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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Darwiniana, by Thomas Henry Huxley
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+Title: Darwiniana
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+Author: Thomas Henry Huxley
+
+Release Date: November, 2004  [EBook #6919]
+[This file was first posted on February 10, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, DARWINIANA ***
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+Branko Collin, Carlo Traverso, Charles Franks and the Distributed
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+
+
+Thomas Henry Huxley
+
+Collected Essays
+
+(1893-1894)
+
+Vol. II
+
+Darwiniana
+
+
+(Edition: published in 1893)
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+I have entitled this volume "Darwiniana" because the pieces republished in
+it either treat of the ancient doctrine of Evolution, rehabilitated and
+placed upon a sound scientific foundation, since and in consequence of, the
+publication of the "Origin of Species;" or they attempt to meet the more
+weighty of the unsparing criticisms with which that great work was visited
+for several years after its appearance; or they record the impression left
+by the personality of Mr. Darwin on one who had the privilege and the
+happiness of enjoying his friendship for some thirty years; or they
+endeavour to sum up his work and indicate its enduring influence on the
+course of scientific thought.
+
+Those who take the trouble to read the first two essays, published in 1859
+and 1860, will, I think, do me the justice to admit that my zeal to secure
+fair play for Mr. Darwin, did not drive me into the position of a mere
+advocate; and that, while doing justice to the greatness of the argument I
+did not fail to indicate its weak points. I have never seen any reason for
+departing from the position which I took up in these two essays; and the
+assertion which I sometimes meet with nowadays, that I have "recanted" or
+changed my opinions about Mr. Darwin's views, is quite unintelligible to
+me.
+
+As I have said in the seventh essay, the fact of evolution is to my mind
+sufficiently evidenced by palaeontology; and I remain of the opinion
+expressed in the second, that until selective breeding is definitely proved
+to give rise to varieties infertile with one another, the logical
+foundation of the theory of natural selection is incomplete. We still
+remain very much in the dark about the causes of variation; the apparent
+inheritance of acquired characters in some cases; and the struggle for
+existence within the organism, which probably lies at the bottom of both of
+these phenomena.
+
+Some apology is due to the reader for the reproduction of the "Lectures to
+Working Men" in their original state. They were taken down in shorthand by
+Mr. J. Aldous Mays, who requested me to allow him to print them. I was very
+much pressed with work at the time; and, as I could not revise the reports,
+which I imagined, moreover, would be of little or no interest to any but my
+auditors, I stipulated that a notice should be prefixed to that effect.
+This was done; but it did not prevent a considerable diffusion of the
+little book in this country and in the United States, nor its translation
+into more than one foreign language. Moreover Mr. Darwin often urged me to
+revise and expand the lectures into a systematic popular exposition of the
+topics of which they treat. I have more than once set about the task: but
+the proverb about spoiling a horn and not making a spoon, is particularly
+applicable to attempts to remodel a piece of work which may have served its
+immediate purpose well enough.
+
+So I have reprinted the lectures as they stand, with all their
+imperfections on their heads. It would seem that many people must have
+found them useful thirty years ago; and, though the sixties appear now to
+be reckoned by many of the rising generation as a part of the dark ages, I
+am not without some grounds for suspecting that there yet remains a fair
+sprinkling even of "philosophic thinkers" to whom it may be a profitable,
+perhaps even a novel, task to descend from the heights of speculation and
+go over the A B C of the great biological problem as it was set before a
+body of shrewd artisans at that remote epoch.
+
+T. H. H.
+
+Hodeslea, Eastbourne, _April 7th_, 1893.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+I     THE DARWINIAN HYPOTHESIS [1859]
+
+II    THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES [1860]
+
+III   CRITICISM ON "THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES" [1864]
+
+IV    THE GENEALOGY OF ANIMALS [1869]
+
+V     MR. DARWIN'S CRITICS [1871]
+
+VI    EVOLUTION IN BIOLOGY [1878]
+
+VII   THE COMING OF AGE OF "THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES" [1880]
+
+VIII  CHARLES DARWIN [1882]
+
+IX    THE DARWIN MEMORIAL [1885]
+
+X     OBITUARY [1888]
+
+XI    SIX LECTURES TO WORKING MEN "ON OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE CAUSES OF THE
+      PHENOMENA OF ORGANIC NATURE" [1863]
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE DARWINIAN HYPOTHESIS
+
+[1859]
+
+
+The hypothesis of which the present work of Mr. Darwin is but the
+preliminary outline, may be stated in his own language as follows:--
+"Species originated by means of natural selection, or through the
+preservation of the favoured races in the struggle for life." To render
+this thesis intelligible, it is necessary to interpret its terms. In the
+first place, what is a species? The question is a simple one, but the right
+answer to it is hard to find, even if we appeal to those who should know
+most about it. It is all those animals or plants which have descended from
+a single pair of parents; it is the smallest distinctly definable group of
+living organisms; it is an eternal and immutable entity; it is a mere
+abstraction of the human intellect having no existence in nature. Such are
+a few of the significations attached to this simple word which may be
+culled from authoritative sources; and if, leaving terms and theoretical
+subtleties aside, we turn to facts and endeavour to gather a meaning for
+ourselves, by studying the things to which, in practice, the name of
+species is applied, it profits us little. For practice varies as much as
+theory. Let two botanists or two zoologists examine and describe the
+productions of a country, and one will pretty certainly disagree with the
+other as to the number, limits, and definitions of the species into which
+he groups the very same things. In these islands, we are in the habit of
+regarding mankind as of one species, but a fortnight's steam will land us
+in a country where divines and savants, for once in agreement, vie with one
+another in loudness of assertion, if not in cogency of proof, that men are
+of different species; and, more particularly, that the species negro is so
+distinct from our own that the Ten Commandments have actually no reference
+to him. Even in the calm region of entomology, where, if anywhere in this
+sinful world, passion and prejudice should fail to stir the mind, one
+learned coleopterist will fill ten attractive volumes with descriptions of
+species of beetles, nine-tenths of which are immediately declared by his
+brother beetle-mongers to be no species at all.
+
+The truth is that the number of distinguishable living creatures almost
+surpasses imagination. At least 100,000 such kinds of insects alone have
+been described and may be identified in collections, and the number of
+separable kinds of living things is under-estimated at half a million.
+Seeing that most of these obvious kinds have their accidental varieties,
+and that they often shade into others by imperceptible degrees, it may well
+be imagined that the task of distinguishing between what is permanent and
+what fleeting, what is a species and what a mere variety, is sufficiently
+formidable.
+
+But is it not possible to apply a test whereby a true species may be known
+from a mere variety? Is there no criterion of species? Great authorities
+affirm that there is--that the unions of members of the same species are
+always fertile, while those of distinct species are either sterile, or
+their offspring, called hybrids, are so. It is affirmed not only that this
+is an experimental fact, but that it is a provision for the preservation of
+the purity of species. Such a criterion as this would be invaluable; but,
+unfortunately, not only is it not obvious how to apply it in the great
+majority of cases in which its aid is needed, but its general validity is
+stoutly denied. The Hon. and Rev. Mr. Herbert, a most trustworthy
+authority, not only asserts as the result of his own observations and
+experiments that many hybrids are quite as fertile as the parent species,
+but he goes so far as to assert that the particular plant _Crinum
+capense_ is much more fertile when crossed by a distinct species than
+when fertilised by its proper pollen! On the other hand, the famous
+Gaertner, though he took the greatest pains to cross the Primrose and the
+Cowslip, succeeded only once or twice in several years; and yet it is a
+well-established fact that the Primrose and the Cowslip are only varieties
+of the same kind of plant. Again, such cases as the following are well
+established. The female of species A, if crossed with the male of species
+B, is fertile; but, if the female of B is crossed with the male of A, she
+remains barren. Facts of this kind destroy the value of the supposed
+criterion.
+
+If, weary of the endless difficulties involved in the determination of
+species, the investigator, contenting himself with the rough practical
+distinction of separable kinds, endeavours to study them as they occur in
+nature--to ascertain their relations to the conditions which surround them,
+their mutual harmonies and discordancies of structure, the bond of union of
+their present and their past history, he finds himself, according to the
+received notions, in a mighty maze, and with, at most, the dimmest
+adumbration of a plan. If he starts with any one clear conviction, it is
+that every part of a living creature is cunningly adapted to some special
+use in its life. Has not his Paley told him that that seemingly useless
+organ, the spleen, is beautifully adjusted as so much packing between the
+other organs? And yet, at the outset of his studies, he finds that no
+adaptive reason whatsoever can be given for one-half of the peculiarities
+of vegetable structure. He also discovers rudimentary teeth, which are
+never used, in the gums of the young calf and in those of the foetal whale;
+insects which never bite have rudimental jaws, and others which never fly
+have rudimental wings; naturally blind creatures have rudimental eyes; and
+the halt have rudimentary limbs. So, again, no animal or plant puts on its
+perfect form at once, but all have to start from the same point, however
+various the course which each has to pursue. Not only men and horses, and
+cats and dogs, lobsters and beetles, periwinkles and mussels, but even the
+very sponges and animalcules commence their existence under forms which are
+essentially undistinguishable; and this is true of all the infinite variety
+of plants. Nay, more, all living beings march, side by side, along the high
+road of development, and separate the later the more like they are; like
+people leaving church, who all go down the aisle, but having reached the
+door, some turn into the parsonage, others go down the village, and others
+part only in the next parish. A man in his development runs for a little
+while parallel with, though never passing through, the form of the meanest
+worm, then travels for a space beside the fish, then journeys along with
+the bird and the reptile for his fellow travellers: and only at last, after
+a brief companionship with the highest of the four-footed and four-handed
+world, rises into the dignity of pure manhood. No competent thinker of the
+present day dreams of explaining these indubitable facts by the notion of
+the existence of unknown and undiscoverable adaptations to purpose. And we
+would remind those who, ignorant of the facts, must be moved by authority,
+that no one has asserted the incompetence of the doctrine of final causes,
+in its application to physiology and anatomy, more strongly than our own
+eminent anatomist, Professor Owen, who, speaking of such cases, says ("On
+the Nature of Limbs," pp. 39, 40)--"I think it will be obvious that the
+principle of final adaptations fails to satisfy all the conditions of the
+problem."
