely conceded
+that the destructive agencies in nature do succeed in preventing the
+perpetuation of monstrous, abortive, and feeble attempts at the
+performance of the evolutionary process, that they rapidly remove
+antecedent forms when new ones are evolved more in harmony with
+surrounding conditions, and that their action results in the formation
+of new characters when these have once attained sufficient completeness
+to be of real utility to their possessor.
+
+"Continued reflection, and five years further pondering over the
+problems of specific origin have more and more convinced me that the
+conception, that the origin of all species 'man included' is due simply
+to conditions which are (to use Mr. Darwin's own words) 'strictly
+accidental,' is a conception utterly irrational."
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"With regard to the conception as now put forward by Mr. Darwin, I
+cannot truly characterize it but by an epithet which I employ only with
+much reluctance. I weigh my words and have present to my mind the many
+distinguished naturalists who have accepted the notion, and yet I cannot
+hesitate to call it a '_puerile hypothesis_.'"[370]
+
+I am afraid I cannot go with Professor Mivart farther than this point,
+though I have a strong feeling as though his conclusion is true, that
+"the material universe is always and everywhere sustained and directed
+by an infinite cause, for which to us the word mind is the least
+inadequate and misleading symbol." But I feel that any attempt to deal
+with such a question is going far beyond that sphere in which man's
+powers may be at present employed with advantage: I trust, therefore,
+that I may never try to verify it, and am indifferent whether it is
+correct or not.
+
+Again, I should probably differ from Professor Mivart in finding this
+mind inseparable from the material universe in which we live and move.
+So that I could neither conceive of such a mind influencing and
+directing the universe from a point as it were outside the universe
+itself, nor yet of a universe as existing without there being
+present--or having been present--in its every particle something for
+which mind should be the least inadequate and misleading symbol. But the
+subject is far beyond me.
+
+As regards Professor Mivart's denunciations of natural selection, I
+have only one fault to find with them, namely, that they do not speak
+out with sufficient bluntness. The difficulty of showing the fallacy of
+Mr. Darwin's position, is the difficulty of grasping a will-o'-the-wisp.
+A concluding example will put this clearly before the reader, and at the
+same time serve to illustrate the most tangible feature of difference
+between Mr. Darwin and Lamarck.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[365] 'Origin of Species,' p. 62.
+
+[366] 'Origin of Species,' p. 49.
+
+[367] 'Origin of Species,' p. 63.
+
+[368] 'Nature,' March 14 and 21, 1878.
+
+[369] 'Origin of Species,' p. 65.
+
+[370] 'Lessons from Nature,' p. 300.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+THE CASE OF THE MADEIRA BEETLES AS ILLUSTRATING THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN
+THE EVOLUTION OF LAMARCK AND OF MR. CHARLES DARWIN--CONCLUSION.
+
+
+An island of no very great extent is surrounded by a sea which cuts it
+off for many miles from the nearest land. It lies a good deal exposed to
+winds, so that the beetles which live upon it are in continual danger of
+being blown out to sea if they fly during the hours and seasons when the
+wind is blowing. It is found that an unusually large proportion of the
+beetles inhabiting this island are either without wings or have their
+wings in a useless and merely rudimentary state; and that a large number
+of kinds which are very common on the nearest mainland, but which are
+compelled to use their wings in seeking their food, are here entirely
+wanting. It is also observed that the beetles on this island generally
+lie much concealed until the wind lulls and the sun shines. These are
+the facts; let us now see how Lamarck would treat them.
+
+Lamarck would say that the beetles once being on this island it became
+one of the conditions of their existence that they should not get blown
+out to sea. For once blown out to sea, they would be quite certain to be
+drowned. Beetles, when they fly, generally fly for some purpose, and do
+not like having that purpose interfered with by something which can
+carry them all-whithers, whether they like it or no. If they are flying
+and find the wind taking them in a wrong direction, or seaward--which
+they know will be fatal to them--they stop flying as soon as may be, and
+alight on _terra firma_. But if the wind is very prevalent the beetles
+can find but little opportunity for flying at all: they will therefore
+lie quiet all day and do as best they can to get their living on foot
+instead of on the wing. There will thus be a long-continued disuse of
+wings, and this will gradually diminish the development of the wings
+themselves, till after a sufficient number of generations these will
+either disappear altogether, or be seen in a rudimentary condition only.
+For each beetle which has made but little use of its wings will be
+liable to leave offspring with a slightly diminished wing, some other
+organ which has been used instead of the wing becoming proportionately
+developed. It is thus seen that the conditions of existence are the
+indirect cause of the wings becoming rudimentary, inasmuch as they
+preclude the beetles from using them; the disuse however on the part of
+the beetles themselves is the direct cause.
+
+Now let us see how Mr. Darwin deals with the same case. He writes:--
+
+"In some cases we might easily set down to disuse, modifications of
+structure which are _wholly_ or _mainly_ due to natural selection." Then
+follow the facts about the beetles of Madeira, as I have given them
+above. While we are reading them we naturally make up our minds that
+the winglessness of the beetles will prove due either wholly, or at any
+rate mainly, to natural selection, and that though it would be easy to
+set it down to disuse, yet we must on no account do so. The facts having
+been stated, Mr. Darwin continues:--"These several considerations make
+me believe that the wingless condition of so many Madeira beetles is
+mainly due to the action of natural selection," and when we go on to the
+words that immediately follow, "combined probably with disuse," we are
+almost surprised at finding that disuse has had anything to do with the
+matter. We feel a languid wish to know exactly how much and in what way
+it has entered into the combination; but we find it difficult to think
+the matter out, and are glad to take it for granted that the part played
+by disuse must be so unimportant that we need not consider it. Mr.
+Darwin continues:--
+
+"For during many successive generations each individual beetle which
+flew least, either from its wings having been ever so little less
+perfectly developed, or from indolent habit, will have had the best
+chance of surviving from not having been blown out to sea; and on the
+other hand those beetles which most readily took to flight would
+oftenest be blown out to sea and perish."[371]
+
+So apt are we to believe what we are told, when it is told us gravely
+and with authority, and when there is no statement at hand to contradict
+it, that we fail to see that Mr. Darwin is all the time really
+attributing the winglessness of the Madeira beetles either to the _qua_
+him _unknown causes_ which have led to the "ever so little less perfect
+development of wing" on the part of the beetles that leave
+offspring--that is to say, is admitting that he can give no account of
+the matter--or else to the "indolent habit" of the parent beetles which
+has led them to disuse their wings, and hence gradually to lose
+them--which is neither more nor less than the "erroneous grounds of
+opinion," and "well-known doctrine" of Lamarck.
+
+For Mr. Darwin cannot mean that the fact of some beetles being blown out
+to sea is the most important means whereby certain other beetles come to
+have smaller wings--that the Madeira beetles in fact come to have
+smaller wings mainly because their large winged uncles and aunts--go
+away.
+
+But if he does not mean this, what becomes of natural selection?
+
+For in this case we are left exactly where Lamarck left us, and must
+hold that such beetles as have smaller wings have them because the
+conditions of life or "circumstances" in which their parents were
+placed, rendered it inconvenient to them to fly, and thus led them to
+leave off using their wings.
+
+Granted, that if there had been nothing to take unmodified beetles away,
+there would have been less room and scope for the modified beetles; also
+that unmodified beetles would have intermixed with the modified, and
+impeded the prevalence of the modification. But anything else than such
+removal of unmodified individuals would be contrary to our hypothesis.
+The very essence of conditions of existence is that there _shall be_
+something to take away those which do not comply with the conditions;
+if there is nothing to render such and such a course a _sine qua non_
+for life, there is no condition of existence in respect of this course,
+and no modification according to Lamarck could follow, as there would be
+no changed distribution of use.
+
+I think that if I were to leave this matter here I should have said
+enough to make the reader feel that Lamarck's system is direct,
+intelligible and sufficient--while Mr. Darwin's is confused and
+confusing. I may however quote Mr. Darwin himself as throwing his theory
+about the Madeira beetles on one side in a later passage, for he
+writes:--
+
+"It is probable that _disuse has been the main agent in rendering organs
+rudimentary_," or in other words that Lamarck was quite right--nor does
+one see why if disuse is after all the main agent in rendering an organ
+rudimentary, use should not have been the main agent in developing
+it--but let that pass. "It (disuse) would at first lead," continues Mr.
+Darwin, "by slow steps to the more and more complete reduction of a
+part, until at last it became rudimentary--as in the case of the eyes of
+animals inhabiting dark caverns, and of the wings of birds inhabiting
+oceanic islands, which have seldom been forced by beasts of prey to take
+flight, and have ultimately lost the power of flying. Again, an organ
+useful under certain conditions, might become injurious under others,
+_as with the wings of beetles living on small and exposed
+islands_;"[372] so that the rudimentary condition of the Madeira
+beetles' wings is here set down as mainly due to disuse--while above we
+find it mainly due to natural selection--I should say that immediately
+after the word "islands" just quoted, Mr. Darwin adds "and in this case
+natural selection will have aided in reducing the organ, until it was
+rendered harmless and rudimentary," but this is Mr. Darwin's manner, and
+must go for what it is worth.
+
+How refreshing to turn to the simple straightforward language of
+Lamarck.
+
+"Long continued disuse," he writes, "in consequence of the habits which
+an animal has contracted, gradually reduces an organ, and leads to its
+final disappearance....
+
+"Eyes placed in the head form an essential part of that plan on which we
+observe all vertebrate organisms to be constructed. Nevertheless the
+mole which uses its vision very little, has eyes which are only very
+small and hardly apparent.
+
+"The _aspalax_ of Olivier, which lives underground like the mole, and
+exposes itself even less than the mole to the light of day, has wholly
+lost the use of its sight, nor does it retain more than mere traces of
+visual organs, these traces again being hidden under the skin and under
+certain other parts which cover them up and leave not even the smallest
+access to the light. The Proteus, an aquatic reptile akin to the
+Salamander and living in deep and obscure cavities under water, has,
+like the aspalax, no longer anything but traces of eyes
+remaining--traces which are again entirely hidden and covered up.[373]
+
+"The following consideration should be decisive.
+
+"Light cannot penetrate everywhere, and as a consequence, animals which
+live habitually in places which it cannot reach, do not have an
+opportunity of using eyes, even though they have got them; but animals
+which form part of a system of organization which comprises eyes as an
+invariable rule among its organs, must have had eyes originally. Since
+then we find among these animals some which have lost their eyes, and
+which have only concealed traces of these organs, it is evident that the
+impoverishment, and even disappearance of the organs in question, must
+be the effect of long-continued disuse.
+
+"A proof of this is to be found in the fact that the organ of hearing is
+never in like case with that of sight; we always find it in animals of
+whose system of organization hearing is a component part; and for the
+following reason, namely, that sound, which is the effect of vibration
+upon the ear, can penetrate everywhere, and pass even through massive
+intermediate bodies. Any animal, therefore, with an organic system of
+which the ear is an essential part, can always find a use for its ears,
+no matter where it inhabits. We never, therefore, come upon rudimentary
+ears among the vertebrata, and when, going down the scale of life lower
+than the vertebrata, we come to a point at which the ear is no longer to
+be found; we never come upon ears again in any lower class.
+
+"Not so with the organ of sight: we see this organ disappear, reappear,
+and disappear again with the possibility or impossibility of using eyes
+on the part of the creature itself.[374]
+
+"The great development of mantle in the acephalous molluscs has rendered
+eyes, and even a head, entirely useless to them. These organs, though
+belonging to the type of the organism, and by rights included in it,
+have had to disappear and become annihilated owing to continued default
+of use.
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"Many insects which, by the analogy of their order and even genus,
+should have wings, have nevertheless lost them more or less completely
+through disuse. A number of coleoptera, orthoptera, hymenoptera, and
+hemiptera give us examples, the habits of these animals never leading
+them to use their wings."[375]
+
+     *     *     *     *     *
+
+I will here bring this present volume to a conclusion, hoping, however,
+to return to the same subject shortly, but to that part of it which
+bears upon longevity and the phenomena of old age. In 'Life and Habit' I
+pointed out that if differentiations of structure and instinct are
+considered as due to the different desires under different circumstances
+of an organism, which must be regarded as a single creature, though its
+development has extended over millions of years, and which is guided
+mainly by habit and memory until some disturbing cause compels
+invention--then the longevity of each generation or stage of this
+organism should depend upon the lateness of the average age of
+reproduction in each generation; so that an organism (using the word in
+its usual signification) which did not upon the average begin to
+reproduce itself till it was twenty, should be longer lived than one
+that on the average begins to reproduce itself at a year old. I also
+maintained that the phenomena of old age should be referred to failure
+of memory on the part of the organism, which in the embryonic stages,
+infancy, youth, and early manhood, leans upon the memory of what it did
+when it was in the persons of its ancestors; in middle life, carries its
+action onward by means of the impetus, already received, and by the
+force of habit; and in old age becomes puzzled, having no experience of
+any past existence at seventy-five, we will say, to guide it, and
+therefore forgetting itself more and more completely till it dies. I
+hope to extend this, and to bring forward arguments in support of it in
+a future work.
+
+Of the importance of the theory put forward in 'Life and Habit'--I am
+daily more and more convinced. Unless we admit oneness of personality
+between parents and offspring, memory of the often repeated facts of
+past existences, the latency of that memory until it is rekindled by the
+presence of the associated ideas, or of a sufficient number of them, and
+the far-reaching consequences of the unconsciousness which results from
+habitual action, evolution does not greatly add to our knowledge as to
+how we shall live here to the best advantage. Add these considerations,
+and its value as a guide becomes immediately apparent; a new light is
+poured upon a hundred problems of the greatest delicacy and difficulty.
+Not the least interesting of these is the gradual extension of human
+longevity--an extension, however, which cannot be effected till many
+many generations as yet unborn have come and gone. There is nothing,
+however, to prevent man's becoming as long lived as the oak if he will
+persevere for many generations in the steps which can alone lead to this
+result. Another interesting achievement which should be more quickly
+attainable, though still not in our own time, is the earlier maturity of
+those animals whose rapid maturity is an advantage to us, but whose
+longevity is not to our purpose.
+
+     *     *     *     *     *
+
+The question--Evolution or Direct Creation of all species?--has been
+settled in favour of Evolution. A hardly less interesting and important
+battle has now to be fought over the question whether we are to accept
+the evolution of the founders of the theory--with the adjuncts hinted at
+by Dr. Darwin and Mr. Matthew, and insisted on, so far as I can gather,
+by Professor Hering and myself--or the evolution of Mr. Darwin, which
+denies the purposiveness or teleology inherent in evolution as first
+propounded. I am assured that such of my readers as I can persuade to
+prefer the old evolution to the new will have but little reason to
+regret their preference.