+
+But, if the doctrine of final causes will not help us to comprehend
+the anomalies of living structure, the principle of adaptation must
+surely lead us to understand why certain living beings are found in
+certain regions of the world and not in others. The Palm, as we know,
+will not grow in our climate, nor the Oak in Greenland. The white bear
+cannot live where the tiger thrives, nor _vice versâ_, and the more
+the natural habits of animal and vegetable species are examined, the
+more do they seem, on the whole, limited to particular provinces. But
+when we look into the facts established by the study of the
+geographical distribution of animals and plants it seems utterly
+hopeless to attempt to understand the strange and apparently
+capricious relations which they exhibit. One would be inclined to
+suppose _à priori_ that every country must be naturally peopled by
+those animals that are fittest to live and thrive in it. And yet how,
+on this hypothesis, are we to account for the absence of cattle in the
+Pampas of South America, when those parts of the New World were
+discovered? It is not that they were unfit for cattle, for millions of
+cattle now run wild there; and the like holds good of Australia and
+New Zealand. It is a curious circumstance, in fact, that the animals
+and plants of the Northern Hemisphere are not only as well adapted to
+live in the Southern Hemisphere as its own autochthones, but are, in
+many cases, absolutely better adapted, and so overrun and extirpate
+the aborigines. Clearly, therefore, the species which naturally
+inhabit a country are not necessarily the best adapted to its climate
+and other conditions. The inhabitants of islands are often distinct
+from any other known species of animal or plants (witness our recent
+examples from the work of Sir Emerson Tennent, on Ceylon), and yet
+they have almost always a sort of general family resemblance to the
+animals and plants of the nearest mainland. On the other hand, there
+is hardly a species of fish, shell, or crab common to the opposite
+sides of the narrow isthmus of Panama.  [Footnote: See page 60
+_Note_.]  Wherever we look, then, living nature offers us riddles of
+difficult solution, if we suppose that what we see is all that can be
+known of it.
+
+But our knowledge of life is not confined to the existing world. Whatever
+their minor differences, geologists are agreed as to the vast thickness of
+the accumulated strata which compose the visible part of our earth, and the
+inconceivable immensity of the time the lapse of which they are the
+imperfect but the only accessible witnesses. Now, throughout the greater
+part of this long series of stratified rocks are scattered, sometimes very
+abundantly, multitudes of organic remains, the fossilised exuviæ of animals
+and plants which lived and died while the mud of which the rocks are formed
+was yet soft ooze, and could receive and bury them. It would be a great
+error to suppose that these organic remains were fragmentary relics. Our
+museums exhibit fossil shells of immeasurable antiquity, as perfect as the
+day they were formed; whole skeletons without a limb disturbed; nay, the
+changed flesh, the developing embryos, and even the very footsteps of
+primæval organisms. Thus the naturalist finds in the bowels of the earth
+species as well defined as, and in some groups of animals more numerous
+than, those which breathe the upper air. But, singularly enough, the
+majority of these entombed species are wholly distinct from those that now
+live. Nor is this unlikeness without its rule and order. As a broad fact,
+the further we go back in time the less the buried species are like
+existing forms; and, the further apart the sets of extinct creatures are,
+the less they are like one another. In other words, there has been a
+regular succession of living beings, each younger set, being in a very
+broad and general sense, somewhat more like those which now live.
+
+It was once supposed that this succession had been the result of vast
+successive catastrophes, destructions, and re-creations _en masse_;
+but catastrophes are now almost eliminated from geological, or at least
+palæontological speculation; and it is admitted, on all hands, that the
+seeming breaks in the chain of being are not absolute, but only relative to
+our imperfect knowledge; that species have replaced species, not in
+assemblages, but one by one; and that, if it were possible to have all the
+phenomena of the past presented to us, the convenient epochs and formations
+of the geologist, though having a certain distinctness, would fade into one
+another with limits as undefinable as those of the distinct and yet
+separable colours of the solar spectrum.
+
+Such is a brief summary of the main truths which have been established
+concerning species. Are these truths ultimate and irresolvable facts, or
+are their complexities and perplexities the mere expressions of a higher
+law?
+
+A large number of persons practically assume the former position to be
+correct. They believe that the writer of the Pentateuch was empowered and
+commissioned to teach us scientific as well as other truth, that the
+account we find there of the creation of living things is simply and
+literally correct, and that anything which seems to contradict it is, by
+the nature of the case, false. All the phenomena which have been detailed
+are, on this view, the immediate product of a creative fiat and,
+consequently, are out of the domain of science altogether.
+
+Whether this view prove ultimately to be true or false, it is, at any rate,
+not at present supported by what is commonly regarded as logical proof,
+even if it be capable of discussion by reason; and hence we consider
+ourselves at liberty to pass it by, and to turn to those views which
+profess to rest on a scientific basis only, and therefore admit of being
+argued to their consequences. And we do this with the less hesitation as it
+so happens that those persons who are practically conversant with the facts
+of the case (plainly a considerable advantage) have always thought fit to
+range themselves under the latter category.
+
+The majority of these competent persons have up to the present time
+maintained two positions--the first, that every species is, within certain
+defined limits, fixed and incapable of modification; the second, that every
+species was originally produced by a distinct creative act. The second
+position is obviously incapable of proof or disproof, the direct operations
+of the Creator not being subjects of science; and it must therefore be
+regarded as a corollary from the first, the truth or falsehood of which is
+a matter of evidence. Most persons imagine that the arguments in favour of
+it are overwhelming; but to some few minds, and these, it must be
+confessed, intellects of no small power and grasp of knowledge, they have
+not brought conviction. Among these minds, that of the famous naturalist
+Lamarck, who possessed a greater acquaintance with the lower forms of life
+than any man of his day, Cuvier not excepted, and was a good botanist to
+boot, occupies a prominent place.
+
+Two facts appear to have strongly affected the course of thought of this
+remarkable man--the one, that finer or stronger links of affinity connect
+all living beings with one another, and that thus the highest creature
+grades by multitudinous steps into the lowest; the other, that an organ may
+be developed in particular directions by exerting itself in particular
+ways, and that modifications once induced may be transmitted and become
+hereditary. Putting these facts together, Lamarck endeavoured to account
+for the first by the operation of the second. Place an animal in new
+circumstances, says he, and its needs will be altered; the new needs will
+create new desires, and the attempt to gratify such desires will result in
+an appropriate modification of the organs exerted. Make a man a blacksmith,
+and his brachial muscles will develop in accordance with the demands made
+upon them, and in like manner, says Lamarck, "the efforts of some
+short-necked bird to catch fish without wetting himself have, with time and
+perseverance, given rise to all our herons and long-necked waders."
+
+The Lamarckian hypothesis has long since been justly condemned, and it is
+the established practice for every tyro to raise his heel against the
+carcase of the dead lion. But it is rarely either wise or instructive to
+treat even the errors of a really great man with mere ridicule, and in the
+present case the logical form of the doctrine stands on a very different
+footing from its substance.
+
+If species have really arisen by the operation of natural conditions, we
+ought to be able to find those conditions now at work; we ought to be able
+to discover in nature some power adequate to modify any given kind of
+animal or plant in such a manner as to give rise to another kind, which
+would be admitted by naturalists as a distinct species. Lamarck imagined
+that he had discovered this _vera causa_ in the admitted facts that
+some organs may be modified by exercise; and that modifications, once
+produced, are capable of hereditary transmission. It does not seem to have
+occurred to him to inquire whether there is any reason to believe that
+there are any limits to the amount of modification producible, or to ask
+how long an animal is likely to endeavour to gratify an impossible desire.
+The bird, in our example, would surely have renounced fish dinners long
+before it had produced the least effect on leg or neck.
+
+Since Lamarck's time, almost all competent naturalists have left
+speculations on the origin of species to such dreamers as the author of the
+"Vestiges," by whose well-intentioned efforts the Lamarckian theory
+received its final condemnation in the minds of all sound thinkers.
+Notwithstanding this silence, however, the transmutation theory, as it has
+been called, has been a "skeleton in the closet" to many an honest
+zoologist and botanist who had a soul above the mere naming of dried plants
+and skins. Surely, has such an one thought, nature is a mighty and
+consistent whole, and the providential order established in the world of
+life must, if we could only see it rightly, be consistent with that
+dominant over the multiform shapes of brute matter. But what is the history
+of astronomy, of all the branches of physics, of chemistry, of medicine,
+but a narration of the steps by which the human mind has been compelled,
+often sorely against its will, to recognise the operation of secondary
+causes in events where ignorance beheld an immediate intervention of a
+higher power? And when we know that living things are formed of the same
+elements as the inorganic world, that they act and react upon it, bound by
+a thousand ties of natural piety, is it probable, nay is it possible, that
+they, and they alone, should have no order in their seeming disorder, no
+unity in their seeming multiplicity, should suffer no explanation by the
+discovery of some central and sublime law of mutual connection?
+
+Questions of this kind have assuredly often arisen, but it might have been
+long before they received such expression as would have commanded the
+respect and attention of the scientific world, had it not been for the
+publication of the work which prompted this article. Its author, Mr.
+Darwin, inheritor of a once celebrated name, won his spurs in science when
+most of those now distinguished were young men, and has for the last twenty
+years held a place in the front ranks of British philosophers. After a
+circumnavigatory voyage, undertaken solely for the love of his science, Mr.
+Darwin published a series of researches which at once arrested the
+attention of naturalists and geologists; his generalisations have since
+received ample confirmation and now command universal assent, nor is it
+questionable that they have had the most important influence on the
+progress of science. More recently Mr. Darwin, with a versatility which is
+among the rarest of gifts, turned his attention to a most difficult
+question of zoology and minute anatomy; and no living naturalist and
+anatomist has published a better monograph than that which resulted from
+his labours. Such a man, at all events, has not entered the sanctuary with
+unwashed hands, and when he lays before us the results of twenty years'
+investigation and reflection we must listen even though we be disposed to
+strike. But, in reading his work, it must be confessed that the attention
+which might at first be dutifully, soon becomes willingly, given, so clear
+is the author's thought, so outspoken his conviction, so honest and fair
+the candid expression of his doubts. Those who would judge the book must
+read it: we shall endeavour only to make its line of argument and its
+philosophical position intelligible to the general reader in our own way.
+
+The Baker Street Bazaar has just been exhibiting its familiar annual
+spectacle. Straight-backed, small-headed, big-barrelled oxen, as dissimilar
+from any wild species as can well be imagined, contended for attention and
+praise with sheep of half-a-dozen different breeds and styes of bloated
+preposterous pigs, no more like a wild boar or sow than a city alderman is
+like an ourang-outang. The cattle show has been, and perhaps may again be,
+succeeded by a poultry show, of whose crowing and clucking prodigies it can
+only be certainly predicated that they will be very unlike the aboriginal
+_Phasianus gallus._ If the seeker after animal anomalies is not
+satisfied, a turn or two in Seven Dials will convince him that the breeds
+of pigeons are quite as extraordinary and unlike one another and their
+parent stock, while the Horticultural Society will provide him with any
+number of corresponding vegetable aberrations from nature's types. He will
+learn with no little surprise, too, in the course of his travels, that the
+proprietors and producers of these animal and vegetable anomalies regard
+them as distinct species, with a firm belief, the strength of which is
+exactly proportioned to their ignorance of scientific biology, and which is
+the more remarkable as they are all proud of their skill in originating
+such "species."
+
+On careful inquiry it is found that all these, and the many other
+artificial breeds or races of animals and plants, have been produced by one
+method. The breeder--and a skilful one must be a person of much sagacity
+and natural or acquired perceptive faculty--notes some slight difference,
+arising he knows not how, in some individuals of his stock. If he wish to
+perpetuate the difference, to form a breed with the peculiarity in question
+strongly marked, he selects such male and female individuals as exhibit the
+desired character, and breeds from them. Their offspring are then carefully
+examined, and those which exhibit the peculiarity the most distinctly are
+selected for breeding; and this operation is repeated until the desired
+amount of divergence from the primitive stock is reached. It is then found
+that by continuing the process of selection--always breeding, that is, from
+well-marked forms, and allowing no impure crosses to interfere--a race may
+be formed, the tendency of which to reproduce itself is exceedingly strong;
+nor is the limit to the amount of divergence which may be thus produced
+known; but one thing is certain, that, if certain breeds of dogs, or of
+pigeons, or of horses, were known only in a fossil state, no naturalist
+would hesitate in regarding them as distinct species.
+
+But in all these cases we have human interference. Without the breeder
+there would be no selection, and without the selection no race. Before
+admitting the possibility of natural species having originated in any
+similar way, it must be proved that there is in Nature some power which
+takes the place of man, and performs a selection _suâ sponte._ It is
+the claim of Mr. Darwin that he professes to have discovered the existence
+and the _modus operandi_ of this "natural selection," as he terms it;
+and, if he be right, the process is perfectly simple and comprehensible,
+and irresistibly deducible from very familiar but well nigh forgotten
+facts.
+
+Who, for instance, has duly reflected upon all the consequences of the
+marvellous struggle for existence which is daily and hourly going on among
+living beings? Not only does every animal live at the expense of some other
+animal or plant, but the very plants are at war. The ground is full of
+seeds that cannot rise into seedlings; the seedlings rob one another of
+air, light and water, the strongest robber winning the day, and
+extinguishing his competitors. Year after year, the wild animals with which
+man never interferes are, on the average, neither more nor less numerous
+than they were; and yet we know that the annual produce of every pair is
+from one to perhaps a million young; so that it is mathematically certain
+that, on the average, as many are killed by natural causes as are born
+every year, and those only escape which happen to be a little better fitted
+to resist destruction than those which die. The individuals of a species
+are like the crew of a foundered ship, and none but good swimmers have a
+chance of reaching the land.
+
+Such being unquestionably the necessary conditions under which living
+creatures exist, Mr. Darwin discovers in them the instrument of natural
+selection. Suppose that in the midst of this incessant competition some
+individuals of a species (A) present accidental variations which happen to
+fit them a little better than their fellows for the struggle in which they
+are engaged, then the chances are in favour, not only of these individuals
+being better nourished than the others, but of their predominating over
+their fellows in other ways, and of having a better chance of leaving
+offspring, which will of course tend to reproduce the peculiarities of
+their parents. Their offspring will, by a parity of reasoning, tend to
+predominate over their contemporaries, and there being (suppose) no room
+for more than one species such as A, the weaker variety will eventually be
+destroyed by the new destructive influence which is thrown into the scale,
+and the stronger will take its place. Surrounding conditions remaining
+unchanged, the new variety (which we may call B)--supposed, for argument's
+sake, to be the best adapted for these conditions which can be got out of
+the original stock--will remain unchanged, all accidental deviations from
+the type becoming at once extinguished, as less fit for their post than B
+itself. The tendency of B to persist will grow with its persistence through
+successive generations, and it will acquire all the characters of a new
+species.
+
+But, on the other hand, if the conditions of life change in any degree,
+however slight, B may no longer be that form which is best adapted to
+withstand their destructive, and profit by their sustaining, influence; in
+which case if it should give rise to a more competent variety (C), this
+will take its place and become a new species; and thus, by natural
+selection, the species B and C will be successively derived from A.
+
+That this most ingenious hypothesis enables us to give a reason for many
+apparent anomalies in the distribution of living beings in time and space,
+and that it is not contradicted by the main phenomena of life and
+organisation appear to us to be unquestionable; and, so far, it must be
+admitted to have an immense advantage over any of its predecessors. But it
+is quite another matter to affirm absolutely either the truth or falsehood
+of Mr. Darwin's views at the present stage of the inquiry. Goethe has an
+excellent aphorism defining that state of mind which he calls "Thätige
+Skepsis"--active doubt. It is doubt which so loves truth that it neither
+dares rest in doubting, nor extinguish itself by unjustified belief; and we
+commend this state of mind to students of species, with respect to Mr.
+Darwin's or any other hypothesis, as to their origin. The combined
+investigations of another twenty years may, perhaps, enable naturalists to
+say whether the modifying causes and the selective power, which Mr. Darwin
+has satisfactorily shown to exist in Nature, are competent to produce all
+the effects he ascribes to them; or whether, on the other hand, he has been
+led to over-estimate the value of the principle of natural selection, as
+greatly as Lamarck over-estimated his _vera causa_ of modification by
+exercise.
+
+But there is, at all events, one advantage possessed by the more recent
+writer over his predecessor. Mr. Darwin abhors mere speculation as nature
+abhors a vacuum. He is as greedy of cases and precedents as any
+constitutional lawyer, and all the principles he lays down are capable of
+being brought to the test of observation and experiment. The path he bids
+us follow professes to be, not a mere airy track, fabricated of ideal
+cobwebs, but a solid and broad bridge of facts. If it be so, it will carry
+us safely over many a chasm in our knowledge, and lead us to a region free
+from the snares of those fascinating but barren virgins, the Final Causes,
+against whom a high authority has so justly warned us. "My sons, dig in the
+vineyard," were the last words of the old man in the fable: and, though the
+sons found no treasure, they made their fortunes by the grapes.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
+
+[1860]
+
+
+Mr. Darwin's long-standing and well-earned scientific eminence probably
+renders him indifferent to that social notoriety which passes by the name
+of success; but if the calm spirit of the philosopher have not yet wholly
+superseded the ambition and the vanity of the carnal man within him, he
+must be well satisfied with the results of his venture in publishing the
+"Origin of Species." Overflowing the narrow bounds of purely scientific
+circles, the "species question" divides with Italy and the Volunteers the
+attention of general society. Everybody has read Mr. Darwin's book, or, at
+least, has given an opinion upon its merits or demerits; pietists, whether
+lay or ecclesiastic, decry it with the mild railing which sounds so
+charitable; bigots denounce it with ignorant invective; old ladies of both
+sexes consider it a decidedly dangerous book, and even savants, who have no
+better mud to throw, quote antiquated writers to show that its author is no
+better than an ape himself; while every philosophical thinker hails it as a
+veritable Whitworth gun in the armoury of liberalism; and all competent
+naturalists and physiologists, whatever their opinions as to the ultimate
+fate of the doctrines put forth, acknowledge that the work in which they
+are embodied is a solid contribution to knowledge and inaugurates a new
+epoch in natural history.
+
+Nor has the discussion of the subject been restrained within the limits of
+conversation. When the public is eager and interested, reviewers must
+minister to its wants; and the genuine _littérateur_ is too much in
+the habit of acquiring his knowledge from the book he judges--as the
+Abyssinian is said to provide himself with steaks from the ox which carries
+him--to be withheld from criticism of a profound scientific work by the
+mere want of the requisite preliminary scientific acquirement; while, on
+the other hand, the men of science who wish well to the new views, no less
+than those who dispute their validity, have naturally sought opportunities
+of expressing their opinions. Hence it is not surprising that almost all
+the critical journals have noticed Mr. Darwin's work at greater or less
+length; and so many disquisitions, of every degree of excellence, from the
+poor product of ignorance, too often stimulated by prejudice, to the fair
+and thoughtful essay of the candid student of Nature, have appeared, that
+it seems an almost hopeless task to attempt to say anything new upon the
+question.