+
+     *     *     *     *     *
+
+P.S.--As these sheets leave my hands, my attention is called to a review
+of Professor Haeckel's 'Evolution of Man,' by Mr. A. E. Wallace, in the
+'Academy' for April 12, 1879. "Professor Haeckel maintains," says Mr.
+Wallace, "_that the struggle for existence in nature evolves new forms
+without design, just as the will of man produces new varieties in
+cultivation with design_." I maintain in preference with the older
+evolutionists, that in consequence of change in the conditions of their
+existence, _organisms design new forms for themselves, and carry those
+designs out in additions to, and modifications of, their own bodies_.
+
+"The science of rudimentary organs," continues Mr. Wallace, "which
+Haeckel terms 'dysteleology, or the doctrine of purposelessness,' is
+here discussed, and a number of interesting examples are given, the
+conclusion being that they prove the mechanical or monistic conception
+of the origin of organisms to be correct, and the idea of any 'all-wise
+creative plan an ancient fable.'" I see no reason to suppose, or again
+not to suppose, an all-wise creative plan. I decline to go into this
+question, believing it to be not yet ripe, nor nearly ripe, for
+consideration. I see purpose, however, in rudimentary organs as much as
+in useful ones, but a spent or extinct purpose--a purpose which has been
+fulfilled, and is now forgotten--the rudimentary organ being repeated
+from force of habit, indolence, and dislike of change, so long as it
+does not, to use the words of Buffon, "stand in the way of the fair
+development" of other parts which are found useful and necessary. I
+demur, therefore, to the inference of "purposelessness" which I gather
+that Professor Haeckel draws from these organs.
+
+In the 'Academy' for April 19, 1879, Mr. Wallace quotes Professor
+Haeckel as saying that our "highly purposive and admirably-constituted
+sense-organs have developed without premeditated aim; that they have
+originated by the same mechanical process of Natural Selection, by the
+same constant interaction of Adaptation and Heredity [what _is_ Heredity
+but another word for unknown causes, unless it is explained in some such
+manner as in 'Life and Habit'?] by which all the other purposive
+contrivances of the animal organization have been slowly and gradually
+evolved during the struggle for existence."
+
+I see no evidence for "premeditated aim" at any modification very far in
+advance of an existing organ, any more than I do for "premeditated aim"
+on man's part at any as yet inconceivable mechanical invention; but as
+in the case of man's inventions, so also in that of the organs of
+animals and plants, modification is due to the accumulation of small,
+well-considered improvements, as found necessary in practice, and the
+conduct of their affairs. Each step having been purposive, the whole
+road has been travelled purposively; nor is the purposiveness of such an
+organ, we will say, as the eye, barred by the fact that invention has
+doubtless been aided by some of those happy accidents which from time to
+time happen to all who keep their wits about them, and know how to turn
+the gifts of Fortune to account.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[371] 'Origin of Species,' p. 109.
+
+[372] 'Origin of Species, p. 401.
+
+[373] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 242.
+
+[374] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 244.
+
+[375] 'Phil. Zool.,' tom. i. p. 245.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+REVIEWS OF 'EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW.'
+
+
+Those who have been at the pains to read the foregoing book will,
+perhaps, pardon me if I put before them a short account of the reception
+it has met with: I will not waste time by arguing with my critics at any
+length; it will be enough if I place some of their remarks upon my book
+under the same cover as the book itself, with here and there a word or
+two of comment.
+
+The only reviews which have come under my notice appeared in the
+'Academy' and the 'Examiner,' both of May 17, 1879; the 'Edinburgh Daily
+Review,' May 23, 1879; 'City Press,' May 21, 1879; 'Field,' May 26,
+1879; 'Saturday Review,' May 31, 1879; 'Daily Chronicle,' May 31, 1879;
+'Graphic' and 'Nature,' both June 12, 1879; 'Pall Mall Gazette,' June
+18, 1879; 'Literary World,' June 20, 1879; 'Scotsman,' June 24, 1879;
+'British Journal of Homoeopathy' and 'Mind,' both July 1, 1879;
+'Journal of Science,' July 18, 1879; 'Westminster Review,' July, 1879;
+'Athenaeum,' July 26, 1879; 'Daily News,' July 29, 1879; 'Manchester
+City News,' August 16, 1879; 'Nonconformist,' November 26, 1879;
+'Popular Science Review,' Jan. 1, 1880; 'Morning Post,' Jan. 12, 1880.
+
+Some of the most hostile passages in the reviews above referred to are
+as follows:--
+
+"From beginning to end, our eccentric author treats us to a dazzling
+flood of epigram, invective, and what appears to be argument; and
+finally leaves us without a single clear idea as to what he has been
+driving at."
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"Mr. Butler comes forward, as it were, to proclaim himself a
+professional satirist, and a mystifier who will do his best to leave you
+utterly in the dark with regard to his system of juggling. Is he a
+teleological theologian making fun of evolution? Is he an evolutionist
+making fun of teleology? Is he a man of letters making fun of science?
+Or is he a master of pure irony making fun of all three, and of his
+audience as well? For our part we decline to commit ourselves, and
+prefer to observe, as Mr. Butler observes of Von Hartmann, that if his
+meaning is anything like what he says it is, we can only say that it has
+not been given us to form any definite conception whatever as to what
+that meaning may be."--'Academy,' May 17, 1879, Signed Grant Allen.
+
+     *     *     *     *     *
+
+Here is another criticism of "Evolution, Old and New"--also, I believe I
+am warranted in saying, by Mr. Grant Allen. These two criticisms
+appeared on the same day; how many more Mr. Allen may have written later
+on I do not know.
+
+We find the writer who in the 'Academy' declares that he has been left
+without "a single clear idea" as to what 'Evolution, Old and New,' has
+been driving at saying on the same day in the 'Examiner' that
+'Evolution, Old and New,' "has a more evident purpose than any of its
+predecessors." If so, I am afraid the predecessors must have puzzled Mr.
+Allen very unpleasantly. What the purpose of 'Evolution, Old and New,'
+is, he proceeds to explain:--
+
+"As to his (Mr. Butler's) main argument, it comes briefly to this:
+natural selection does not originate favourable varieties, it only
+passively permits them to exist; therefore it is the unknown cause which
+produced the variations, not the natural selection which spared them,
+that ought to count as the mainspring of evolution. That unknown cause
+Mr. Butler boldly declares to be the will of the organism itself. An
+intelligent ascidian wanted a pair of eyes,[376] so set to work and made
+itself a pair, exactly as a man makes a microscope; a talented fish
+conceived the idea of walking on dry land, so it developed legs, turned
+its swim bladder into a pair of lungs, and became an amphibian; an
+aesthetic guinea-fowl admired bright colours, so it bought a paint-box,
+studied Mr. Whistler's ornamental designs, and, painting itself a gilded
+and ocellated tail, was thenceforth a peacock. But how about plants? Mr.
+Butler does not shirk even this difficulty. The theory must be
+maintained at all hazards.... This is the sort of mystical nonsense
+from which we had hoped Mr. Darwin had for ever saved us."--'Examiner,'
+May 17, 1879.
+
+     *     *     *     *     *
+
+In this last article, Mr. Allen has said that I am a man of genius,
+"with the unmistakable signet-mark upon my forehead." I have been
+subjected to a good deal of obloquy and misrepresentation at one time or
+another, but this passage by Mr. Allen is the only one I have seen that
+has made me seriously uneasy about the prospects of my literary
+reputation.
+
+I see Mr. Allen has been lately writing an article in the 'Fortnightly
+Review' on the decay of criticism. Looking over it somewhat hurriedly,
+my eye was arrested by the following:--
+
+"Nowadays any man can write, because there are papers enough to give
+employment to everybody. No reflection, no deliberation, no care; all is
+haste, fatal facility, stock phrases, commonplace ideas, and a ready pen
+that can turn itself to any task with equal ease, because supremely
+ignorant of all alike."
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"The writer takes to his craft nowadays, not because he has taste for
+literature, but because he has an incurable faculty for scribbling. He
+has no culture, and he soon loses the power of taking pains, if he ever
+possessed it. But he can talk with glib superficiality and imposing
+confidence about every conceivable subject, from a play or a picture to
+a sermon or a metaphysical essay. It is the utter indifference to
+subject-matter, joined with the vulgar unscrupulousness of pretentious
+ignorance, that strikes the keynote of our existing criticism. Men write
+without taking the trouble to read or think."[377]
+
+     *     *     *     *     *
+
+The 'Saturday Review' attacked 'Evolution, Old and New,' I may almost
+say savagely. It wrote: "When Mr. Butler's 'Life and Habit' came before
+us, we doubted whether his ambiguously expressed speculations belonged
+to the regions of playful but possibly scientific imagination, or of
+unscientific fancies; and we gave him the benefit of the doubt. In fact,
+we strained a point or two to find a reasonable meaning for him. He has
+now settled the question against himself. Not professing to have any
+particular competence in biology, natural history, or the scientific
+study of evidence in any shape whatever, and, indeed, rather glorying in
+his freedom from any such superfluities, he undertakes to assure the
+overwhelming majority of men of science, and the educated public who
+have followed their lead, that, while they have done well to be
+converted to the doctrine of the evolution and transmutation of species,
+they have been converted on entirely wrong grounds."
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"When a writer who has not given as many weeks to the subject as Mr.
+Darwin has given years [as a matter of fact, it is now twenty years
+since I began to publish on the subject of Evolution] is not content to
+air his own crude, though clever, fallacies, but presumes to criticize
+Mr. Darwin with the superciliousness of a young schoolmaster looking
+over a boy's theme, it is difficult not to take him more seriously than
+he deserves or perhaps desires. One would think that Mr. Butler was the
+travelled and laborious observer of Nature, and Mr. Darwin the pert
+speculator, who takes all his facts at secondhand."
+
+     . . . . . .
+
+"Let us once more consider how matters stood a year or two before the
+'Origin of Species' first appeared. The continuous evolution of animated
+Nature had in its favour the difficulty of drawing fixed lines between
+species and even larger divisions, all the indications of comparative
+anatomy and embryology, and a good deal of general scientific
+presumption. Several well-known writers, and some eminent enough to
+command respect, had expressed their belief in it. One or two far-seeing
+thinkers, among whom the place of honour must be assigned to Mr. Herbert
+Spencer, had done more. They had used their philosophic insight, which,
+to science, is the eye of faith, to descry the promised land almost
+within reach; they knew and announced how rich and spacious the heritage
+would be, if once the entry could be made good. But on that 'if'
+everything hung. Nature was not bound to give up her secret, or was
+bound only in a mocking covenant with an impossible condition: _Si caelum
+digito tetigeris_; if only some fortunate hand could touch the
+inaccessible firmament, and bring down the golden chain to earth! But
+fruition seemed out of sight. Even those who were most willing to
+advance in this direction, could only regret that they saw no road
+clear. There was a tempting vision, but nothing proven--many would have
+said nothing provable. A few years passed, and all this was changed.
+The doubtful speculation had become a firm and connected theory. In the
+room of scattered foragers and scouts, there was an irresistibly
+advancing column. Nature had surrendered her stronghold, and was
+disarmed of her secret. And if we ask who were the men by whom this was
+done, the answer is notorious, and there is but one answer possible: the
+names that are for ever associated with this great triumph are those of
+Charles Darwin and Wallace."[378]
+
+I gave the lady or gentleman who wrote this an opportunity of
+acknowledging the authorship; but she or he preferred, not I think
+unnaturally, to remain anonymous.
+
+The only other criticism of 'Evolution, Old and New,' to which I would
+call attention, appeared in 'Nature,' in a review of 'Unconscious
+Memory,' by Mr. Romanes, and contained the following passages:--
+
+"But to be serious, if in charity we could deem Mr. Butler a lunatic, we
+should not be unprepared for any aberration of common sense that he
+might display.... A certain nobody writes a book ['Evolution, Old and
+New'] accusing the most illustrious man in his generation of burying the
+claims of certain illustrious predecessors out of the sight of all men.
+In the hope of gaining some notoriety by deserving, and perhaps
+receiving a contemptuous refutation from the eminent man in question, he
+publishes this book which, if it deserved serious consideration, would
+be not more of an insult to the particular man of science whom it
+accuses of conscious and wholesale plagiarism [there is no such
+accusation in 'Evolution, Old and New'] than it would be to men of
+science in general for requiring such elementary instruction on some of
+the most famous literature in science from an upstart ignoramus, who,
+until two or three years ago, considered himself a painter by
+profession."--'Nature,' Jan. 27, 1881.
+
+     *     *     *     *     *
+
+In a subsequent letter to 'Nature,' Mr. Romanes said he had been "acting
+the part of policeman" by writing as he had done. Any unscrupulous
+reviewer may call himself a policeman if he likes, but he must not
+expect those whom he assails to recognize his pretensions. 'Evolution,
+Old and New,' was not written for the kind of people whom Mr. Romanes
+calls men of science; if "men of science" means men like Mr. Romanes, I
+trust they say well who maintain that I am not a man of science; I
+believe the men to whom Mr. Romanes refers to be men, not of that kind
+of science which desires to know, but of that kind whose aim is to
+thrust itself upon the public as actually knowing. 'Evolution, Old and
+New,' could be of no use to these; certainly, it was not intended as an
+insult to them, but if they are insulted by it, I do not know that I am
+sorry, for I value their antipathy and opposition as much as I should
+dislike their approbation: of one thing, however, I am certain--namely,
+that before 'Evolution, Old and New,' was written, Professors Huxley and
+Tyndall, for example, knew very little of the earlier history of
+Evolution. Professor Huxley, in his article on Evolution in the ninth
+edition of the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica,' published in 1878, says of the
+two great pioneers of Evolution, that Buffon "contributed nothing to
+the general doctrine of Evolution,"[379] and that Erasmus Darwin "can
+hardly be said to have made any real advance on his predecessors."[380]
+
+Professor Haeckel evidently knew little of Erasmus Darwin, and still
+less, apparently, about Buffon.[381] Professor Tyndall,[382] in 1878,
+spoke of Evolution as "Darwin's theory"; and I have just read Mr. Grant
+Allen as saying that Evolutionism "is an almost exclusively English
+impulse."[383]
+
+Since 'Evolution, Old and New,' was published, I have observed several
+of the so-called men of science--among them Professor Huxley and Mr.
+Romanes--airing Buffon; but I never observed any of them do this till
+within the last three years. I maintain that "men of science" were, and
+still are, very ignorant concerning the history of Evolution; but,
+whether they were or were not, I did not write 'Evolution, Old and New,'
+for them; I wrote for the general public, who have been kind enough to
+testify their appreciation of it in a sufficiently practical manner.