+
+But it may be doubted if the knowledge and acumen of prejudged scientific
+opponents, and the subtlety of orthodox special pleaders, have yet exerted
+their full force in mystifying the real issues of the great controversy
+which has been set afoot, and whose end is hardly likely to be seen by this
+generation; so that, at this eleventh hour, and even failing anything new,
+it may be useful to state afresh that which is true, and to put the
+fundamental positions advocated by Mr. Darwin in such a form that they may
+be grasped by those whose special studies lie in other directions. And the
+adoption of this course may be the more advisable, because, notwithstanding
+its great deserts, and indeed partly on account of them, the "Origin of
+Species" is by no means an easy book to read--if by reading is implied the
+full comprehension of an author's meaning.
+
+We do not speak jestingly in saying that it is Mr. Darwin's misfortune to
+know more about the question he has taken up than any man living.
+Personally and practically exercised in zoology, in minute anatomy, in
+geology; a student of geographical distribution, not on maps and in museums
+only, but by long voyages and laborious collection; having largely advanced
+each of these branches of science, and having spent many years in gathering
+and sifting materials for his present work, the store of accurately
+registered facts upon which the author of the "Origin of Species" is able
+to draw at will is prodigious.
+
+But this very superabundance of matter must have been embarrassing to a
+writer who, for the present, can only put forward an abstract of his views;
+and thence it arises, perhaps, that notwithstanding the clearness of the
+style, those who attempt fairly to digest the book find much of it a sort
+of intellectual pemmican--a mass of facts crushed and pounded into shape,
+rather than held together by the ordinary medium of an obvious logical
+bond; due attention will, without doubt, discover this bond, but it is
+often hard to find.
+
+Again, from sheer want of room, much has to be taken for granted which
+might readily enough be proved; and hence, while the adept, who can supply
+the missing links in the evidence from his own knowledge, discovers fresh
+proof of the singular thoroughness with which all difficulties have been
+considered and all unjustifiable suppositions avoided, at every reperusal
+of Mr. Darwin's pregnant paragraphs, the novice in biology is apt to
+complain of the frequency of what he fancies is gratuitous assumption.
+
+Thus while it may be doubted if, for some years, any one is likely to be
+competent to pronounce judgment on all the issues raised by Mr. Darwin,
+there is assuredly abundant room for him, who, assuming the humbler, though
+perhaps as useful, office of an interpreter between the "Origin of Species"
+and the public, contents himself with endeavouring to point out the nature
+of the problems which it discusses; to distinguish between the ascertained
+facts and the theoretical views which it contains; and finally, to show the
+extent to which the explanation it offers satisfies the requirements of
+scientific logic. At any rate, it is this office which we purpose to
+undertake in the following pages.
+
+It may be safely assumed that our readers have a general conception of the
+nature of the objects to which the word "species" is applied; but it has,
+perhaps, occurred to a few, even to those who are naturalists _ex
+professo_, to reflect, that, as commonly employed, the term has a double
+sense and denotes two very different orders of relations. When we call a
+group of animals, or of plants, a species, we may imply thereby, either
+that all these animals or plants have some common peculiarity of form or
+structure; or, we may mean that they possess some common functional
+character. That part of biological science which deals with form and
+structure is called Morphology--that which concerns itself with function,
+Physiology--so that we may conveniently speak of these two senses, or
+aspects, of "species"--the one as morphological, the other as
+physiological. Regarded from the former point of view, a species is nothing
+more than a kind of animal or plant, which is distinctly definable from all
+others, by certain constant, and not merely sexual, morphological
+peculiarities. Thus horses form a species, because the group of animals to
+which that name is applied is distinguished from all others in the world by
+the following constantly associated characters. They have--1, A vertebral
+column; 2, Mammae; 3, A placental embryo; 4, Four legs; 5, A single
+well-developed toe in each foot provided with a hoof; 6, A bushy tail; and
+7, Callosities on the inner sides of both the fore and the hind legs. The
+asses, again, form a distinct species, because, with the same characters,
+as far as the fifth in the above list, all asses have tufted tails, and
+have callosities only on the inner side of the fore-legs. If animals were
+discovered having the general characters of the horse, but sometimes with
+callosities only on the fore-legs, and more or less tufted tails; or
+animals having the general characters of the ass, but with more or less
+bushy tails, and sometimes with callosities on both pairs of legs, besides
+being intermediate in other respects--the two species would have to be
+merged into one. They could no longer be regarded as morphologically
+distinct species, for they would not be distinctly definable one from the
+other.
+
+However bare and simple this definition of species may appear to be, we
+confidently appeal to all practical naturalists, whether zoologists,
+botanists, or palaeontologists, to say if, in the vast majority of cases,
+they know, or mean to affirm, anything more of the group of animals or
+plants they so denominate than what has just been stated. Even the most
+decided advocates of the received doctrines respecting species admit this.
+
+"I apprehend," says Professor Owen, [Footnote: "On the Osteology of the
+Chimpanzees and Orangs"; _Transactions of the Zoological Society_,
+1858.] "that few naturalists nowadays, in describing and proposing a name
+for what they call 'a new _species_,' use that term to signify what
+was meant by it twenty or thirty years ago; that is, an originally distinct
+creation, maintaining its primitive distinction by obstructive generative
+peculiarities. The proposer of the new species now intends to state no more
+than he actually knows; as, for example, that the differences on which he
+founds the specific character are constant in individuals of both sexes, so
+far as observation has reached; and that they are not due to domestication
+or to artificially superinduced external circumstances, or to any outward
+influence within his cognizance; that the species is wild, or is such as it
+appears by Nature."
+
+If we consider, in fact, that by far the largest proportion of recorded
+existing species are known only by the study of their skins, or bones, or
+other lifeless exuviae; that we are acquainted with none, or next to none,
+of their physiological peculiarities, beyond those which can be deduced
+from their structure, or are open to cursory observation; and that we
+cannot hope to learn more of any of those extinct forms of life which now
+constitute no inconsiderable proportion of the known Flora and Fauna of the
+world: it is obvious that the definitions of these species can be only of a
+purely structural, or morphological, character. It is probable that
+naturalists would have avoided much confusion of ideas if they had more
+frequently borne the necessary limitations of our knowledge in mind. But
+while it may safely be admitted that we are acquainted with only the
+morphological characters of the vast majority of species--the functional or
+physiological, peculiarities of a few have been carefully investigated, and
+the result of that study forms a large and most interesting portion of the
+physiology of reproduction.
+
+The student of Nature wonders the more and is astonished the less, the more
+conversant he becomes with her operations; but of all the perennial
+miracles she offers to his inspection, perhaps the most worthy of
+admiration is the development of a plant or of an animal from its embryo.
+Examine the recently laid egg of some common animal, such as a salamander
+or newt. It is a minute spheroid in which the best microscope will reveal
+nothing but a structureless sac, enclosing a glairy fluid, holding granules
+in suspension. [Footnote: When this sentence was written, it was generally
+believed that the original nucleus of the egg (the germinal vesicle)
+disappeared. 1893.] But strange possibilities lie dormant in that
+semi-fluid globule. Let a moderate supply of warmth reach its watery
+cradle, and the plastic matter undergoes changes so rapid, yet so steady
+and purposelike in their succession, that one can only compare them to
+those operated by a skilled modeller upon a formless lump of clay. As with
+an invisible trowel, the mass is divided and subdivided into smaller and
+smaller portions, until it is reduced to an aggregation of granules not too
+large to build withal the finest fabrics of the nascent organism. And,
+then, it is as if a delicate finger traced out the line to be occupied by
+the spinal column, and moulded the contour of the body; pinching up the
+head at one end, the tail at the other, and fashioning flank and limb into
+due salamandrine proportions, in so artistic a way, that, after watching
+the process hour by hour, one is almost involuntarily possessed by the
+notion, that some more subtle aid to vision than an achromatic, would show
+the hidden artist, with his plan before him, striving with skilful
+manipulation to perfect his work.
+
+As life advances, and the young amphibian ranges the waters, the terror of
+his insect contemporaries, not only are the nutritious particles supplied
+by its prey, by the addition of which to its frame, growth takes place,
+laid down, each in its proper spot, and in such due proportion to the rest,
+as to reproduce the form, the colour, and the size, characteristic of the
+parental stock; but even the wonderful powers of reproducing lost parts
+possessed by these animals are controlled by the same governing tendency.
+Cut off the legs, the tail, the jaws, separately or all together, and, as
+Spallanzani showed long ago, these parts not only grow again, but the
+redintegrated limb is formed on the same type as those which were lost. The
+new jaw, or leg, is a newt's, and never by any accident more like that of a
+frog. What is true of the newt is true of every animal and of every plant;
+the acorn tends to build itself up again into a woodland giant such as that
+from whose twig it fell; the spore of the humblest lichen reproduces the
+green or brown incrustation which gave it birth; and at the other end of
+the scale of life, the child that resembled neither the paternal nor the
+maternal side of the house would be regarded as a kind of monster.
+
+So that the one end to which, in all living beings, the formative impulse
+is tending--the one scheme which the Archæus of the old speculators strives
+to carry out, seems to be to mould the offspring into the likeness of the
+parent. It is the first great law of reproduction, that the offspring tends
+to resemble its parent or parents, more closely than anything else.
+
+Science will some day show us how this law is a necessary consequence of
+the more general laws which govern matter; but, for the present, more can
+hardly be said than that it appears to be in harmony with them. We know
+that the phænomena of vitality are not something apart from other physical
+phænomena, but one with them; and matter and force are the two names of the
+one artist who fashions the living as well as the lifeless. Hence living
+bodies should obey the same great laws as other matter--nor, throughout
+Nature, is there a law of wider application than this, that a body impelled
+by two forces takes the direction of their resultant. But living bodies may
+be regarded as nothing but extremely complex bundles of forces held in a
+mass of matter, as the complex forces of a magnet are held in the steel by
+its coercive force; and, since the differences of sex are comparatively
+slight, or, in other words, the sum of the forces in each has a very
+similar tendency, their resultant, the offspring, may reasonably be
+expected to deviate but little from a course parallel to either, or to
+both.
+
+Represent the reason of the law to ourselves by what physical metaphor or
+analogy we will, however, the great matter is to apprehend its existence
+and the importance of the consequences deducible from it. For things which
+are like to the same are like to one another; and if, in a great series of
+generations, every offspring is like its parent, it follows that all the
+offspring and all the parents must be like one another; and that, given an
+original parental stock, with the opportunity of undisturbed
+multiplication, the law in question necessitates the production, in course
+of time, of an indefinitely large group, the whole of the members of which
+are at once very similar and are blood relations, having descended from the
+same parent, or pair of parents. The proof that all the members of any
+given group of animals, or plants, had thus descended, would be ordinarily
+considered sufficient to entitle them to the rank of physiological species,
+for most physiologists consider species to be definable as "the offspring
+of a single primitive stock."
+
+But though it is quite true that all those groups we call species
+_may_, according to the known laws of reproduction, have descended
+from a single stock, and though it is very likely they really have done so,
+yet this conclusion rests on deduction and can hardly hope to establish
+itself upon a basis of observation. And the primitiveness of the supposed
+single stock, which, after all, is the essential part of the matter, is not
+only a hypothesis, but one which has not a shadow of foundation, if by
+"primitive" be meant "independent of any other living being." A scientific
+definition, of which an unwarrantable hypothesis forms an essential part,
+carries its condemnation within itself; but, even supposing such a
+definition were, in form, tenable, the physiologist who should attempt to
+apply it in Nature would soon find himself involved in great, if not
+inextricable, difficulties. As we have said, it is indubitable that
+offspring _tend_ to resemble the parental organism, but it is equally
+true that the similarity attained never amounts to identity either in form
+or in structure. There is always a certain amount of deviation, not only
+from the precise characters of a single parent, but when, as in most
+animals and many plants, the sexes are lodged in distinct individuals, from
+an exact mean between the two parents. And indeed, on general principles,
+this slight deviation seems as intelligible as the general similarity, if
+we reflect how complex the co-operating "bundles of forces" are, and how
+improbable it is that, in any case, their true resultant shall coincide
+with any mean between the more obvious characters of the two parents.
+Whatever be its cause, however, the co-existence of this tendency to minor
+variation with the tendency to general similarity, is of vast importance in
+its bearing on the question of the origin of species.
+
+As a general rule, the extent to which an offspring differs from its parent
+is slight enough; but, occasionally, the amount of difference is much more
+strongly marked, and then the divergent offspring receives the name of a
+Variety. Multitudes, of what there is every reason to believe are such
+varieties, are known, but the origin of very few has been accurately
+recorded, and of these we will select two as more especially illustrative
+of the main features of variation. The first of them is that of the "Ancon"
+or "Otter" sheep, of which a careful account is given by Colonel David
+Humphreys, F.R.S., in a letter to Sir Joseph Banks, published in the
+"Philosophical Transactions" for 1813. It appears that one Seth Wright, the
+proprietor of a farm on the banks of the Charles River, in Massachusetts,
+possessed a flock of fifteen ewes and a ram of the ordinary kind. In the
+year 1791, one of the ewes presented her owner with a male lamb, differing,
+for no assignable reason, from its parents by a proportionally long body
+and short bandy legs, whence it was unable to emulate its relatives in
+those sportive leaps over the neighbours' fences, in which they were in the
+habit of indulging, much to the good farmer's vexation.
+
+The second case is that detailed by a no less unexceptionable authority
+than Réaumur, in his "Art de faire éclore les Poulets." A Maltese couple,
+named Kelleia, whose hands and feet were constructed upon the ordinary
+human model, had born to them a son, Gratio, who possessed six perfectly
+movable fingers on each hand, and six toes, not quite so well formed, on
+each foot. No cause could be assigned for the appearance of this unusual
+variety of the human species.
+
+Two circumstances are well worthy of remark in both these cases. In each,
+the variety appears to have arisen in full force, and, as it were, _per
+saltum_; a wide and definite difference appearing, at once, between the
+Ancon ram and the ordinary sheep; between the six-fingered and six-toed
+Gratio Kelleia and ordinary men. In neither case is it possible to point
+out any obvious reason for the appearance of the variety. Doubtless there
+were determining causes for these as for all other phenomena; but they do
+not appear, and we can be tolerably certain that what are ordinarily
+understood as changes in physical conditions, as in climate, in food, or
+the like, did not take place and had nothing to do with the matter. It was
+no case of what is commonly called adaptation to circumstances; but, to use
+a conveniently erroneous phrase, the variations arose spontaneously. The
+fruitless search after final causes leads their pursuers a long way; but
+even those hardy teleologists, who are ready to break through all the laws
+of physics in chase of their favourite will-o'-the-wisp, may be puzzled to
+discover what purpose could be attained by the stunted legs of Seth
+Wright's ram or the hexadactyle members of Gratio Kelleia.
+
+Varieties then arise we know not why; and it is more than probable that the
+majority of varieties have arisen in this "spontaneous" manner, though we
+are, of course, far from denying that they may be traced, in some cases, to
+distinct external influences; which are assuredly competent to alter the
+character of the tegumentary covering, to change colour, to increase or
+diminish the size of muscles, to modify constitution, and, among plants, to
+give rise to the metamorphosis of stamens into petals, and so forth. But
+however they may have arisen, what especially interests us at present is,
+to remark that, once in existence, many varieties obey the fundamental law
+of reproduction that like tends to produce like; and their offspring
+exemplify it by tending to exhibit the same deviation from the parental
+stock as themselves. Indeed, there seems to be, in many instances, a
+prepotent influence about a newly-arisen variety which gives it what one
+may call an unfair advantage over the normal descendants from the same
+stock. This is strikingly exemplified by the case of Gratio Kelleia, who
+married a woman with the ordinary pentadactyle extremities, and had by her
+four children, Salvator, George, André, and Marie. Of these children
+Salvator, the eldest boy, had six fingers and six toes, like his father;
+the second and third, also boys, had five fingers and five toes, like their
+mother, though the hands and feet of George were slightly deformed. The
+last, a girl, had five fingers and five toes, but the thumbs were slightly
+deformed. The variety thus reproduced itself purely in the eldest, while
+the normal type reproduced itself purely in the third, and almost purely in
+the second and last: so that it would seem, at first, as if the normal type
+were more powerful than the variety. But all these children grew up and
+intermarried with normal wives and husband, and then, note what took place:
+Salvator had four children, three of whom exhibited the hexadactyle members
+of their grandfather and father, while the youngest had the pentadactyle
+limbs of the mother and grandmother; so that here, notwithstanding a double
+pentadactyle dilution of the blood, the hexadactyle variety had the best of
+it. The same pre-potency of the variety was still more markedly exemplified
+in the progeny of two of the other children, Marie and George. Marie (whose
+thumbs only were deformed) gave birth to a boy with six toes, and three
+other normally formed children; but George, who was not quite so pure a
+pentadactyle, begot, first, two girls, each of whom had six fingers and
+toes; then a girl with six fingers on each hand and six toes on the right
+foot, but only five toes on the left; and lastly, a boy with only five
+fingers and toes. In these instances, therefore, the variety, as it were,
+leaped over one generation to reproduce itself in full force in the next.
+Finally, the purely pentadactyle André was the father of many children, not
+one of whom departed from the normal parental type.
+
+If a variation which approaches the nature of a monstrosity can strive thus
+forcibly to reproduce itself, it is not wonderful that less aberrant
+modifications should tend to be preserved even more strongly; and the
+history of the Ancon sheep is, in this respect, particularly instructive.
+With the "'cuteness" characteristic of their nation, the neighbours of the
+Massachusetts farmer imagined it would be an excellent thing if all his
+sheep were imbued with the stay-at-home tendencies enforced by Nature upon
+the newly-arrived ram; and they advised Wright to kill the old patriarch of
+his fold, and install the Ancon ram in his place. The result justified
+their sagacious anticipations, and coincided very nearly with what occurred
+to the progeny of Gratio Kelleia. The young lambs were almost always either
+pure Ancons, or pure ordinary sheep.[Footnote: Colonel Humphreys'
+statements are exceedingly explicit on this point:--. "When an Ancon ewe is
+impregnated by a common ram, the increase resembles wholly either the ewe
+or the ram. The increase of the common ewe impregnated by an Ancon ram
+follows entirely the one or the other, without blending any of the
+distinguishing and essential peculiarities of both. Frequent instances have
+happened where common ewes have had twins by Ancon rams, when one exhibited
+the complete marks and features of the ewe, the other of the ram. The
+contrast has been rendered singularly striking, when one short-legged and
+one long-legged lamb, produced at a birth, have been seen sucking the dam
+at the same time."--_Philosophical Transactions_, 1813, Ft. I. pp. 89,
+90.] But when sufficient Ancon sheep were obtained to interbreed with one
+another, it was found that the offspring was always pure Ancon. Colonel
+Humphreys, in fact, states that he was acquainted with only "one
+questionable case of a contrary nature." Here, then, is a remarkable and
+well-established instance, not only of a very distinct race being
+established _per saltum_, but of that race breeding "true" at once,
+and showing no mixed forms, even when crossed with another breed.