+
+The way in which Mr. Charles Darwin met 'Evolution, Old and New,' has
+been so fully dealt with in my book, 'Unconscious Memory;' in the
+'Athenaeum,' Jan. 31, 1880; the 'St. James's Gazette,' Dec. 8, 1880; and
+'Nature,' Feb. 3, 1881, that I need not return to it here, more
+especially as Mr. Darwin has, by his silence, admitted that he has no
+defence to make.
+
+I have quoted by no means the moat exceptionable parts of Mr. Romanes'
+article, and have given them a permanence they would not otherwise
+attain, inasmuch as nothing can better show the temper of the kind of
+men who are now--as I said in the body of the foregoing work--clamouring
+for endowment, and who would step into the Pope's shoes to-morrow if we
+would only let them.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[376] See p. 44, and the whole of chap. v., where I say of this
+supposition, that "nothing could be conceived more foreign
+to experience and common sense."
+
+[377] 'Fortnightly Review,' March 1, 1882, pp. 344, 345.
+
+[378] 'Saturday Review,' May 31, 1879, pp. 682-3.
+
+[379] P. 748.
+
+[380] _Ibid._
+
+[381] See pp. 71-73.
+
+[382] 'Nineteenth Century' for November, pp. 360, 361.
+
+[383] 'Fortnightly Review,' March, 1882.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+ROME AND PANTHEISM.
+
+
+Evolution would after all be a poor doctrine if it did not affect human
+affairs at every touch and turn. I propose to devote the second chapter
+of this Appendix to the consideration of an aspect of Evolution which
+will always interest a very large number of people--the development of
+the relation that may exist between religion and science.
+
+If the Church of Rome would only develop some doctrine or, I know not
+how, provide some means by which men like myself, who cannot pretend to
+believe in the miraculous element of Christianity, could yet join her as
+a conservative stronghold, I, for one, should gladly do so. I believe
+the difference between her faith and that of all who can be called
+gentlemen to be one of words rather than things. Our practical working
+ideal is much the same as hers; when we use the word "gentleman" we mean
+the same thing that the Church of Rome does; so that, if we get down
+below the words that formulate her teaching, there are few points upon
+which we should not agree. But, alas! words are often so very important.
+
+How is it possible for myself, for example, to give people to understand
+that I believe in the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception or in the
+Lourdes miracles? If the Pope could spare time to think about so
+insignificant a person, would he wish me to pretend such beliefs or
+think better of me if I did pretend them? I should be sorry to see him
+turn suddenly round and deny his own faith, and I am persuaded that, in
+like manner, he would have me continue to hold my own in peace;
+nevertheless, the duty of subordinating private judgment to the
+avoidance of schism is so obvious that, if we could see a practicable
+way of bridging the gulf between ourselves and Rome, we should be
+heartily glad to bridge it.
+
+I speak as though the Church of Rome was the only one we can look to. I
+do not see how it is easy to dispute this. Protestantism has been tried
+and failed; it has long ceased to grow, but it has by no means ceased to
+disintegrate. Note the manner in which it is torn asunder by
+dissensions, and the rancour which these dissensions engender--a rancour
+which finds its way into the political and social life of Europe, with
+incalculable damage to the health and well-being of the world. Who can
+doubt but that there will be a split even in the Church of England ere
+so many years are over? Protestantism is like one of those drops of
+glass which tend to split up into minuter and minuter fragments the
+moment the bond that united them has been removed. It is as though the
+force of gravity had lost its hold, and a universal power of repulsion
+taken the place of attraction. This may, perhaps, come about some day in
+the material as well as in the spiritual and political world, but the
+spirit of the age is as yet one of aggregation; the spirit of
+Protestantism is one of disintegration. I maintain, therefore, that it
+is not likely to be permanent.
+
+All the great powers of Europe have from numberless distinct tribes
+become first a few kingdoms or dukedoms, then two or three nations, and
+now homogeneous wholes, so that there is no chance of their further
+dismemberment through internal discontent; a process which has been
+going on for so many hundreds of years all over Europe is not likely to
+be arrested without ample warning. True, during the Roman Empire the
+world was practically bonded together, yet broke in pieces again; but
+this, I imagine, was because the bonding was prophetic and superficial
+rather than genuine. Nature very commonly makes one or two false starts,
+and misses her aim a time or two before she hits it. She nearly hit it
+in the time of Alexander the Great, but this was a short-lived success;
+in the case of the Roman Empire she succeeded better and for longer
+together. Where Nature has once or twice hit her mark as near as this
+she will commonly hit it outright eventually; the disruption of the
+Roman Empire, therefore, does not militate against the supposition that
+the normal condition of right-minded people is one which tends towards
+aggregation, or, in other words, towards compromise and the merging of
+much of one's own individuality for the sake of union and concerted
+action.
+
+See, again, how Rome herself, within the limits of Italy, was an
+aggregation, an aggregation which has now within these last few years
+come together again after centuries of disruption; all middle-aged men
+have seen many small countries come together in their own lifetime,
+while in America a gigantic attempt at disruption has completely failed.
+Success will, of course, sometimes attend disruption, but on the whole
+the balance inclines strongly in favour of aggregation and homogeneity;
+analogy points in the direction of supposing that the great civilized
+nations of Europe, as they are the coalition of subordinate provinces,
+so must coalesce themselves also to form a larger, but single empire.
+Wars will then cease, and surely anything that seems likely to tend
+towards so desirable an end deserves respectful consideration.
+
+The Church of Rome is essentially a unifier. It is a great thing that
+nations should have so much in common as the acknowledgment of the same
+tribunal for the settlement of spiritual and religious questions, and
+there is no head under which Christendom can unite with as little
+disturbance as under Rome. Nothing more tends to keep men apart than
+religious differences; this certainly ought not to be the case, but it
+no less certainly is, and therefore we should strain many points and
+subordinate our private judgment to a very considerable extent if called
+upon to do so. A man, under these circumstances, is right in saying he
+believes in much that he does not believe in. Nevertheless there are
+limits to this, and the Church of Rome requires more of us at present
+than we can by any means bring ourselves into assenting to.
+
+It may be asked, Why have a Church at all? Why not unite in community of
+negation rather than of assertion? When I wrote 'Evolution, Old and
+New,' three years ago, I thought, as now, that the only possible Church
+must be a development of the Church of Rome; and seeing no chance of
+agreement between avowed free-thinkers, like myself, and Rome (for I
+believed Rome immovable), I leaned towards absolute negation as the best
+chance for unity among civilized nations; but even then, I expressed
+myself as "having a strong feeling as though Professor Mivart's
+conclusion is true, that 'the material universe is always and everywhere
+sustained and directed by an infinite cause, for which to us the word
+mind is the least inadequate and misleading symbol.'"[384]
+
+I had hardly finished 'Evolution, Old and New,' before I began to deal
+with this question according to my lights, in a series of articles upon
+God[385] which appeared in the 'Examiner' during the summer of 1879, and
+I returned to the same matter more than once in 'Unconscious Memory,' my
+next succeeding work. The articles I intend recasting and rewriting, as
+they go upon a false assumption; but subsequent reflection has only
+confirmed me in the general result I arrived at--namely, the
+omnipresence of mind in the universe.
+
+I have therefore come to see that we can go farther than negation, and
+in this case--a positive expression of faith as regards an invisible
+universe of some sort being possible--a Church of some sort is also
+possible, which shall formulate and express the general convictions as
+regards man's position in respect of this faith. I think the instinct
+which has led so many countries towards a double legislative chamber,
+and ourselves, till at any rate quite recently, to a double system of
+jurisprudence, law and equity, was not arrived at without having passed
+through the stages of reason and reflection. There are a variety of
+delicate, almost intangible, questions which belong rather to conscience
+than to law, and for which a Church is a fitter tribunal--at any rate
+for many ages hence--than a parliament or law court. There is room,
+therefore, for both a State and a Church, each of which should be
+influenced by the action of the other.
+
+I do not say that I personally should like to see the Church of Rome as
+at present constituted in the position which I should be glad to see
+attained by an ideal Church. If it were in that position I would attack
+it to the utmost of my power; but I have little hesitation in thinking
+that the world with a very possible feasible Church, would be better
+than the world with no Church at all; and, if so, I have still less
+hesitation in concluding, for the reasons already given, that it is to
+Rome we must turn as the source from which the Church of the future is
+to be evolved, if it is to come at all.
+
+For the new, if it is to strike deep root and be permanent, must grow
+out of the old, without too violent a transition. Some violence there
+will always be, even in the kindliest birth; but the less the better,
+and a leap greater than the one from Judaism to Christianity is not
+desirable, even if it were possible. As a free-thinker, therefore, but
+also as one who wishes to take a practical view of the manner in which
+things will, and ought to go, I neither expect to see the religions of
+the world come once for all to an end with the belief in
+Christianity--which to me is tantamount to saying with Rome--nor am I at
+all sure that such a consummation is more desirable than likely to come
+about. The ultimate fight will, I believe, be between Rome and
+Pantheism; and the sooner the two contending parties can be ranged into
+their opposite camps by the extinction of all intermediate creeds, the
+sooner will an issue of some sort be arrived at. This will not happen in
+our time, but we should work towards it.
+
+When it arrives, what is to happen? Is Pantheism to absorb Rome, and, if
+so, what sort of a religious formula is to be the result? or is Rome so
+to modify her dogmas that the Pantheist can join her without doing too
+much violence to his convictions? We who are outside the Church's pale
+are in the habit of thinking that she will make little if any advances
+in our direction. The dream of a Pantheistic Rome seems so wild as
+hardly to be entertained seriously; nevertheless I am much mistaken if I
+do not detect at least one sign as though more were within the bounds of
+possibility than even the most sanguine of us could have hoped for a few
+years back. We do not expect the Church to go our whole length; it is
+the business of some to act as pioneers, but this is the last function a
+Church should assume. A Church should be as the fly-wheel of a
+steam-engine, which conserves, regulates and distributes energy, but
+does not originate it. In all cases it is more moral and safer to be a
+little behind the age than a little in front of it; a Church, therefore,
+ought to cling to an old-established belief, even though her leaders
+know it to be unfounded, so long as any considerable number of her
+members would be shocked at its abandonment. The question is whether
+there are any signs as though the Church of Rome thought the time had
+come when she might properly move a step forward, and I rejoice to
+think, as I have said above, that at any rate one such sign--and a very
+important one--has come under my notice.
+
+In his Encyclical of August 4, 1879, the Pope desires the Bishops and
+Clergy to restore the golden wisdom of St. Thomas Aquinas, and to spread
+it far and wide. "Vos omnes," he writes, "Venerabiles Fratres, quam
+enixe hortamur ut ad Catholicae fidei tutelam et decus, ad societatis
+bonum, ad scientiarum omnium incrementum auream Sancti Thomae sapientiam
+restituatis, et quam latissime propagetis." He proceeds then with the
+following remarkable passage: "We say the wisdom of St. Thomas. For
+whatever has been worked out with too much subtleness by the doctors of
+the schools, or handed down inconsiderately, whatever is not consistent
+with the teachings of a later age, or finally, is in any way NOT
+PROBABLE, We in no wise intend to propose for acceptance in these
+days."[386]
+
+It would be almost possible to suppose that these words had been written
+inadvertently, so the Pope practically repeats them thus: "We willingly
+and gratefully declare that whatsoever can be excepted with advantage,
+is to be excepted, no matter by whom it has been invented."[387]
+
+The passage just quoted is so pregnant that a few words of comment may
+be very well excused. In the first place, I cannot but admire the
+latitude which the Pope not only tolerates, but enjoins: he defines
+nothing, but declares point blank that if we find anything in St. Thomas
+Aquinas "not consistent with the assured teachings of a later age, or
+finally IN ANY WAY NOT PROBABLE"--(what is not involved here?)--we are
+"in no wise to suppose" that it is being proposed for our acceptance.
+But it is a small step from allowing latitude in accepting or rejecting
+the parts of St. Thomas Aquinas which conflict with the assured result
+of later discoveries to allowing a similar latitude in respect, we will
+say, of St. Jude; and if of St. Jude, then of St. James the Less; and if
+of St. James the Less, then surely ere very long of St. James the
+Greater and St. John and St. Paul; nor will the matter stop there. How
+marvellously closely are the two extremes of doctrine approaching to one
+another! We, on the one hand, who begin with _tabulae rasae_ having made a
+clean sweep of every shred of doctrine, lay hold of the first thing we
+can grasp with any firmness, and work back from it. We grope our way to
+evolution; through this to purposive evolution; through this to the
+omnipresence of mind and design throughout the universe; what is this
+but God? So that we can say with absolute freedom from _equivoque_ that
+we are what we are through the will of God. The theologian, on the other
+hand, starts with God, and finds himself driven through this to
+evolution, as surely as we found ourselves driven through evolution to
+the omnipresence of God.
+
+Let us look a little more closely at the ground which the Church of Rome
+and the Evolutionist hold in common. St. Paul speaks of there being "one
+body and one spirit," and of one God as being "above all, and through
+all, and in you all."[388] Again, he tells us that we are members of
+God's body, "of his flesh and of his bones;"[389] in another place he
+writes that God has reconciled us to himself, "in the body of his
+flesh,"[390] and in yet another of the Spirit of God "dwelling in
+us."[391] St. Paul indeed is continually using language which implies
+the closest physical as well as spiritual union between God and those at
+any rate of mankind who were Christians. Then he speaks of our "being
+builded together for an habitation of God through the spirit,"[392] and
+of our being "filled with the fulness of God."[393] He calls Christian
+men's bodies "temples of the Holy Spirit,"[394] in fact it is not too
+much to say that he regarded Christian men's limbs as the actual living
+organs of God himself, for the expressions quoted above--and many others
+could be given--come to no less than this. It follows that since any man
+could unite himself to "the flesh and bones" of God by becoming a
+Christian, Paul had a perception of the unity at any rate of human life;
+and what Paul admitted I am persuaded the Church of Rome will not deny.
+
+Granted that Paul's notion of the unity of all mankind in one spirit
+animating, or potentially animating the whole was mystical, I submit
+that the main difference between him and the Evolutionist is that the
+first uses certain expressions more or less prophetically, and without
+perhaps a full perception of their import; while the second uses the
+same expressions literally, and with the ordinary signification attached
+to the words that compose them. It is not so much that we do not hold
+what Paul held, but that we hold it with the greater definiteness and
+comprehension which modern discovery has rendered possible. We not only
+accept his words, but we extend them, and not only accept them as
+articles of faith to be taken on the word of others, but as so
+profoundly entering into our views of the world around us that that
+world loses the greater part of its significance if we may not take such
+sayings as that "we are God's flesh and his bones" as meaning neither
+more nor less than what appears upon the face of them. We believe that
+what we call our life is part of the universal life of the Deity--which
+is literally and truly made manifest to us in flesh that can be seen and
+handled--ever changing, but the same yesterday, and to-day, and for
+ever.