+
+By taking care to select Ancons of both sexes, for breeding from, it thus
+became easy to establish an extremely well-marked race; so peculiar that,
+even when herded with other sheep, it was noted that the Ancons kept
+together. And there is every reason to believe that the existence of this
+breed might have been indefinitely protracted; but the introduction of the
+Merino sheep, which were not only very superior to the Ancons in wool and
+meat, but quite as quiet and orderly, led to the complete neglect of the
+new breed, so that, in 1813, Colonel Humphreys found it difficult to obtain
+the specimen, the skeleton of which was presented to Sir Joseph Banks. We
+believe that, for many years, no remnant of it has existed in the United
+States.
+
+Gratio Kelleia was not the progenitor of a race of six-fingered men, as
+Seth Wright's ram became a nation of Ancon sheep, though the tendency of
+the variety to perpetuate itself appears to have been fully as strong in
+the one case as in the other. And the reason of the difference is not far
+to seek. Seth Wright took care not to weaken the Ancon blood by matching
+his Ancon ewes with any but males of the same variety, while Gratio
+Kelleia's sons were too far removed from the patriarchal times to
+intermarry with their sisters; and his grand-children seem not to have been
+attracted by their six-fingered cousins. In other words, in the one example
+a race was produced, because, for several generations, care was taken to
+_select_ both parents of the breeding stock from animals exhibiting a
+tendency to vary in the same direction; while, in the other, no race was
+evolved, because no such selection was exercised. A race is a propagated
+variety; and as, by the laws of reproduction, offspring tend to assume the
+parental forms, they will be more likely to propagate a variation exhibited
+by both parents than that possessed by only one.
+
+There is no organ of the body of an animal which may not, and does not,
+occasionally, vary more or less from the normal type; and there is no
+variation which may not be transmitted and which, if selectively
+transmitted, may not become the foundation of a race. This great truth,
+sometimes forgotten by philosophers, has long been familiar to practical
+agriculturists and breeders; and upon it rest all the methods of improving
+the breeds of domestic animals, which, for the last century, have been
+followed with so much success in England. Colour, form, size, texture of
+hair or wool, proportions of various parts, strength or weakness of
+constitution, tendency to fatten or to remain lean, to give much or little
+milk, speed, strength, temper, intelligence, special instincts; there is
+not one of these characters the transmission of which is not an every-day
+occurrence within the experience of cattle-breeders, stock-farmers,
+horse-dealers, and dog and poultry fanciers. Nay, it is only the other day
+that an eminent physiologist, Dr. Brown-Séquard, communicated to the Royal
+Society his discovery that epilepsy, artificially produced in guinea-pigs,
+by a means which he has discovered, is transmitted to their offspring.
+[Footnote: Compare Weismann's _Essays Upon Heredity_, p. 310, _et
+seq_. 1893.]
+
+But a race, once produced, is no more a fixed and immutable entity than the
+stock whence it sprang; variations arise among its members, and as these
+variations are transmitted like any others, new races may be developed out
+of the pre-existing one _ad infinitum_, or, at least, within any limit
+at present determined. Given sufficient time and sufficiently careful
+selection, and the multitude of races which may arise from a common stock
+is as astonishing as are the extreme structural differences which they may
+present. A remarkable example of this is to be found in the rock-pigeon,
+which Mr. Darwin has, in our opinion, satisfactorily demonstrated to be the
+progenitor of all our domestic pigeons, of which there are certainly more
+than a hundred well-marked races. The most noteworthy of these races are,
+the four great stocks known to the "fancy" as tumblers, pouters, carriers,
+and fantails; birds which not only differ most singularly in size, colour,
+and habits, but in the form of the beak and of the skull; in the
+proportions of the beak to the skull; in the number of tail-feathers; in
+the absolute and relative size of the feet; in the presence or absence of
+the uropygial gland; in the number of vertebræ in the back; in short, in
+precisely those characters in which the genera and species of birds differ
+from one another.
+
+And it is most remarkable and instructive to observe, that none of these
+races can be shown to have been originated by the action of changes in what
+are commonly called external circumstances, upon the wild rock-pigeon. On
+the contrary, from time immemorial pigeon-fanciers have had essentially
+similar methods of treating their pets, which have been housed, fed,
+protected and cared for in much the same way in all pigeonries. In fact,
+there is no case better adapted than that of the pigeons to refute the
+doctrine which one sees put forth on high authority, that "no other
+characters than those founded on the development of bone for the attachment
+of muscles" are capable of variation. In precise contradiction of this
+hasty assertion, Mr. Darwin's researches prove that the skeleton of the
+wings in domestic pigeons has hardly varied at all from that of the wild
+type; while, on the other hand, it is in exactly those respects, such as
+the relative length of the beak and skull, the number of the vertebrae, and
+the number of the tail-feathers, in which muscular exertion can have no
+important influence, that the utmost amount of variation has taken place.
+
+We have said that the following out of the properties exhibited by
+physiological species would lead us into difficulties, and at this point
+they begin to be obvious; for if, as the result of spontaneous variation
+and of selective breeding, the progeny of a common stock may become
+separated into groups distinguished from one another by constant, not
+sexual, morphological characters, it is clear that the physiological
+definition of species is likely to clash with the morphological definition.
+No one would hesitate to describe the pouter and the tumbler as distinct
+species, if they were found fossil, or if their skins and skeletons were
+imported, as those of exotic wild birds commonly are--and without doubt, if
+considered alone, they are good and distinct morphological species. On the
+other hand, they are not physiological species, for they are descended from
+a common stock, the rock-pigeon.
+
+Under these circumstances, as it is admitted on all sides that races occur
+in Nature, how are we to know whether any apparently distinct animals are
+really of different physiological species, or not, seeing that the amount
+of morphological difference is no safe guide? Is there any test of a
+physiological species? The usual answer of physiologists is in the
+affirmative. It is said that such a test is to be found in the phænomena of
+hybridisation--in the results of crossing races, as compared with the
+results of crossing species.
+
+So far as the evidence goes at present, individuals, of what are certainly
+known to be mere races produced by selection, however distinct they may
+appear to be, not only breed freely together, but the offspring of such
+crossed races are perfectly fertile with one another. Thus, the spaniel and
+the greyhound, the dray-horse and the Arab, the pouter and the tumbler,
+breed together with perfect freedom, and their mongrels, if matched with
+other mongrels of the same kind, are equally fertile.
+
+On the other hand, there can be no doubt that the individuals of many
+natural species are either absolutely infertile if crossed with individuals
+of other species, or, if they give rise to hybrid offspring, the hybrids so
+produced are infertile when paired together. The horse and the ass, for
+instance, if so crossed, give rise to the mule, and there is no certain
+evidence of offspring ever having been produced by a male and female mule.
+The unions of the rock-pigeon and the ring-pigeon appear to be equally
+barren of result. Here, then, says the physiologist, we have a means of
+distinguishing any two true species from any two varieties. If a male and a
+female, selected from each group, produce offspring, and that offspring is
+fertile with others produced in the same way, the groups are races and not
+species. If, on the other hand, no result ensues, or if the offspring are
+infertile with others produced in the same way, they are true physiological
+species. The test would be an admirable one, if, in the first place, it
+were always practicable to apply it, and if, in the second, it always
+yielded results susceptible of a definite interpretation. Unfortunately, in
+the great majority of cases, this touchstone for species is wholly
+inapplicable.
+
+The constitution of many wild animals is so altered by confinement that
+they will not breed even with their own females, so that the negative
+results obtained from crosses are of no value; and the antipathy of wild
+animals of different species for one another, or even of wild and tame
+members of the same species, is ordinarily so great, that it is hopeless to
+look for such unions in Nature. The hermaphrodism of most plants, the
+difficulty in the way of insuring the absence of their own or the proper
+working of other pollen, are obstacles of no less magnitude in applying the
+test to them. And, in both animals and plants, is super-added the further
+difficulty, that experiments must be continued over a long time for the
+purpose of ascertaining the fertility of the mongrel or hybrid progeny, as
+well as of the first crosses from which they spring.
+
+Not only do these great practical difficulties lie in the way of applying
+the hybridisation test, but even when this oracle can be questioned, its
+replies are sometimes as doubtful as those of Delphi. For example, cases
+are cited by Mr. Darwin, of plants which are more fertile with the pollen
+of another species than with their own; and there are others, such as
+certain _Fuci,_ the male element of which will fertilise the ovule of
+a plant of distinct species, while the males of the latter species are
+ineffective with the females of the first. So that, in the last-named
+instance, a physiologist, who should cross the two species in one way,
+would decide that they were true species; while another, who should cross
+them in the reverse way, would, with equal justice, according to the rule,
+pronounce them to be mere races. Several plants, which there is great
+reason to believe are mere varieties, are almost sterile when crossed;
+while both animals and plants, which have always been regarded by
+naturalists as of distinct species, turn out, when the test is applied, to
+be perfectly fertile. Again, the sterility or fertility of crosses seems to
+bear no relation to the structural resemblances or differences of the
+members of any two groups.
+
+Mr. Darwin has discussed this question with singular ability and
+circumspection, and his conclusions are summed up as follows, at page 276
+of his work:--
+
+"First crosses between forms sufficiently distinct to be ranked as species,
+and their hybrids, are very generally, but not universally, sterile. The
+sterility is of all degrees, and is often so slight that the two most
+careful experimentalists who have ever lived have come to diametrically
+opposite conclusions in ranking forms by this test. The sterility is
+innately variable in individuals of the same species, and is eminently
+susceptible of favourable and unfavourable conditions. The degree of
+sterility does not strictly follow systematic affinity, but is governed by
+several curious and complex laws. It is generally different and sometimes
+widely different, in reciprocal crosses between the same two species. It is
+not always equal in degree in a first cross, and in the hybrid produced
+from this cross.