+
+So much for the closeness with which we have come together on matters of
+fact, and now for the _rapprochement_ between us in respect of how much
+conformity is required for the sake of avoiding schism. We find
+ourselves driven through considerations of great obviousness and
+simplicity to the conclusion that a man both may and should keep no
+small part of his opinions to himself, if they are too widely different
+from those of other people for the sake of union and the strength gained
+by concerted action; and we also find the Pope declaring of one of the
+brightest saints and luminaries of the Church that we need not follow
+him when it is plainly impossible for us to do so. Is it so very much to
+hope that ere many years are over the approximation will become closer
+still?
+
+I have sometimes imagined that the doctrine of Papal Infallibility may
+be the beginning of a way out of the difficulty, and that its promoters
+were so eager for it, rather for the facilities it afforded for the
+repealing of old dogmas than for the imposition of new ones. The Pope
+cannot, even now, under any circumstances, declare a dogma of the Church
+to be obsolete or untrue, but I should imagine he can, in council, _ex
+cathedra_, modify the interpretation to be put upon any dogma, if he
+should find the interpretation commonly received to be prejudicial to
+the good of the Church: and if so, the manner in which Rome can put
+herself more in harmony with the spirit of recent discoveries, without
+putting herself in an illogical position, is not likely to escape eyes
+so keen as those of the Catholic hierarchy. No sensible man will
+hesitate to admit that many an interpretation which was natural to and
+suitable for one age is unnatural to and unsuitable for another; as
+circumstances are always changing, so men's moods and the meanings they
+attach to words, and the state of their knowledge changes; and hence,
+also, the interpretation of the dogmas in which their conclusions are
+summarized. There is nothing to be ashamed of or that needs explaining
+away in this; nothing can remain changeless under changed conditions;
+and that institution is most likely to be permanent which contains
+provision for such changes as time may prove to be expedient, with the
+least disturbance. I can see nothing, therefore, illogical or that needs
+concealment in the fact of an infallible Pope putting a widely different
+interpretation upon a dogma now, to what a no less infallible Pope put
+upon the same dogma fifteen hundred, or even fifteen years ago; it is
+only right, reasonable, and natural that this should be so. The Church
+of England may have made no provision for the virtual pruning off of
+dogmas that have become rudimentary, but the Encyclical from which I
+have just quoted leads me to think that the Church of Rome has found
+one, and, in her own cautious way, is proceeding to make use of it. If
+so, she may possibly in the end get rid of Protestantism by putting
+herself more in harmony with the spirit of the age than Protestantism
+can do. In this case, the spiritual reunion of Christendom under Rome
+ceases to be impossible, or even, I should think improbable. I heartily
+wish that my conjecture concerning future possibilities is not
+unfounded.
+
+Scientists have been right in preaching evolution, but they have
+preached it in such a way as to make it almost as much of a
+stumbling-block as of an assistance. For though the fact that animals
+and plants are descended from a common stock is accepted by the greater
+and more reasonable part of mankind, these same people feel that the
+evidence in favour of design in the universe is no less strong than that
+in favour of evolution, and our scientists, for the most part, uphold a
+theory of evolution of which the cardinal doctrine is that design and
+evolution have nothing to do with one another; the jar they raise,
+therefore, is as bad as the jar they have allayed.
+
+It has been the object of the foregoing work to show that those who take
+this line are wrong, and that evolution not only tolerates design, but
+cannot get on without it. The unscrupulousness with which I have been
+attacked, together with the support given me by the general public, are
+sufficient proofs that I have not written in vain.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[384] P. 371.
+
+[385] Published as "God the Known and God the Unknown" in 1909.
+(Fifield.)
+
+[386] "Sapientiam Sancti Thomae dicimus: si quid enim est a doctoribus
+scholasticis vel nimia subtilitate quaesitum, vel parum considerate
+traditum, si quid cum exploratis posterioris aevi doctrinis minus
+cohaerens, vel denique quoque modo non probabile, id nullo pacto in animo
+est aetate nostra ad imitandum proponi."
+
+[387] "Edicimus libenti gratoque animo excipiendum esse quidquid
+utiliter fuerit a quopiam inventum atque excogitatum."
+
+[388] Eph. iv. 3, 4, 5.
+
+[389] Eph. v. 30.
+
+[390] Col. i. 22.
+
+[391] Rom. viii. 2.
+
+[392] Eph. ii. 22.
+
+[393] Eph. iii. 19.
+
+[394] 1 Cor. vii. 19.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+ABORTION, neutralization of working bees an act of, 250
+
+Accessory touches, varying Buffon on, 92
+
+Accident, many of our best thoughts come thoughtlessly, 48, 384
+
+---- profiting by, 51, 53
+
+---- and discovery of theory connecting meteors with comets, 53
+
+---- shaking the bag to see what will come out, 53
+
+---- effects of, transmitted to offspring, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, 224
+
+---- and design, the line between these hard to draw, 384
+
+Accidental variations thrown for as with dice, 3
+
+Accumulation of variations, C. Darwin deals with the, and not with
+  the origin of, 340, 341
+
+---- of small divergencies, Buffon on the, 103
+
+Accurate, survival of fittest more accurate than Nat. Sel. and
+  _sometimes_ equally convenient, 9, 354, 365
+
+Act of Parliament, Natural Selection compared to a certain kind of, 358
+
+Age, old, the phenomena of, 67, 204, 381
+
+Aggregation, the spirit of the age tends towards, 397, 398
+
+Ahead, no organism sees very far, 44, 48, 54, 384
+
+Aldrovandus, Buffon on the learned, 93
+
+Alive, when we must not say that an animal is alive (to be
+  retracted), 279
+
+Allen, Grant, on 'Evolution, Old and New,' 386-388
+
+---- on the decay of criticism, 388
+
+---- calls Evolutionism "an almost exclusively English impulse," 393
+
+Alternations of fat and lean years, Buffon on, 125
+
+Amoeba, the, did not conceive the idea of an eye and work towards
+  it, 43, 44, 384
+
+Analogies, false, all words are apt to turn out to be, 365
+
+Animals, contracts among, Dr. E. Darwin on, 205
+
+Ape, the, and man, 90
+
+Apes and monkeys, Buffon on, 153
+
+---- and children fall on all-fours at the approach of danger, 312
+
+Apparentibus, _de non_, _et non existentibus, &c._, 36
+
+Appearances, rather superficial, our only guide to
+  classification, 34, 35, 36, 198, 204
+
+Appetency, Paley's argument against the view that structures have been
+  developed through, 22, 45
+
+Aristides, C. Darwin as just as, 363
+
+Aristotle denied teleology, 4
+
+Artificial and real foot, differences between, 25
+
+Asceticism, virtue errs on the side of excess rather than on that of, 35
+
+Ass, the, and horse, Buffon's pregnant passage on their
+  relationship, 80, 90, 91, 100, 101, 142, 143, 155, 164, 311
+
+Authority, a hard thing to weigh, 253
+
+
+BACON, F., on evolution, 69
+
+Balzac, quotation from, on memory and instinct, 67
+
+Bark, Erasmus Darwin's theory of, 208
+
+Beaver, trowel incorporated into the beaver's organism, 8
+
+Bees, neutralization of working, an act of abortion, 250
+
+Beetles, Madeira, Lamarck and C. Darwin's views of their winglessness
+  compared, 373, 380
+
+Begin, How could the eye _begin_? 46, 47
+
+Beginnings, of complex structures, a difficulty in the way of natural
+  selection, 21, 22
+
+---- difficulty of accounting for, 46, 47
+
+---- a matter of conjecture and inference, 48
+
+Behind, more moral to be behind the age than in front of it, 401
+
+Best, making the best of whatever power one has, 50
+
+Bird, how birds became web-footed, 48, 49, 51
+
+---- a, will modify its nest a little, under altered circumstances, 55
+
+---- Buffon on, 170, &c.
+
+---- nests, Dr. Erasmus Darwin's failure to connect the power to make
+  them with memory, 201, 203
+
+---- aquatic and wading, Lamarck on, 305
+
+Bishop, and Eveque, common derivation of, 355
+
+Blindfolded, we are so far, that we can see a few steps in front,
+  but no more, 44
+
+---- us, C. Darwin has almost ostentatiously, 346
+
+Blindly, forces interacting blindly, 59
+
+Body and mind, Lamarck on, 338, 339, 341
+
+Brain, Lamarck had brain upon the brain, 36
+
+---- Buffon on the, 131, 133, &c.
+
+Brevity may be the soul of wit, but, &c., 315
+
+Breeding, and feeding, 222
+
+Brown-Sequard, his experiments on guinea-pigs' legs, 303
+
+Buds, individuality of, Dr. Erasmus Darwin on the, 207, 208
+
+Buffalo, Buffon on the, 148, &c.
+
+Buffon, profoundly superficial, 34
+
+---- _plus il a su, plus il a pu, &c._, 44
+
+---- _dans l'animal il y a moins de jugement que de sentiment_, 51
+
+---- ignorance concerning, 61
+
+---- memoir of, 74, &c.
+
+---- on glory, genius, and style, 76, 77
+
+---- ironical character of his work and method (_see_ Irony), 78,
+  &c., 171
+
+---- on the ass, horse, and zebra, 80, 90, 91, 100, 101, 142,
+  143, 155, 164, 311
+
+---- would not play the part of Rousseau or Voltaire, 81
+
+---- Sir W. Jardine on, and the Sorbonne, 82
+
+---- regards all animal and vegetable life as from one common source, 90
+
+---- if a single species has ever been found under domestication,
+  &c., 91
+
+---- on plaisanterie, and the learned Aldrovandus, 93, &c.
+
+---- his compromise, 92
+
+---- accessory touches, 92
+
+---- "_especially_" the same, 96
+
+---- fluctuation of opinion an unfounded charge, 97, &c., 164
+
+---- on the accumulation of small divergencies, 103
+
+---- began preaching evolution almost on his first page, 104
+
+---- chapter on the _degeneration des animaux_, equivalent to "on
+  descent with modification," 104, &c.
+
+---- difference of opinion between him and Erasmus Darwin and
+  Lamarck, 105
+
+---- probably did not differ from Lamarck, 105
+
+---- on direct action of changed conditions, 105, 145, 147
+
+---- on man and the lower animals, 108
+
+---- on classification, 108, 109, 141
+
+---- on animals and plants, 109, 110
+
+---- on reason and instinct, 110, 115
+
+---- on final causes (the pig), 118, &c.
+
+---- on hybridism, 117, 118
+
+---- rudimentary organs, 120
+
+---- on animals under domestication, 121, &c., 148
+
+---- deals with these early, as giving him the best opportunities
+  for illustrating the theory of evolution, 276
+
+---- approaches natural selection in his "by _some chance_ common
+  enough in Nature," 122
+
+---- preaching on the hare when he should have preached on the rabbit
+  out of pure love of mischief, 123
+
+---- resumption of feral characteristics, 123
+
+---- on the geometrical ratio of increase, 123, &c.
+
+---- alternation of fat and lean years, 125
+
+---- equilibrium of Nature, 125
+
+---- "au reel," 126
+
+---- on violent death, 126
+
+---- on sensation, 126, &c.
+
+---- on the interaction of organ and sense, 127
+
+---- the carnivora, 126
+
+---- his criterion of what name a thing is to bear, 127
+
+---- his criterion of perception and sensation, 127
+
+---- on the unity of the individual, 127, 128
+
+---- satirizes our habit of judging all things by our own standards, 129
+
+---- the diaphragm, 129
+
+---- on the stock and the diaphragm, 130
+
+---- distinction between perception and sensation, 129, 130
+
+---- on the meninges, 132
+
+---- on the brain, 131, 133, &c.
+
+---- on scientific orthodoxy and mystification, 138
+
+---- on the relativity of science, 140
+
+---- on nomenclature and knowledge, 141
+
+---- on the genus _felis_, 143
+
+---- on the lion and the tiger, 143, 145
+
+---- on the animals of the old and new world, 145, &c.
+
+---- on changed geographical distribution of land and water, 145, 164
+
+---- on extinct species, 146
+
+---- hates the new world, 146
+
+---- on heredity and habit, 148, 159, 160, 161, 162
+
+---- approaches Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, _re_ the Buffalo, Camel,
+  and Llama, 148, 160, 161
+
+---- on oneness of personality between parents and offspring, 151
+
+---- on the organic and inorganic, 153, &c.
+
+---- on apes and monkeys, 153, &c.
+
+---- on the causes or means of the transformation of species, 159, &c.
+
+---- on generic (as well as specific) differences, 164
+
+---- on plants under domestication, 167
+
+---- on pigeons and fowls, 169
+
+---- on birds, 170, &c.
+
+---- the assistance he rendered to Lamarck, 237, 258
+
+---- Isidore Geoffroy's failure to understand, 328
+
+---- Colonel, 75
+
+Bulk, a _sine qua non_ for success in literature or science, 315
+
+Bull running, Tutbury, and Erasmus Darwin, 187
+
+
+CAMEL, Buffon on the hereditary ills of the, 161
+
+Cant, and rudimentary organs, 38
+
+Captandum, all good things are done ad, 85
+
+Carnivora, Buffon on the, 126
+
+Carriage, Dr. Erasmus Darwin's, 181
+
+Cat, family, Buffon on the, 142, &c.
+
+---- with a mane and long tail, 143
+
+Cataclysms, the good cells that get exterminated during the cataclysms
+  of our own development, 75
+
+Catastrophes, Lamarck on, 277
+
+Causes, or "means," of modification, 301
+
+---- C. Darwin says that Buffon has not entered on the, 104, &c.
+
+---- C. Darwin gets us into a fog about, 345, &c.
+
+Change, under changed circumstances, Mr. Patrick Matthew on, 318
+
+Charity, the greatest of these is, 77
+
+Church, a, like a second chamber, 400
+
+---- the world better with than without, 400
+
+---- should be like the fly-wheel of a steam engine, 104
+
+_Circonstances_ (_see_ Conditions of Existence), Lamarck on, 268, 281
+
+Circumstance, suiting power, a, Mr. Patrick Matthew on, 318-321
+
+Classification, rather superficial appearances our best guide
+  to, 34, 35, 36, 198, 204
+
+---- Buffon on, 108, 109, 141
+
+Clear, an ineradicable tendency to make things, 92
+
+Clifford, Professor, on "Design," 6, 7
+
+Climbing plants, the movements of, Dr. Erasmus Darwin on, 209
+
+Coherency, the persistency of ideas the best argument in support of
+  their legitimate connection, 23
+
+Coleridge, on "Darwinising," 21
+
+Common terms, our, involve the connection between memory and
+  heredity, 201, 205
+
+---- descent, the "hidden bond" of Lamarck, as also of C. Darwin, 271
+
+Comparative anatomy, Lamarck on, 266, &c.
+
+Complex structures, the incipiency of, a difficulty in the way of the
+  natural selection view of evolution, 21, 22
+
+Compromise, Buffon's, 92
+
+Conditions of existence, the very essence of condition involves that
+  there shall be penalty in case of non-fulfilment, 352, 376, 377
+
+---- and the winglessness of Madeira beetles, 373, &c.
+
+---- according to C. Darwin, "include" and yet "are fully embraced by"
+  natural selection, 355
+
+---- identical with "natural selection," 351-354
+
+---- Etienne Geoffroy, and Lamarck on, 326, 327, 328
+
+---- Buffon on the, 103;
+     difference between Buffon's and Lamarck's view of their action, 105
+
+---- direct action of changed, Buffon on the, 145, 147, 160
+
+---- Lamarck on, 105, 268, 270, 271, 275, 277, 278, 281, 291,
+  292, 294, 295, 298, 299, 300, &c.
+
+Continuity in discontinuity, and _vice versa_, 47
+
+Contracts of animals, Dr. E. Darwin on the, 205
+
+Contrivance, does organism show signs of this? 2
+
+Convenient, not only _sometimes_, but always, more, 365
+
+Corkscrew for corks, and lungs for respiration, Prof. Clifford on, 7.
+  See also p. 58
+
+---- we should have grown a, if drawing corks had been important
+  to us, 7
+
+Creator, a, who is not an organism, unintelligible, 6, 11, 24
+
+Criticising, difficulty of, without knowing more than the mere facts
+  which are to be criticised, 172
+
+Criticism, Miss Seward's, on Dr. Darwin's "Elegy," 189
+
+---- Grant Allen on the decay of, 388
+
+Crux, the, of the early evolutionist, 35
+
+Cuttle-fish, natural selection like the secretion of a, 332
+
+
+DAMNATION, praising with faint, 111
+
+Darwin, Charles, on the eye, denies design, 8
+
+---- declares variation to be the cause of variation, 8, 347, 369
+
+---- and blind chance working on whither; the accumulation of
+  innumerable lucky accidents, 41, 42
+
+---- our indebtedness to, 62, 66, 335
+
+---- has adopted one half of Isidore Geoffroy's conclusion without
+  verifying either, 83
+
+---- on Buffon's fluctuation of opinion, 97
+
+---- on Isidore Geoffroy, 97
+
+---- his assertion that Buffon has not entered on the "causes or
+  means" of transformation, 104
+
+---- his meagre notice of his grandfather, 196
+
+---- his treatment of the author of the "Vestiges of Creation," 65,
+  247, 248
+
+---- attributes the characteristics of neuter insects to natural
+  selection, 249
+
+---- his treatment of Lamarck, 249, 250, 251, 298, 314, 376
+
+---- "great is the power of steady misrepresentation," 251
+
+---- his "happy simplicity" about animals and plants under
+  domestication, 276
+
+---- his notice of Mr. Patrick Matthew in the imperfect historical
+  sketch which he has prefaced to the "Origin of Species," 315, 316
+
+---- points of agreement between him and Lamarck, 335-337
+
+---- sees no broad principle underlying variation, 339
+
+---- dwells on the accumulation of variations, the origination of
+  which he leaves unaccounted for, 340, 341
+
+---- his variations being due to no general underlying principle, will
+  not tend to appear in definite directions, nor to many individuals
+  at a time, nor to be constant for long together, 342
+
+---- speaks of natural selection as a cause of modification, while
+  declaring it to be a means only, 345, &c.
+
+---- his explanation of this, 384, &c.
+
+---- his dilemma, as regards the "Origin of Species," 346
+
+---- declares the fact of variation to be the cause of variation,
+  8, 347, 369
+
+---- if he had told us more of what Buffon, &c., said, and where
+  they were wrong, he would have taken a course, &c., 357
+
+---- on the ease with which we can hide our ignorance under a cloud
+  of words, 358
+
+---- apologizes for having underrated the frequency and importance
+  of variation due to spontaneous variability, 358
+
+---- his "Origin of Species" like the opinion of a lawyer who wanted
+  to leave loopholes, or an Act of Parliament full of repealed and
+  inserted clauses, 358
+
+---- accused of confusion and inaccuracy of thought, 359
+
+---- as just as Aristides himself, 364
+
+---- most candid literary opponent in the world, 364
+
+---- declares Nature to be the most important means of modification,
+  and variation to be the cause of variations, 369
+
+---- like a will-o'-the-wisp, 372
+
+---- disuse, the main agent in reducing wings of Madeira beetles, 377
+
+---- how he and Lamarck treat the winglessness of Madeira beetles
+  respectively, 373-380
+
+---- an example of his "manner," 378
+
+---- the way in which he met "Evolution, Old and New," 393
+
+Darwin, Erasmus, never quite recognized design, 39
+
+---- ignorance concerning, 61
+
+---- on reason and instinct, 115, &c.
+
+---- life of, 173, &c.
+
+---- in Nottingham market-place, 182, 184, 197
+
+---- and Dr. Johnson, 184, 185
+
+---- and Tutbury bull running, 187
+
+---- his poetry about the pump, and illustration, 84, 193
+
+---- should have given his evolution theory a book to itself, 197
+
+---- had no wish to see far beyond the obvious, 197
+
+---- must be admitted to have missed detecting Buffon's
+  humour, 83, 84, 197
+
+---- did not attribute instincts and structures to memory pure
+  and simple, 198
+
+---- on the reasoning powers of animals, and on instinct, 201, 205
+
+---- his failure to connect memory and instinct, as with birds'
+  nests, 201-203
+
+---- failed to see the four main propositions which I contended
+  for in "Life and Habit," 37, 203, 204
+
+---- on the analogies between animal and vegetable life, 206, &c.
+
+---- on sensitive plants, 206, 210
+
+---- on the individuality of buds, and his theory of bark, 207, 208
+
+---- on the movements of climbing plants, 209
+
+---- on the oneness of personality between parents and offspring, 214;
+     the embryo not a new animal, 215
+
+---- on animals under domestication, 223
+
+---- on the effects of accidents transmitted to offspring, 224
+
+---- sees struggle, and hence modification, turn mainly round three
+  great wants, 226, 229, 257, 279
+
+---- on desire as a means of modification, 226, 228, 259
+
+---- by a slip approaches the error of his grandson, 227, 228
+
+---- on embryonic metamorphoses, 230, 231
+
+---- believed animals and plants to be descended from a common
+  stock, 233
+
+---- and Lamarck compared, 257
+
+---- on the struggle of existence, and the survival of the
+  fittest, 227, 232, 259
+
+Darwin, Mrs. Erasmus, death-bed of, 178
+
+Darwin, Francis, mentioned, 109
+
+---- his interesting lecture, 206
+
+---- does not use the expression "natural selection," 368
+
+Darwinising, Coleridge on, 21
+
+Darwinism, the old Darwinism involves desire, invention, and design, 58
+
+---- modern, falling into disfavour, 60
+
+---- and evolution not to be confounded, 360, 361
+
+Day, the portrait of, by Wright of Derby, 180
+
+Death, violent, Buffon on, 126
+
+---- of Dr. Erasmus Darwin, 193, 194
+
+Death-bed of Mrs. Erasmus Darwin, 178
+
+Deed, illustration drawn from a very intricate, 28
+
+Definite, with Lamarck the variations are, 341, 344
+
+_Degenerations_, 87
+
+Demand and supply, like power and desire, 222, 300
+
+Demonstrative case, "this demonstrative case of neuter insects,
+  &c.," 249, 298, 314
+
+Descent, with modification, spoken of as though synonymous with
+  natural selection, 248, 356
+
+Design, and organism, shall we or shall we not connect these ideas? 2
+
+---- Aristotle denied, Plato upheld, Haeckel on, 4
+
+---- Prof. Clifford's denial of, 6, 7
+
+---- does certainly involve a designer who has an organism, who
+  can think, and make mistakes, 6, 24
+
+---- a belief in both design and evolution, commonly held to
+  be incompatible, 9
+
+---- Sir W. Thomson and Sir J. Herschel on, 11
+
+---- Paley on, 12, &c.
+
+---- light thrown by embryology on the method of, 25
+
+---- G. H. Lewes opposes, 26
+
+---- the three positions in respect to, taken by Charles Darwin,
+  Paley, and the earlier evolutionists, 31
+
+---- the first evolutionists did not see that their view of
+  evolution involved design, 34
+
+---- from within as much design as from without, 36
+
+---- was equivalent to theological design, with the early
+  evolutionists, 36
+
+---- if each step is taken designedly, the whole is done
+  designedly, 52, 384
+
+---- and accident, the line between them hard to draw; shaking
+  the bag, &c., 53, 384
+
+---- instinct originated in, 54
+
+---- as much lost sight of with old-established forms of the
+  steam-engine as with birds' nests or the wheel, 55
+
+---- Dr. E. Darwin's failure to see that evolution involves design, 195
+
+---- we feel the want of, as much as we do of evolution, 407
+
+---- evolution not only tolerates, but cannot get on without, 408
+
+Designer, "I believe in an organic and tangible designer of every
+  complex structure," 6
+
+---- "where is he? show him to us," &c., 29, 30
+
+---- the, of any organism, the organism itself, 30, 31, 40
+
+Desire and power, interaction of, 44, 45, 47, 127, 217, 221, 300, 322
+
+---- and power, like wealth, 222
+
+---- as a means of modification, Dr. Erasmus Darwin on, 226, 228, 259
+
+Development, the history of organic, the history of a moral struggle, 45
+
+---- always due to making the best of the present, 50
+
+Devils, 20,000, dancing a saraband on the point of a needle, 216
+
+Dew drop, or lens, the, and Lord Rosse's telescope, 44, 47
+
+Diaphragm, Buffon on the, 129
+
+Dice, accidental variations thrown for as with, 3
+
+Difference between animal and ordinary mechanism, 24
+
+---- the main, between the manufacture of tools and that of organs, 39
+
+Dilemma, C. Darwin's, 346
+
+Direct action of changed conditions, Buffon on the, 105, 145, 147, 160
+
+Discontinuity in continuity, 47
+
+Disease, accidents followed by, 303
+
+Disintegration, Protestantism tends towards, 397
+
+Distribution, geographical, changed, Buffon on, 145, 164
+
+Disuse, and the winglessness of Madeira beetles, we are almost surprised
+  to find that they are connected at all, 375
+
+---- the main agent in reducing the wings of Madeira beetles, 377
+
+---- some examples of the effect of, adduced by Lamarck, 378
+
+Dog, Buffon on the, 120
+
+---- Lamarck on the various breeds of the, 297
+
+Domestication, a single case of a species formed under domestication
+  sufficient to remove the _a priori_ difficulty from a
+  comprehensive theory of evolution, 90, 91, 311
+
+---- plants under, Buffon on, 167, &c.
+
+---- Buffon on animals under, 103, 120, &c., 148, &c., 159, &c., 276
+
+---- animals under, Dr. Erasmus Darwin on, 223
+
+---- animals under, Buffon on, 121, &c., 148, 276
+
+---- C. Darwin on, 276
+
+---- animals and plants under, Lamarck on, 275, 293, 296, 297, 300
+
+---- animals and plants under, Mr. Patrick Matthew on, 324
+
+Door, the doing anything well will open the door for doing
+  something else, 51
+
+Ducks, our domesticated, why they cannot fly like wild ones, 296, 309
+
+
+EARN, "you are but doing your best to earn an honest living," 29
+
+Ears are never found in a rudimentary condition, 379
+
+Eat, or be eaten, 177
+
+Effort, Paley's argument that structures have not been developed
+  through, 22, 45
+
+---- too much, as vicious as indolence, 35
+
+---- "neither too much nor too little," 50
+
+---- Herculean, condemned, 197
+
+Egyptian mummies, Lamarck on, 274, 275
+
+Embryology, the light it throws upon the mode in which organisms
+  have been designed, 25
+
+Embryonic metamorphoses, Erasmus Darwin on, 230, 231
+
+Embryonic development, Lamarck on, 289
+
+Encyclical, the Pope's, on St. Thomas Aquinas, 402, &c.
+
+Endeavour, Paley's argument against the view that structures have
+  been developed through, 22, 45
+
+Endowment, the new orthodoxy, which is clamouring for, 360
+
+English wines, Dr. Erasmus Darwin's preference for, 175
+
+Environment. _See_ Conditions of Existence
+
+Equilibrium, the, of Nature, Buffon on the, 125
+
+Err, the power to, rated highly, 29
+
+---- "it is on this margin that we may err or wander," 50
+
+---- virtue ever errs on the side of excess, 35
+
+Error, importance of, dependent on the distance, rather than the
+  direction, 50
+
+"Especially" the same, 92, 96
+
+Ethiopian, the, can change his skin, if it becomes worth his while
+  to try long enough, 40
+
+Eveque and bishop, common derivation of, 355
+
+Everlasting, God, how far, 32
+
+Evolution, commonly held incompatible with design, 9
+
+---- Paley, its first serious opponent in England, 21
+
+---- Sir Walter Raleigh on, 21, 70
+
+---- must stand or fall according as it rests on a purposive
+  foundation or no, 60
+
+---- brief summary of its six principal stages, 62, &c.