+
+"In the same manner as in grafting trees, the capacity of one species or
+variety to take on another is incidental on generally unknown differences
+in their vegetative systems; so in crossing, the greater or less facility
+of one species to unite with another is incidental on unknown differences
+in their reproductive systems. There is no more reason to think that
+species have been specially endowed with various degrees of sterility to
+prevent them crossing and breeding in Nature, than to think that trees have
+been specially endowed with various and somewhat analogous degrees of
+difficulty in being grafted together, in order to prevent them becoming
+inarched in our forests.
+
+"The sterility of first crosses between pure species, which have their
+reproductive systems perfect, seems to depend on several circumstances; in
+some cases largely on the early death of the embryo. The sterility of
+hybrids which have their reproductive systems imperfect, and which have had
+this system and their whole organisation disturbed by being compounded of
+two distinct species, seems closely allied to that sterility which so
+frequently affects pure species when their natural conditions of life have
+been disturbed. This view is supported by a parallelism of another kind:
+namely, that the crossing of forms, only slightly different, is favourable
+to the vigour and fertility of the offspring; and that slight changes in
+the conditions of life are apparently favourable to the vigour and
+fertility of all organic beings. It is not surprising that the degree of
+difficulty in uniting two species, and the degree of sterility of their
+hybrid offspring, should generally correspond, though due to distinct
+causes; for both depend on the amount of difference of some kind between
+the species which are crossed. Nor is it surprising that the facility of
+effecting a first cross, the fertility of hybrids produced from it, and the
+capacity of being grafted together--though this latter capacity evidently
+depends on widely different circumstances--should all run to a certain
+extent parallel with the systematic affinity of the forms which are
+subjected to experiment; for systematic affinity attempts to express all
+kinds of resemblance between all species.
+
+"First crosses between forms known to be varieties, or sufficiently alike
+to be considered as varieties, and their mongrel offspring, are very
+generally, but not quite universally, fertile. Nor is this nearly general
+and perfect fertility surprising, when we remember how liable we are to
+argue in a circle with respect to varieties in a state of Nature; and when
+we remember that the greater number of varieties have been produced under
+domestication by the selection of mere external differences, and not of
+differences in the reproductive system. In all other respects, excluding
+fertility, there is a close general resemblance between hybrids and
+mongrels."--Pp. 276-8.
+
+We fully agree with the general tenor of this weighty passage; but forcible
+as are these arguments, and little as the value of fertility or infertility
+as a test of species may be, it must not be forgotten that the really
+important fact, so far as the inquiry into the origin of species goes, is,
+that there are such things in Nature as groups of animals and of plants,
+the members of which are incapable of fertile union with those of other
+groups; and that there are such things as hybrids, which are absolutely
+sterile when crossed with other hybrids. For, if such phænomena as these
+were exhibited by only two of those assemblages of living objects, to which
+the name of species (whether it be used in its physiological or in its
+morphological sense) is given, it would have to be accounted for by any
+theory of the origin of species, and every theory which could not account
+for it would be, so far, imperfect.
+
+Up to this point, we have been dealing with matters of fact, and the
+statements which we have laid before the reader would, to the best of our
+knowledge, be admitted to contain a fair exposition of what is at present
+known respecting the essential properties of species, by all who have
+studied the question. And whatever may be his theoretical views, no
+naturalist will probably be disposed to demur to the following summary of
+that exposition:--
+
+Living beings, whether animals or plants, are divisible into multitudes of
+distinctly definable kinds, which are morphological species. They are also
+divisible into groups of individuals, which breed freely together, tending
+to reproduce their like, and are physiological species. Normally resembling
+their parents, the offspring of members of these species are still liable
+to vary; and the variation may be perpetuated by selection, as a race,
+which race, in many cases, presents all the characteristics of a
+morphological species. But it is not as yet proved that a race ever
+exhibits, when crossed with another race of the same species, those
+phænomena of hybridisation which are exhibited by many species when crossed
+with other species. On the other hand, not only is it not proved that all
+species give rise to hybrids infertile _inter se_, but there is much
+reason to believe that, in crossing, species exhibit every gradation from
+perfect sterility to perfect fertility.
+
+Such are the most essential characteristics of species. Even were man not
+one of them--a member of the same system and subject to the same laws--the
+question of their origin, their causal connexion, that is, with the other
+phænomena of the universe, must have attracted his attention, as soon as
+his intelligence had raised itself above the level of his daily wants.
+
+Indeed history relates that such was the case, and has embalmed for us the
+speculations upon the origin of living beings, which were among the
+earliest products of the dawning intellectual activity of man. In those
+early days positive knowledge was not to be had, but the craving after it
+needed, at all hazards, to be satisfied, and according to the country, or
+the turn of thought, of the speculator, the suggestion that all living
+things arose from the mud of the Nile, from a primeval egg, or from some
+more anthropomorphic agency, afforded a sufficient resting-place for his
+curiosity. The myths of Paganism are as dead as Osiris or Zeus, and the man
+who should revive them, in opposition to the knowledge of our time, would
+be justly laughed to scorn; but the coeval imaginations current among the
+rude inhabitants of Palestine, recorded by writers whose very name and age
+are admitted by every scholar to be unknown, have unfortunately not yet
+shared their fate, but, even at this day, are regarded by nine-tenths of
+the civilised world as the authoritative standard of fact and the criterion
+of the justice of scientific conclusions, in all that relates to the origin
+of things, and, among them, of species. In this nineteenth century, as at
+the dawn of modern physical science, the cosmogony of the semi-barbarous
+Hebrew is the incubus of the philosopher and the opprobrium of the
+orthodox. Who shall number the patient and earnest seekers after truth,
+from the days of Galileo until now, whose lives have been embittered and
+their good name blasted by the mistaken zeal of Bibliolaters? Who shall
+count the host of weaker men whose sense of truth has been destroyed in the
+effort to harmonise impossibilities--whose life has been wasted in the
+attempt to force the generous new wine of Science into the old bottles of
+Judaism, compelled by the outcry of the same strong party?
+
+It is true that if philosophers have suffered, their cause has been amply
+avenged. Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science as
+the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules; and history records that
+whenever science and orthodoxy have been fairly opposed, the latter has
+been forced to retire from the lists, bleeding and crushed if not
+annihilated; scotched, if not slain. But orthodoxy is the Bourbon of the
+world of thought. It learns not, neither can it forget; and though, at
+present, bewildered and afraid to move, it is as willing as ever to insist
+that the first chapter of Genesis contains the beginning and the end of
+sound science; and to visit, with such petty thunderbolts as its
+half-paralysed hands can hurl, those who refuse to degrade Nature to the
+level of primitive Judaism.
+
+Philosophers, on the other hand, have no such aggressive tendencies. With
+eyes fixed on the noble goal to which "per aspera et ardua" they tend, they
+may, now and then, be stirred to momentary wrath by the unnecessary
+obstacles with which the ignorant, or the malicious, encumber, if they
+cannot bar, the difficult path; but why should their souls be deeply vexed?
+The majesty of Fact is on their side, and the elemental forces of Nature
+are working for them. Not a star comes to the meridian at its calculated
+time but testifies to the justice of their methods--their beliefs are "one
+with the falling rain and with the growing corn." By doubt they are
+established, and open inquiry is their bosom friend. Such men have no fear
+of traditions however venerable, and no respect for them when they become
+mischievous and obstructive; but they have better than mere antiquarian
+business in hand, and if dogmas, which ought to be fossil but are not, are
+not forced upon their notice, they are too happy to treat them as
+non-existent.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The hypotheses respecting the origin of species which profess to stand upon
+a scientific basis, and, as such, alone demand serious attention, are of
+two kinds. The one, the "special creation" hypothesis, presumes every
+species to have originated from one or more stocks, these not being the
+result of the modification of any other form of living matter--or arising
+by natural agencies--but being produced, as such, by a supernatural
+creative act.
+
+The other, the so-called "transmutation" hypothesis, considers that all
+existing species are the result of the modification of pre-existing
+species, and those of their predecessors, by agencies similar to those
+which at the present day produce varieties and races, and therefore in an
+altogether natural way; and it is a probable, though not a necessary
+consequence of this hypothesis, that all living beings have arisen from a
+single stock. With respect to the origin of this primitive stock, or
+stocks, the doctrine of the origin of species is obviously not necessarily
+concerned. The transmutation hypothesis, for example, is perfectly
+consistent either with the conception of a special creation of the
+primitive germ, or with the supposition of its having arisen, as a
+modification of inorganic matter, by natural causes.
+
+The doctrine of special creation owes its existence very largely to the
+supposed necessity of making science accord with the Hebrew cosmogony; but
+it is curious to observe that, as the doctrine is at present maintained by
+men of science, it is as hopelessly inconsistent with the Hebrew view as
+any other hypothesis.
+
+If there be any result which has come more clearly out of geological
+investigation than another, it is, that the vast series of extinct animals
+and plants is not divisible, as it was once supposed to be, into distinct
+groups, separated by sharply-marked boundaries. There are no great gulfs
+between epochs and formations--no successive periods marked by the
+appearance of plants, of water animals, and of land animals, _en
+masse_. Every year adds to the list of links between what the older
+geologists supposed to be widely separated epochs: witness the crags
+linking the drift with older tertiaries; the Maestricht beds linking the
+tertiaries with the chalk; the St. Cassian beds exhibiting an abundant
+fauna of mixed mesozoic and palaeozoic types, in rocks of an epoch once
+supposed to be eminently poor in life; witness, lastly, the incessant
+disputes as to whether a given stratum shall be reckoned devonian or
+carboniferous, silurian or devonian, cambrian or silurian.