+
+---- Bacon on, 69
+
+---- the theory of, as apart from the evidence in support of it, 332
+
+---- C. Darwin and Lamarck are equally intent upon establishing
+  the same theory of evolution, 335-337
+
+---- and Darwinism, not to be confounded, 360, 361
+
+---- Rome and Pantheism meet in, 403
+
+Evolutionists, the early, did not know that they accepted teleology, 34
+
+---- the early, saw design, only as design by the God of theologians, 36
+
+Experience and instinct, Mr. Patrick Matthew on, 322
+
+Extinct species, Lamarck on, 277
+
+---- Buffon on, 146, 277
+
+Eye, no creature that had nothing like an eye ever set itself to
+  conceive one and grow one, 44, 387
+
+---- Paley asks "how will our philosopher get an eye?" 46
+
+---- of flat fish, Lamarck on the, 307
+
+---- Lamarck on the, of underground and cave-inhabiting animals, 378
+
+---- disappear and reappear in the scale of organism according to the
+  power of using them, 379
+
+
+FAITH, forms of, or faiths of form, &c., 339
+
+Familiarity, with a little, such superficial objections will be
+  forgotten, 367
+
+Far ahead, no organism ever saw an improvement a long way off and made
+  towards it, 43, 44, 48, 49, 54, 384
+
+Father, the man who could be father of such a son and retain his
+  affection, &c., 76
+
+Factors, there have been two, of modification, one producing and the
+  other accumulating variations, 227
+
+Fecundity, alternate years of, Buffon on, 125
+
+Feeding and breeding, 222
+
+Feel, if plants and animals look as if they feel, let us say
+  they feel, 198
+
+Feeling, there is more feeling than reason in animals, 51
+
+Feral characteristics, resumption of, Buffon on, 123
+
+Final causes, the doctrine of, as commonly held in the time of the
+  early evolutionists, 34, 36
+
+---- Buffon on, 118, &c.
+
+Fitness, the cause of, more important than the fact that fitness is
+  commonly fit, and therefore successful, 351
+
+Flat fish, Lamarck on the eyes of, 307
+
+Fluctuation of opinion, C. Darwin on Buffon's, the charge
+  refuted, 97, &c., 164, 166
+
+Fontenelle, on theories, 22
+
+Foot, and model of foot, differences between, 24
+
+Forms of faith, or faiths of form, &c., 339
+
+Four main points which the early evolutionists failed to see in
+  their connection and bearing on each other, 37, 203
+
+Four main principles, the, which I contended for in "Life and
+  Habit," 37, 203, 380, 381
+
+Fowls and pigeons, Buffon on, 169
+
+
+GARNETT, Mr. R., and "Darwinising," 21
+
+Genius, Mr. Allen says I am a, 388
+
+Gentleman, the Church of Rome means the same by the word as we do, 395
+
+Geoffroy, Etienne, how small a way he goes, 196
+
+---- and Isidore, trimmers, 328
+
+---- on Buffon, 328
+
+---- on conditions of existence, 326, 327
+
+---- declares against Lamarck's hypothesis, 328
+
+---- his position, 325-328
+
+Geoffroy, Isidore, on evolution and final causes, 9
+
+---- on Buffon's fluctuation of opinion, 98, &c., 164, 166
+
+---- points out the difference between the views of Buffon
+  and Lamarck, 105
+
+---- statement that Buffon's opinions fluctuated again refuted, 166
+
+---- and Lamarck's hypothesis, 244-246, 329
+
+---- on Buffon, 328
+
+---- his position, 329
+
+Genealogical order, Lamarck on, 264
+
+---- C. Darwin on, 265
+
+Generation more remarkable than reason, Hume on, 233
+
+Generic differences (as well as specific), Buffon on, 164
+
+Genius, a supreme capacity for taking pains, 76
+
+Geographical distribution, changed, Buffon on, 145, &c., 164
+
+Geometrical ratio of increase, Buffon on, 123
+
+---- Lamarck, on, 280
+
+---- Patrick Matthew on, 320, 321
+
+Germ of oak indistinguishable from that of a man, 334
+
+Germans, Buffon on the, 93
+
+Glory "comes after labour if she can," &c., 76
+
+Go away, because their uncles, aunts, 376
+
+God, embodied in living forms, and dwelling in them, 31
+
+---- how far everlasting, invisible, imperishable, omnipotent, &c., 32
+
+---- the unseen parts of, are as a deep-buried history, 33
+
+Goethe, as an evolutionist, 71
+
+Gradations infinitely subtle, 87
+
+Grant Allen, on "Evolution, Old and New," 386-388
+
+---- on the decay of criticism, 388
+
+---- says that "Evolutionism is an almost exclusively English
+  impulse," 393
+
+Greyhound or racehorse, the well-adapted form of the, 359
+
+Growth attended at each step by a felicitous tempering of two
+  antagonistic principles, 35
+
+Gueneau de Montbeillard, 172, 173
+
+
+HABIT," "Life and. _See_ "Life and Habit."
+
+---- rudimentary organs repeated through mere force of, 38, 39
+
+---- Buffon on, 148, 159, 160, 161, 162
+
+---- a second Nature, Lamarck on, 300
+
+Habits, or use, and organ, Lamarck on the interaction of, 292, 311
+
+Haeckel, on design, 4, 5
+
+---- on Goethe as an evolutionist, 71
+
+---- does not appear to know of Buffon as an evolutionist, 71, 393
+
+---- his surprising statement concerning Lamarck, 73
+
+---- his ignorance concerning Erasmus Darwin, 73, 393
+
+---- on Lamarck, 246, 247
+
+---- A. R. Wallace's review of his "Evolution of Man," 382, 384
+
+Hamlet, the "Origin of Species" like "Hamlet" without Hamlet, 363
+
+Handiest, a man should do whatever comes handiest, 51, 52
+
+Hare, Buffon on the, 123, &c.
+
+Hartmann's philosophy of the unconscious, and "Life and Habit," 56, 57
+
+Hearing, when we once reach animals so low as to have no organ of,
+  we lose this organ for good and all, 379
+
+Heredity and habit, Buffon on, 148, 159, 160, 161, 162
+
+---- only another term for unknown causes, unless the "Life and Habit"
+  theory be adopted, 384
+
+Hering, Professor, referred to, 66, 67
+
+---- his theory as given in "Nature" by Ray Lankester, 198-200
+
+Herschel, Sir John, compares natural selection to the Laputan
+  method of making books, 10
+
+Higgling and haggling of the market, 50
+
+History of the universe, each organism is a, from its own point
+  of view, 31
+
+Horse and ass, Buffon's most pregnant passage on the, 80, 90, 91,
+  100, 101, 142, 143, 155, 164, 311
+
+---- and man, skeleton of the, 88, 89
+
+---- and zebra, Buffon on the, example of irony, 80, 155, 164
+
+Hume, his saying that generation is more remarkable than reason, 233
+
+Huxley, Professor, referred to, 93
+
+---- pointed out to Professor Mivart the difficulty in the way of
+  natural selection, 344
+
+---- his ignorance concerning the earlier history of evolution, 392, 393
+
+Hybridism, Buffon on, 117, 118
+
+Hybrids, sterility of, Lamarck on, and C. Darwin on, 272, 273
+
+
+IDEAS, the bond or nexus of our, 23, 29, 30
+
+Ignorance, the prevailing, concerning the earlier evolutionists, 61
+
+---- it is easy to hide our, under such expressions as "plan of
+  creation," or natural selection, 358
+
+Imitation, instinct not referable to, as maintained by Erasmus
+  Darwin, 202
+
+Immutability of species and design commonly accepted together, 9, 10
+
+Improvements, small successive, in man's inventions, 44, 46,
+  47, 54, 55, 384
+
+Inaccuracy of thought, C. Darwin accused of, 359
+
+Incipiency, of complex structures, a difficulty in the way of the
+  Natural selection view of evolution, 21, 22
+
+Incorporate, the designer is, with the organism, 30
+
+Increase, geometrical ratio of Buffon on the, 123
+
+---- Lamarck on, 280
+
+---- Patrick Matthew on, 320, 321
+
+Indefinite, with C. Darwin the variations are, 342, 344
+
+Indifference, I say I am more indifferent than I think I am, whether
+  mind is or is not the least misleading symbol for the cause that
+  sustains the universe, 371
+
+Indirect action of conditions of existence according to
+  Lamarck, 294, 299, 306. (_See_ "Conditions of Existence")
+
+Individuality, Buffon on, 128
+
+---- of buds, Erasmus Darwin on the, 207, 208
+
+---- our, a _consensus_, or full-flowing river, 318
+
+Infallibility, possible results of the doctrine of Papal, 406
+
+Insectivorous plants, Erasmus Darwin on, 206
+
+Instep, ligament that binds the tendons of the, Paley on the, 22
+
+Instinct, present, does not bar its having arisen in reason and
+  reflection, 53, 54
+
+---- returns to its earlier phase, _i. e._ to reason on the presence
+  of the unfamiliar, 54, 55, 56
+
+---- and reason, Buffon on, 110-116
+
+---- Darwin, Erasmus, on, 115, 116, 204
+
+---- not referable to imitation, as maintained by Erasmus Darwin, 202
+
+---- is reason become habitual, 203
+
+---- reason perfected and got by rote, 256
+
+---- and reason, Lamarck on, 256, 257, 274
+
+---- referred to experience and memory, by Patrick Matthew, 322
+
+Insult, "Evolution, Old and New," not intended as an insult to men
+  of science, 392
+
+Interaction of want and power, 44, 45, 47, 217, 218, 221, 300, 323
+
+---- of body and mind, Lamarck on the, 338, 339, 341
+
+Interesting, the more interesting the animal the more evolution Buffon
+  puts into his account of it, 84
+
+Intermediate forms, Lamarck on, 283, 286
+
+---- C. Darwin, 284, 285
+
+Inventions, small successive improvements in man's, and development of,
+  analogous to that of organism, 44, 46, 47, 54, 55, 384
+
+Irony, good-natured and the reverse, 91
+
+---- an apology for, and explanation how far it is legitimate, 111, 112
+
+---- Buffon's, 78, &c., 91, 92, 93, 155, 157, 163, 164
+
+
+JARDINE, Sir W., on Buffon's character, 82
+
+Johnson, Dr., and Erasmus Darwin, 184, 185
+
+Joints, Paley on the human, 19, 20
+
+Juggle, Paley's argument a juggle, unless man has had a _bona fide_
+  personal, and therefore organic designer, 14, 16
+
+
+KNEE-PAN, Paley on the human, 18
+
+Knowledge, nomenclature mistaken for, 141
+
+
+LABOUR, glory comes after, if she can, 76
+
+Lamarck, had brain upon the brain, 36
+
+---- never quite recognized design, 39
+
+---- Haeckel's surprising statement concerning, 73
+
+---- wherein he mainly differs from Buffon, 105
+
+---- memoir of, 235
+
+---- his connection with Buffon, as tutor to his son, &c., 237, 258
+
+---- his daughters, 242, 253
+
+---- his poverty and blindness, 242, 253
+
+---- Isidore Geoffroy on, bad caricature of his teaching, 244-246
+
+---- Haeckel on, 246, 247
+
+---- never seriously discussed, 247
+
+---- "the well-known doctrine of," C. Darwin's reference
+  to, 249, 250, 251, 298, 314, 376
+
+---- on the opposition his theory met with, 252
+
+---- too old to have begun his unequal contest, 253
+
+---- on the feeling of animals, 254, 255
+
+---- too theory-ridden, 254
+
+---- misled by Buffon (query), 255
+
+---- took from Buffon without sufficient acknowledgment,
+  255, 258, 260, 311
+
+---- as compared with Dr. Erasmus Darwin, 257
+
+---- like Dr. E. Darwin, sees struggle and modification turn
+  mainly round three great wants, 257, 279, 300, 309
+
+---- when and how he came over to the side of mutability, 258
+
+---- and the French translation of the "Loves of the Plant," 259
+
+---- on comparative anatomy, 266
+
+---- on species, 267, &c.
+
+---- on conditions of existence (_circonstances_), 105, 268, 270, 271,
+  275, 277, 278, 281, 291, 292, 294, 295, 298, 299, 300, &c.
+
+---- on instinct, 274
+
+---- on animals and plants under domestication, 275, 293, 296, 297, 300
+
+---- on extinct species, 277
+
+---- anticipated Lyell in rejecting catastrophes, 277
+
+---- on the geometrical ratio of increase and struggle for
+  existence, 280-282
+
+---- on embryonic development, 289
+
+---- the main principles which he supposes to underlie
+  variations, 292, 299, 338, 339
+
+---- his contention that plants have neither actions nor habits, 295
+
+---- on use and disuse, 294, 296, 299, 301, 302, 304, 305, 307-309
+
+---- on the various breeds of the dog, 297
+
+---- habit a second nature, 300
+
+---- like Erasmus Darwin and Buffon, understood the survival of
+  the fittest, 301
+
+---- on the way in which serpents have lost their legs, 303
+
+---- on wading and aquatic birds, 305
+
+---- on the eyes of flat fish, 307
+
+---- on man, 311, &c.
+
+---- on a single instance of considerable variation under
+  domestication, 311
+
+---- on speech, 313, 314
+
+---- on the upright position of man and certain apes, 313
+
+---- his, and Etienne Geoffroy's views on conditions of
+  existence, 326, 327, 328
+
+---- his hypothesis, and Isidore Geoffroy, 329
+
+---- Herbert Spencer on, 330, 331
+
+---- desired to discover the law underlying variations, 337
+
+---- the extent to which he and C. Darwin take common ground, 335-337
+
+---- on body and mind, 338, 339, 341
+
+---- on his theory variations will be definite, will appear in large
+  numbers of individuals at the same time, for long periods
+  together, 341
+
+---- how he and C. Darwin treat the winglessness of Madeira beetles
+  respectively, 373-380
+
+---- on the eyes and ears of cave-inhabiting animals, 378, 379
+
+Laputan method of making books, the, and natural selection, 11
+
+Lawyer's deed, if we come across a very intricate, &c., 27
+
+Leopard, the, can change his spots if it becomes worth his while to
+  try long enough, 40
+
+Lewes, G. H., on embryology, 25
+
+---- his objection to the tentativeness with which the same errors
+  are repeated generation after generation, 26
+
+---- his objection to C. Darwin's language concerning natural
+  selection, 346
+
+Lewes, G. H., on natural selection, 348, 349, 359
+
+Life, some remarks about the criterion of, that I must retract, 279
+
+---- one Proteus principal of, 320
+
+"Life and Habit," what I believe to have been its most important
+  features, 67, 203, 204
+
+---- recapitulation of the main principle insisted on, 37, 56,
+  203, 380, 381, 384
+
+---- and Hartmann's philosophy of the unconscious, German review, 56, 57
+
+Lifetime, considerable modifications effected during a single, 304
+
+---- the changes undergone by organisms during a single, Herbert
+  Spencer, on, 332-334
+
+Ligament, the, which binds down the tendons of the instep, 21
+
+Living, Paley is but doing his best to earn an honest, 29
+
+---- forms of faith, or faiths of form, 339
+
+Lines, no sharp can be drawn, 47
+
+Lion and tiger, Buffon on the, 143, 145
+
+Llama, Buffon on the hereditary ills of the, 161
+
+Longevity, the principle underlying, 67, 380, 381
+
+Loopholes for escape, the "Origin of Species" full of, 358
+
+"Loves of the Plants," French translation of the, 63, 259
+
+Lungs for respiration, and corkscrew for corks, Professor
+  Clifford on, 7. (_See_ also p. 58)
+
+Lyell, Sir C., and Lamarck, 277
+
+---- on the similarity between Lamarck's theory and Mr.
+  Darwin's, 336, 337
+
+
+MACHINE, Paley declares animals to be neither wholly machines
+  nor wholly not machines, 14
+
+Madeira beetles, the ways in which Lamarck and C. Darwin would
+  treat their winglessness, 373-380
+
+Maillet, de, referred to, 70
+
+Mainspring, the true, of our existence lies not in these
+  muscles, &c., 32
+
+Man, the designer of man, 30
+
+---- and horse, skeleton of the, 88, 89
+
+---- and the ape, 90
+
+---- and the lower animals, Buffon on, 107, 108
+
+---- Lamarck on, 311, &c.
+
+Manner, the, is the man himself, 77
+
+---- "but this is Mr. Darwin's", 378
+
+Manufacture, the, of tools and of organs, two species of
+  the same genus, 39
+
+Margin, there is a margin in every organic structure, &c., 49, 50
+
+---- on the margin of the self-evident the greatest purchase is
+  obtainable, 197
+
+Market, the higgling and haggling of the, 50
+
+Martins, M., his life of Lamarck, 235, &c.
+
+Matter less important than the manner, 77
+
+---- and mind, inseparable, 371
+
+Matthew, Mr. Patrick, his work on naval timber and arboriculture, 64, 65
+
+---- extracts from, 315, &c.
+
+---- Mr. C. Darwin on, 315
+
+---- on animals and plants under domestication, 324
+
+---- on will as influencing organism, 320, 321, 322
+
+---- on the struggle for existence with survival of the
+  fittest, 320, 322
+
+---- and natural selection, 323
+
+---- on instinct and memory, and on the continued personality
+  of parents in offspring, 321, 322, 323
+
+Means, C. Darwin's dangerous use of this word, 345
+
+---- one _sine qua non_ for a thing is as much a means of that
+  thing's coming about as anything else is, 349
+
+Mechanism of animals, Paley on the, 14
+
+Mechanism of animals, evidence of design in any ordinary, 15
+
+Memory, and life and heredity, 37, 38, 39, 56, 67, 198-203,
+  332, 380, 381
+
+---- Professor Hering on, 198-200
+
+---- Patrick Matthew on, 322
+
+Meteoric, both want and power are, 44, 45
+
+Meninges, Buffon on the, 132
+
+Microcosm, each organism a history of the universe from its
+  own point of view, 31
+
+Microscope, illustration from successive improvements in the, 46, 47
+
+Mind, "the least inadequate and misleading symbol," for the power
+  that has designed organism, 3, 371
+
+---- and body, Lamarck on, 338, 339, 341
+
+---- and matter inseparable, 371
+
+Misfortune, take advantage of, 51
+
+Misrepresentation, "great is the power of steady," 251
+
+Missionaries should avoid trying to effect sudden modifications, 183
+
+Mistake, the power to make, rated highly, 29
+
+---- importance of, depends on magnitude rather than on the
+  direction, 50
+
+Mivart, Professor, says that, "Mind is the least adequate and
+  misleading symbol," &c., 3, 371
+
+---- referred to, 22, 66, 67
+
+---- admits that his objection does not tell against the Lamarckian
+  theory of evolution, 343
+
+---- points out that the admission of a principle underlying variations
+  is fatal to C. Darwin's theory concerning natural selection, 343
+
+---- on C. Darwin's "haphazard, indefinite variations," 343
+
+---- how Professor Huxley pointed out to him the objection to C.
+  Darwin's theory concerning natural selection, 344
+
+---- asks what is natural selection? and declares it to be repudiated
+  by its propounder, 369
+
+---- declares it to be "nothing," and a puerile
+  hypothesis, 370, 371
+
+---- declares the causes of variation to be the causes of the
+  distinction of species, 370
+
+Model, artificial, of a foot, and true foot, difference between, 24
+
+Modification. It is only on modification that reason reasserts
+  itself, 55
+
+---- there have been two factors of, one producing variations, and
+  the other accumulating them, 227
+
+---- arrived at by struggle round three great wants, Erasmus
+  Darwin on, 226-229
+
+---- Lamarck on the same, 257, 279, 300, 301
+
+---- the cause of survival, not survival the cause of modification, 302
+
+Moral, an organism is most, when looking a little ahead, but not
+  too far, 44
+
+---- struggle, the history of organic development, the history of a, 45
+
+---- more, and safer, to be behind the age than in front of it, 401
+
+Movement, Buffon's great criterion of sensation, 127
+
+Mummies, Egyptian, Lamarck on, 274, 275
+
+Murphy, Rev. J. J., mentioned, 22
+
+---- referred to, 66, 67
+
+Mutability of species commonly held to be incompatible with a
+  belief in design, 9, 10
+
+Mystery-mongering, that Buffon wished to protest against, 81, 171
+
+Mystification, scientific, and orthodoxy, Buffon on, 138
+
+
+NAIVELY, as Mr. Darwin naively adds, "_sometimes_ equally
+  convenient," 354
+
+Natural selection, the essence of the theory is that the variations
+  shall have been mainly accidental, 7
+
+Natural selection, the unerring skill of, 9
+
+---- Sir William Thomson and Sir John Herschel on, 10
+
+---- Button, and, "by _some chance_ common enough with Nature," 122
+
+---- spoken of as though synonymous with descent with
+  modification, 248, 285, 356
+
+---- C. Darwin attributes the instincts of neuter insects to, 249
+
+---- Mr. Patrick Matthew and, 323
+
+---- like the secretion of a cuttle-fish, 332
+
+---- G. H. Lewes's objection to C. Darwin's language concerning, 346
+
+---- if this is declared to be a cause, the fact of variation
+  is declared to be the cause of variation, 347
+
+---- declared by C. Darwin to be a means of variation, 347
+
+---- treated as a cause, 348
+
+---- G. H. Lewes on, 348, 349, 350
+
+---- identity with "conditions of existence," 351-354
+
+---- according to C. Darwin, "fully embraces" and yet "is included
+  in" conditions of existence, 355
+
+---- a cloak for want of precision of thought, and of substantial
+  difference from Lamarck, 358
+
+---- "some have even imagined that it induces variability;" and small
+  wonder, considering C. Darwin's language concerning it, 362
+
+---- C. Darwin's reply to those who have objected to the term, 362-368
+
+---- a cloak of difference from C. Darwin's predecessors, under which
+  there lurks a concealed identity of opinion as to main facts, 362, 363
+
+---- "implies only the preservation of such variations as arise,"
+  &c., 363
+
+---- admitted by C. Darwin to be a false term, 364
+
+---- the complaint is that the expression has been retained when
+  an avowedly more accurate one is to hand, 365, 366
+
+---- only another way of saying Nature, 368, 369
+
+---- the dislike of it is increasing, 368, 369
+
+---- Francis Darwin does not use the expression, 368, 369
+
+---- daily and hourly scrutinizing throughout the world, &c., 369
+
+---- practically repudiated by C. Darwin himself, 369
+
+---- Professor Mivart declares it to be "simply nothing," 370
+
+---- a "puerile hypothesis," 371
+
+---- and not disuse, the true main cause of the winglessness of
+  Madeira beetles, according to C. Darwin, 374
+
+---- _not_ the main cause of the winglessness of Madeira beetles,
+  according to C. Darwin, 377
+
+---- "combined probably with disuse," will account, according to
+  C. Darwin, for the winglessness of Madeira beetles, 375
+
+_Naturalistes_, _le peuple des_, 80, 171
+
+Nature, the personification of comparatively venial, 367
+
+---- and natural selection the same thing, 368, 369
+
+---- the most important means of modification, and variation the
+  cause of variation, 369
+
+Neck, Paley on the human, 17, 18
+
+Need, sense of, the main idea in connection with evolution that is
+  left with the reader by the "Zoonomia," or "Philosophie
+  Zoologique," 363
+
+Needle, 20,000 devils dancing a saraband on the point of a, 216
+
+Nest, a bird will alter its nest a little, to meet altered
+ circumstances, 55
+
+Nests, birds', Dr. E. Darwin on, 201
+
+Neuter insects, "the demonstrative case of neuter insects,"
+  &c., 249, 298, 314
+
+New countries, Buffon a hater of, 146
+
+Nomenclature, mistaken for knowledge, 141
+
+Nottingham market-place, Erasmus Darwin in, 182, 184, 197
+
+
+OAK and man, the germs of, indistinguishable, 334
+
+---- man may become as long-lived as the, 382
+
+Obvious, Erasmus Darwin had no wish to see far beyond the, 197
+
+Oken, alluded to, 72
+
+Old age, the phenomena of, 67, 204, 381
+
+---- and new worlds, Buffon on the fauna of, 145, &c.
+
+One source for all life, Buffon on, 91
+
+---- Erasmus Darwin on, 109, 233
+
+Oneness of personality between parents and offspring, 37, 38, 39
+
+---- Buffon on the, 151
+
+---- Erasmus Darwin and Professor Hering on the, 198-200
+
+---- Dr. E. Darwin's failure to grasp the whole facts in connection
+  with this, 198, 201, 203
+
+---- Dr. E. Darwin on, 214, 215
+
+---- Patrick Matthew on, 322, 323
+
+---- mentioned, 332, 380, 381
+
+Orang-outang, Buffon on the, 156-159
+
+Organ and use. _See_ "Use."
+
+---- and sense, interaction of the, Buffon on, 127
+
+---- and faculty, Lamarck on, 255
+
+Organs are living tools, 2
+
+---- the manufacture of, and that of tools, two species of the
+  same genus, 39, 43, &c.
+
+---- are the expressions of mental phases, 339, 341
+
+Organic structures have a margin, 49, 50
+
+Organic strictures and inorganic, Buffon on the, 153, &c.
+
+Organisms, have been developed as man's inventions
+  have, 44, 46, 47, 384
+
+"Origin of Species," the, cannot take permanent rank in the
+  literature of evolution, 62
+
+---- has no _raison d'etre_, if natural selection is not a
+  cause of variation, 346
+
+---- a piece of intellectual sleight of hand, 346
+
+---- compared to the advice of a lawyer who wanted to leave
+  plenty of loopholes, or to a cobbled Act of Parliament, 358
+
+---- is "Hamlet" with the part of Hamlet cut out, 363
+
+---- most readers would say that it advocated natural selection as
+  the most important cause of variation, 363
+
+---- and the "Zoonomia," or the "Philosophie Zoologique"; the one
+  upholds natural selection, the other, sense of need, 363
+
+Orthodoxy, scientific, and mystification, Buffon on, 138
+
+---- scientific, clamouring for endowment, 360
+
+---- dangers of, 368
+
+Overseeing tends to oversight, 197
+
+
+PAINS, genius a supreme capacity for taking, 76
+
+Painting, a man should do _something_, no matter what, 51, 52
+
+Paley, quotations from, 12, &c.
+
+---- his argument a juggle, unless some one designed man, much as
+  man designed the watch, 14, 16
+
+---- on ordinary mechanism, as showing design, 15
+
+---- on the human neck, 16, 17
+
+---- on the patella, 18
+
+---- on the joints, 19, 20
+
+---- as a writer against evolution, 21
+
+---- on the ligament that binds the tendons of the instep, 21, 22
+
+---- opposes the view that structures have been formed through
+  appetency, endeavour or effort, 22, 45
+
+---- we turn on him and say, Show us your designer, 29
+
+---- asks, How will our philosopher get an eye? 46
+
+---- his "Natural Theology" written throughout at the "Zoonomia," 195
+
+---- never gives a reference when quoting an opponent, 195, 306
+
+Pantheism and Rome will in the end be the two sole combatants, 401
+
+---- common ground held by Rome and Pantheism, 403-405
+
+---- of Paul, 404
+
+Parents and offspring, oneness of personality between (_see_
+  "Personality")
+
+Passions, of like passions, men of science are, with other
+  pastors and prophets, 253
+
+Patella, or knee-pan, Paley on the, 18
+
+Paul, St., his pantheistic tendencies, 404
+
+---- we want to accept him literally, 405
+
+Peace, the, that passeth understanding, 35
+
+Perception and sensation, Buffon on the difference between, 129, 130
+
+Personality, oneness of, between parents and offspring, 37, 38, 39
+
+---- Buffon on the, 151
+
+---- Erasmus Darwin and Professor Hering on the, 198-200
+
+---- Erasmus Darwin's failure to grasp the whole conception,
+  198, 201, 203
+
+---- Erasmus Darwin on the, 214, 215
+
+---- Patrick Matthew on the, 322, 323
+
+---- mentioned, 332, 380, 381
+
+Personification, the, of Nature, comparatively venial, 367
+
+Pessimism: "Which is the pessimist I or Mr. Darwin?" 59
+
+Peuple des Naturalistes, le, 80, 171
+
+"Philosophie Zoologique," summary of, 261-314
+
+---- the, leaves "sense of need" on the reader's mind; the
+  "Origin of Species," natural selection, 363
+
+Pig, Buffon on the, 118, &c.
+
+Pigeons and fowls, Buffon on, 169
+
+Plaisanterie, Button's disclaimer of, 93
+
+Planted upside down, the vertebrata regarded as vegetables, 137
+
+Plants under domestication, Buffon on, 167, &c.
+
+---- Dr. Erasmus Darwin, on the life of, 206, &c.
+
+---- Lamarck's assertion that they have no action nor habits, 294, 295
+
+Plato upheld teleology, 4
+
+_Plus il a su_, &c., 44
+
+Poem, a, by Dr. Erasmus Darwin, 189
+
+Poetry, Dr. Erasmus Darwin's, 83, 189, 193
+
+Pope's shoes, scientists would step into the, if we would let
+  them, 360, 394
+
+Portrait of Mr. Day, author of "Sandford and Merton," 180
+
+Potto, the missing forefinger of the, 303
+
+Power and desire, interaction of, 44, 45, 47, 127, 217, 221, 300, 323
+
+Praising, with faint damnation, 111
+
+Prescience, need not extend over more than the next step, and yet the
+  whole road may have been travelled presciently, 52, 384
+
+Present, development due to a wise use of the, 50-52
+
+Probable, whatever in the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas is not probable
+  is to be rejected, 402, 403
+
+Proficiency is due to design if each step was taken designedly, though
+  the end was not far foreseen, 52, 384
+
+Protestantism tends towards disintegration, 396
+
+Proteus principle of life, one, 320
+
+Pump, Erasmus Darwin's poetry about the, 84, 193
+
+Purpose, instinctive actions were once done with a, 54
+
+---- spent or extinct, and rudimentary organs, 38, 383
+
+Purposive, if each step is purposive, the whole is purposive, 52, 384
+
+Purposiveness: I maintain the lungs to be as purposive us the
+  corkscrew, 5, 6, 7, 58
+
+
+RACE, the runners in a, and natural selection, 366, 367
+
+---- significance of the words being used for a breed and a
+  competition, 366, 367
+
+Racehorse or greyhound, "the well-adapted forms of the," 359
+
+Ranunculus aquatilis, Lamarck's passage on, 260, 297
+
+Raleigh, Sir Walter, and evolution, 21, 70
+
+Ray Lankester, Professor, on Hering's theory connecting memory
+  and heredity, 198-200
+
+Reason, there is less reason than feeling in animals, Buffon, 51
+
+---- perfected becomes instinct, but reasserts itself when the
+  circumstances alter, 54, 55, 56, 203
+
+---- and instinct, Buffon on, 110, 116
+
+---- Erasmus Darwin on, 115, 116, 201-205
+
+---- a less remarkable faculty than generation, Hume on, 233
+
+---- and instinct, Lamarck on, 256, 274
+
+---- declared to be incipient instinct, 256
+
+_Reel_, _au_, Buffon's use of these words, 126
+
+Relativity of the sciences, Buffon on the, 140
+
+Religion, Buffon's appeals to, 91, 115
+
+Reopen settled questions, animals cannot, serpents must have no
+  more than four legs, 303
+
+Resume earlier habits, the tendency to, on the approach of a
+  difficulty, 312, 313
+
+Retrogressive, Mr. Darwin's views of evolution retrogressive, 66
+
+Revelation, Buffon's appeals to, against evolution, 91, 115
+
+Reviews of "Evolution, Old and New," 385, &c.
+
+Riches, the normal growth of, and evolution, 222
+
+Roman Empire, the, prophetic, 397
+
+Romanes, G. R., on "Evolution, Old and New," 391-393
+
+Rome, Church of, means the same by "gentleman" as we do, 395
+
+---- I would join, if I could, 395, 396
+
+---- a unifier, 398
+
+---- the only source from which a church can come, 398-401
+
+---- and Pantheism, the ultimate fight will be between, 401
+
+---- points of agreement between Rome and Pantheists, 403-405
+
+---- may, and should get rid of Protestantism by outbidding it, 407
+
+Rousseau, Buffon would not play part of, 81
+
+Rudimentary organs, the crux of the early evolutionist in respect of
+  design, 34
+
+---- are now mere cant formulae, force of habit, 38, 383
+
+---- like the protuberance at the bottom of a tobacco-pipe, 38
+
+---- Buffon would not accept them as designed, 83
+
+---- Buffon on, 120
+
+---- Professor Haeckel on, 383
+
+Run, how did the winner come to be able to run ever such a little
+  faster than his fellows, 367
+
+Runners in a race and natural selection, 366, 367
+
+
+"SANDFORD and Merton," Miss Seward on the author of, 179, 180
+
+Saints will commonly strain a point or two in their own favour, 253
+
+_Saturday Review_ on "Evolution, Old and New," 389-391
+
+Savery, Captain, 54
+
+Science, men of, of like passions with other priests and prophets, 253
+
+---- not a kingdom into which a poor man can enter easily, 253
+
+---- the leaders of will generally burke new-born wit unless, &c., 315
+
+---- not of that kind which desires to know, 392
+
+Scientific orthodoxy and mystification, Buffon on, 138
+
+---- danger of, 360, 368
+
+Scramble, birds learned to swim through scrambling, 48, 51
+
+Self-indulgence, virtue has ever erred rather on the side of, than
+  on that of asceticism, 35
+
+Sensation, Buffon on, 126, 129
+
+Sense, "in one sense," 355
+
+Sensitive plants, Dr. E. Darwin on, 206, 210
+
+Seriously, Buffon speaking, 126
+
+Serpents, how it is that they have lost their legs, 302
+
+Seward, Miss, her life of Erasmus Darwin, 174, &c.
+
+Shakspeare and Handel address the many as well as the few, 81
+
+Shortest day, and shortest day but one, no difference perceptible
+  between, 48
+
+Skeletons, the, of man and of the horse, 88, &c.
+
+Skill, the unerring, of natural selection, 9
+
+Siamese twins, desire and power compared to, 218, 300
+
+Simplicity, happy, an example of, 276
+
+Sisters, "his, and his cousins and his aunts," 253
+
+Slit, a slit in one tendon to let another pass through, 20
+
+Something a man should do, no matter what, 51
+
+Sometimes, "equally convenient" ("the survival of the fittest"
+  with natural selection), 9, 354, 365
+
+Son, the people who can get good sons and retain their affection
+  are the only ones worth studying from, 76
+
+Sorbonne, the, and Buffon, 82, 84
+
+Sorbonnes, never do like people who write in this way, 143
+
+Specialists, embryos are, 28
+
+Species, Buffon on the causes or means of transformation, 159, &c.
+
+---- Lamarck on, 267, &c.
+
+---- clusters of, Lamarck on, 288
+
+---- C. Darwin on, 289
+
+Specific characteristics vary more than generic, Lamarck on, 287, 288
+
+---- C. Darwin on, 288
+
+Speech, Lamarck on, 313, 314
+
+Spencer, Herbert, on Lamarck's hypothesis, 330, 331
+
+---- a follower of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, 332
+
+Spent, or extinct purpose, and rudimentary organs, 383
+
+Spontaneous: C. Darwin uses this word in connection with
+  variability, 358
+
+---- variability (or unknown causes), C. Darwin, on what it will
+  account for, or make known, 358
+
+Steam engine, latest development of, not foreseen, though each
+  immediate step in advance was so, 54, 384
+
+---- design lost sight of in the most common patterns, as with
+  a bird's-nest, or the wheel, 55
+
+Step, if each step is purposive, the whole road has been
+  travelled purposively, 52, 384
+
+---- only the few nearest are taken definitely, 44, 384
+
+Sterility of hybrids, Lamarck on, 272
+
+---- C. Darwin on, 273
+
+Stock, Buffon on the, and the diaphragm, 130
+
+Stronger, the, succeed, and the weaker fail, 320, 321
+
+Strongest, the, eat the weaker, 282
+
+Struggle for existence, Buffon on the, 123
+
+---- and hence modification, according to Dr. Erasmus Darwin, mainly
+  conversant about three wants, 226-229, 232
+
+---- comparison between Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck's views on the
+  foregoing, 257
+
+---- Lamarck on the foregoing, 279
+
+---- and survival of the fittest, Lamarck on the, 281, 282
+
+---- Patrick Matthew on, 321
+
+Style, Buffon on, 76, 77
+
+Sudden, the question what is too, to be settled by higgling and
+  haggling, 50
+
+---- modifications, missionaries should avoid trying to effect, 183
+
+Superficial, philosophy of the, 34, 35, 36, 198, 204
+
+Supply and demand, and desire and power, 223, 300
+
+Survival of the fittest, a synonym for natural selection, 9
+
+---- Dr. Erasmus Darwin on the, 227
+
+---- in the struggle for existence, Lamarck on the, 281, 282
+
+---- understood and admitted by Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, and
+  Lamarck, 301
+
+---- subsequent to modification, and therefore not the cause
+  of it, 302, 346
+
+---- Patrick Matthew on, 321
+
+---- this is not a theory, but a fact, 356, 357
+
+Swimming, no shore bird ever set itself to learn, of malice
+  prepense, 48, 51
+
+
+TAIL, the beaver's, has become an incarnate trowel, 8
+
+Teething, the pain an infant feels is the death-cry of many a
+  good cell, 75
+
+Teleological, failure of the early evolutionists to see their
+  position as, 34
+
+Teleology, statement of the question, 1
+
+---- Aristotle denied, Plato upheld, 4
+
+---- the, of Paley and the theologians, 12, &c.
+
+---- internal as much teleology as external, 36
+
+---- _See_ also "Design."
+
+Telescope, Lord Rosse's, and dew-drop, 44, 47
+
+Tempering, the felicitous, of two great contradictory principles, 35
+
+Tendon, a slit in one, to let another pass through, 20
+
+Terminology of botany harder than botany, 108
+
+---- Buffon on, 140, 141
+
+Test, Buffon's, as to the name an object is to bear, 115
+
+---- of perception and sensation, Buffon's, 127
+
+Theological writer, few passages in any, displease me more, &c., 368
+
+Theory, the survival of the fittest is a fact, not a theory, 356, 357
+
+Theories, true, Fontenelle on, 22, 23
+
+---- to be ordered out of court if troublesome, 35
+
+This: "I can no more believe in this," &c., 359
+
+---- "it is impossible to attribute to this cause," 358
+
+Thomas, St., Aquinas, Papal encyclical on, 402, 403
+
+Thomson, Sir W., natural selection and design, 10
+
+Thought is expressed in organ, 339, 341
+
+Time, Buffon on, 103
+
+---- Lamarck on, 241
+
+Tobacco-pipe, a rudimentary organ on a, 38
+
+Toes, a man who plays the violin with his, 50
+
+Tools, organs are living tools, 2
+
+---- the manufacture of, and that of organs, two species of the
+  same genus, 39
+
+Touch, all senses modifications of the sense of touch, 47
+
+Transformation of species, Buffon on the causes or means of, 159
+
+Translation of the "Loves of the Plants" into French, 63, 258, 259
+
+Translation of the "Zoonomia" into German, 71
+
+---- of Dr. E. Darwin's other works, 195
+
+Trapa Natans, Erasmus Darwin's note on, 260
+
+Treviranus alluded to, 72
+
+Tree, life seen as a tree, by Lamarck, 269
+
+---- by C. Darwin, 270
+
+---- nature compared to a, by Buffon, 171
+
+Trees, the blind man who saw men as trees walking, 137
+
+Trowel, the beaver has an incarnate trowel, 8
+
+True, vitally, 227
+
+---- all very, as far as it goes (that Nature is the most
+  important means of modification), 369
+
+Truism, the survival of the fittest, a, 351
+
+Tutbury bull running, 187
+
+Tyndall, Professor, a rhapsody about C. Darwin, 41
+
+---- calls evolution C. Darwin's theory, 360, 361
+
+
+UNCLES and aunts do not beget their nephews and nieces, 367, 376
+
+Unconscious, our acquired habits come to be done as unconsciously
+  as though instinctive, on repetition, 56
+
+---- difference between my view of the, and Von Hartmann's, 58
+
+Unconsciousness, the, with which habitual actions come to be
+  performed, 37, 38, 39, 56-58, 67, 203, 332, 381
+
+Understanding, the peace of mind that passeth, 35
+
+Unity of the individual, Buffon on the, 127, 128. (_See_ "Oneness")
+
+"Unknown causes," according to Mr. Darwin, can do so much, but
+  not so much more, 359
+
+---- their identity with spontaneous variability, 359
+
+---- heredity only another name for, unless the "Life and Habit"
+  theory be adopted, 384
+
+Upright position in man and certain apes, and children, Lamarck
+  on, 312
+
+Upside down, the vertebrata are perambulating vegetables planted, 137
+
+Use and organ, 44, 45, 47, 217, 218, 221, 292, 294, 296, 299, 301,
+  302, 304, 305, 307-309, 311, 323
+
+
+VACUUM, an omniscient and omnipotent, 28
+
+Vague, efforts and desires are vague in the outset, 47, 52, 384
+
+Variation, C. Darwin declares the fact of variation to be the cause
+  of variation, 8, 9, 347, 369
+
+Variations, one factor of modification provides, the other
+  accumulates, 227
+
+---- Lamarck strove to discover the law underlying, 337
+
+---- C. Darwin sees no cause underlying them, 339, 340
+
+---- according to Lamarck, they will tend to appear in definite
+  directions in large numbers of individuals, for long periods
+  together; according to C. Darwin they will not do thus, 341
+
+---- must appear before they can be preserved, 346
+
+---- the cause of variations is the cause of species (Professor
+  Mivart on this), 370
+
+Vary, man cannot vary his practices much more than animals can, 55
+
+"Vestiges of Creation," the, 65
+
+---- C. Darwin on the, 65
+
+---- the author of, on Lamarck, 247
+
+---- Darwin's treatment of, 247, 248
+
+Virtue has ever erred on the side of excess than on that of
+  asceticism, 35
+
+Violin, a man who plays the, with his toes, 50
+
+Vitally true, 227
+
+Volition. (_See_ "Will")
+
+Voltaire, Buffon would not play the part of, 81
+
+
+WALLACE, A. R., his review of Professor Haeckel's "Evolution
+  of Man," 382-384
+
+Want and power, interaction of, 44, 45, 47, 48, 217, 218,
+  221, 300, 323
+
+Wasp, cutting a fly in half, Dr. Erasmus Darwin on, 205
+
+Watch, Paley's argument from the, 13
+
+Weaker, the strongest eat the, 282
+
+Wealth, the normal growth of, and evolution, 222
+
+Web-footed, how birds, became, 48, 49, 51
+
+---- development of, birds, Lamarck on, 305
+
+---- Paley on, 305
+
+Wedge, Buffon let in the thin end of the wedge, by saying
+  that changed habits modify form, 105, 106
+
+Whisky, God keep you from--if he can, 176
+
+Will, Patrick Matthew on, as influencing organism, 320-322.
+  (_See_ also "Desire," "Design," "Want," "Wish")
+
+Will-o'-the-wisp, C. Darwin like a, 372
+
+Wish and power, their interaction, 44, 45, 47, 48, 217, 218, 221,
+  300, 323
+
+Wit, brevity may be its soul, but the leaders of science, &c., 315
+
+Worcester, the Marquis of, 54
+
+Words are apt to turn out compendious false analogies, 365
+
+Worms, reasonable creatures, 255
+
+Worth, nothing worth looking at or doing, except at a fair price, 35
+
+Wright, of Derby, his portrait of Mr. Day, 180
+
+
+ZEBRA and horse, Buffon on the, 80, 155, 164
+
+"Zoonomia," German translation of the, 71
+
+---- Paley's "Natural Theology" written at the, 195
+
+---- fuller quotations from the, 214, &c.
+
+---- the, and the "Origin of Species," the different ideas that an
+  average reader would carry away with him from these two works
+  ("Sense of Need" and "Natural Selection"), 363
+
+
+
+
+_The Mayflower Press, Plymouth, England._ William Brendon & Son, Ltd.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Evolution, Old & New, by Samuel Butler
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