+
+This truth is further illustrated in a most interesting manner by the
+impartial and highly competent testimony of M. Pictet, from whose
+calculations of what percentage of the genera of animals, existing in any
+formation, lived during the preceding formation, it results that in no case
+is the proportion less than _one-third_, or 33 per cent. It is the
+triassic formation, or the commencement of the mesozoic epoch, which has
+received the smallest inheritance from preceding ages. The other formations
+not uncommonly exhibit 60, 80, or even 94 per cent, of genera in common
+with those whose remains are imbedded in their predecessor. Not only is
+this true, but the subdivisions of each formation exhibit new species
+characteristic of, and found only in, them; and, in many cases, as in the
+lias for example, the separate beds of these subdivisions are distinguished
+by well-marked and peculiar forms of life. A section, a hundred feet thick,
+will exhibit, at different heights, a dozen species of ammonite, none of
+which passes beyond its particular zone of limestone, or clay, into the
+zone below it or into that above it; so that those who adopt the doctrine
+of special creation must be prepared to admit, that at intervals of time,
+corresponding with the thickness of these beds, the Creator thought fit to
+interfere with the natural course of events for the purpose of making a new
+ammonite. It is not easy to transplant oneself into the frame of mind of
+those who can accept such a conclusion as this, on any evidence short of
+absolute demonstration; and it is difficult to see what is to be gained by
+so doing, since, as we have said, it is obvious that such a view of the
+origin of living beings is utterly opposed to the Hebrew cosmogony.
+Deserving no aid from the powerful arm of Bibliolatry, then, does the
+received form of the hypothesis of special creation derive any support from
+science or sound logic? Assuredly not much. The arguments brought forward
+in its favour all take one form: If species were not supernaturally
+created, we cannot understand the facts _x_, or _y_, or _z_;
+we cannot understand the structure of animals or plants, unless we suppose
+they were contrived for special ends; we cannot understand the structure of
+the eye, except by supposing it to have been made to see with; we cannot
+understand instincts, unless we suppose animals to have been miraculously
+endowed with them.
+
+As a question of dialectics, it must be admitted that this sort of
+reasoning is not very formidable to those who are not to be frightened by
+consequences. It is an _argumentum ad ignorantiam_--take this
+explanation or be ignorant. But suppose we prefer to admit our ignorance
+rather than adopt a hypothesis at variance with all the teachings of
+Nature? Or, suppose for a moment we admit the explanation, and then
+seriously ask ourselves how much the wiser are we; what does the
+explanation explain? Is it any more than a grandiloquent way of announcing
+the fact, that we really know nothing about the matter? A phenomenon is
+explained when it is shown to be a case of some general law of Nature; but
+the supernatural interposition of the Creator can, by the nature of the
+case, exemplify no law, and if species have really arisen in this way, it
+is absurd to attempt to discuss their origin.
+
+Or, lastly, let us ask ourselves whether any amount of evidence which the
+nature of our faculties permits us to attain, can justify us in asserting
+that any phenomenon is out of the reach of natural causation. To this end
+it is obviously necessary that we should know all the consequences to which
+all possible combinations, continued through unlimited time, can give rise.
+If we knew these, and found none competent to originate species, we should
+have good ground for denying their origin by natural causation. Till we
+know them, any hypothesis is better than one which involves us in such
+miserable presumption.
+
+But the hypothesis of special creation is not only a mere specious mask for
+our ignorance; its existence in Biology marks the youth and imperfection of
+the science. For what is the history of every science but the history of
+the elimination of the notion of creative, or other interferences, with the
+natural order of the phænomena which are the subject-matter of that
+science? When Astronomy was young "the morning stars sang together for
+joy," and the planets were guided in their courses by celestial hands. Now,
+the harmony of the stars has resolved itself into gravitation according to
+the inverse squares of the distances, and the orbits of the planets are
+deducible from the laws of the forces which allow a schoolboy's stone to
+break a window. The lightning was the angel of the Lord; but it has pleased
+Providence, in these modern times, that science should make it the humble
+messenger of man, and we know that every flash that shimmers about the
+horizon on a summer's evening is determined by ascertainable conditions,
+and that its direction and brightness might, if our knowledge of these were
+great enough, have been calculated.
+
+The solvency of great mercantile companies rests on the validity of the
+laws which have been ascertained to govern the seeming irregularity of that
+human life which the moralist bewails as the most uncertain of things;
+plague, pestilence, and famine are admitted, by all but fools, to be the
+natural result of causes for the most part fully within human control, and
+not the unavoidable tortures inflicted by wrathful Omnipotence upon His
+helpless handiwork.
+
+Harmonious order governing eternally continuous progress--the web and woof
+of matter and force interweaving by slow degrees, without a broken thread,
+that veil which lies between us and the Infinite--that universe which alone
+we know or can know; such is the picture which science draws of the world,
+and in proportion as any part of that picture is in unison with the rest,
+so may we feel sure that it is rightly painted. Shall Biology alone remain
+out of harmony with her sister sciences?
+
+Such arguments against the hypothesis of the direct creation of species as
+these are plainly enough deducible from general considerations; but there
+are, in addition, phenomena exhibited by species themselves, and yet not so
+much a part of their very essence as to have required earlier mention,
+which are in the highest degree perplexing, if we adopt the popularly
+accepted hypothesis. Such are the facts of distribution in space and in
+time; the singular phenomena brought to light by the study of development;
+the structural relations of species upon which our systems of
+classification are founded; the great doctrines of philosophical anatomy,
+such as that of homology, or of the community of structural plan exhibited
+by large groups of species differing very widely in their habits and
+functions.
+
+The species of animals which inhabit the sea on opposite sides of the
+isthmus of Panama are wholly distinct;[Footnote: Recent investigations tend
+to show that this statement is not strictly accurate.--1870.] the animals
+and plants which inhabit islands are commonly distinct from those of the
+neighbouring mainlands, and yet have a similarity of aspect. The mammals of
+the latest tertiary epoch in the Old and New Worlds belong to the same
+genera, or family groups, as those which now inhabit the same great
+geographical area. The crocodilian reptiles which existed in the earliest
+secondary epoch were similar in general structure to those now living, but
+exhibit slight differences in their vertebræ, nasal passages, and one or
+two other points. The guinea-pig has teeth which are shed before it is
+born, and hence can never subserve the masticatory purpose for which they
+seem contrived, and, in like manner, the female dugong has tusks which
+never cut the gum. All the members of the same great group run through
+similar conditions in their development, and all their parts, in the adult
+state, are arranged according to the same plan. Man is more like a gorilla
+than a gorilla is like a lemur. Such are a few, taken at random, among the
+multitudes of similar facts which modern research has established; but when
+the student seeks for an explanation of them from the supporters of the
+received hypothesis of the origin of species, the reply he receives is, in
+substance, of Oriental simplicity and brevity--"Mashallah! it so pleases
+God!" There are different species on opposite sides of the isthmus of
+Panama, because they were created different on the two sides. The pliocene
+mammals are like the existing ones, because such was the plan of creation;
+and we find rudimental organs and similarity of plan, because it has
+pleased the Creator to set before Himself a "divine exemplar or archetype,"
+and to copy it in His works; and somewhat ill, those who hold this view
+imply, in some of them. That such verbal hocus-pocus should be received as
+science will one day be regarded as evidence of the low state of
+intelligence in the nineteenth century, just as we amuse ourselves with the
+phraseology about Nature's abhorrence of a vacuum, wherewith Torricellis
+compatriots were satisfied to explain the rise of water in a pump. And be
+it recollected that this sort of satisfaction works not only negative but
+positive ill, by discouraging inquiry, and so depriving man of the usufruct
+of one of the most fertile fields of his great patrimony, Nature.
+
+The objections to the doctrine of the origin of species by special creation
+which have been detailed, must have occurred, with more or less force, to
+the mind of every one who has seriously and independently considered the
+subject. It is therefore no wonder that, from time to time, this hypothesis
+should have been met by counter hypotheses, all as well, and some better
+founded than itself; and it is curious to remark that the inventors of the
+opposing views seem to have been led into them as much by their knowledge
+of geology, as by their acquaintance with biology. In fact, when the mind
+has once admitted the conception of the gradual production of the present
+physical state of our globe, by natural causes operating through long ages
+of time, it will be little disposed to allow that living beings have made
+their appearance in another way, and the speculations of De Maillet and his
+successors are the natural complement of Scilla's demonstration of the true
+nature of fossils.
+
+A contemporary of Newton and of Leibnitz, sharing therefore in the
+intellectual activity of the remarkable age which witnessed the birth of
+modern physical science, Benoît de Maillet spent a long life as a consular
+agent of the French Government in various Mediterranean ports. For sixteen
+years, in fact, he held the office of Consul-General in Egypt, and the
+wonderful phenomena offered by the valley of the Nile appear to have
+strongly impressed his mind, to have directed his attention to all facts of
+a similar order which came within his observation, and to have led him to
+speculate on the origin of the present condition of our globe and of its
+inhabitants. But, with all his ardour for science, De Maillet seems to have
+hesitated to publish views which, notwithstanding the ingenious attempts to
+reconcile them with the Hebrew hypothesis contained in the preface to
+"Telliamed," were hardly likely to be received with favour by his
+contemporaries.
+
+But a short time had elapsed since more than one of the great anatomists
+and physicists of the Italian school had paid dearly for their endeavours
+to dissipate some of the prevalent errors; and their illustrious pupil,
+Harvey, the founder of modern physiology, had not fared so well, in a
+country less oppressed by the benumbing influences of theology, as to tempt
+any man to follow his example. Probably not uninfluenced by these
+considerations, his Catholic majesty's Consul-General for Egypt kept his
+theories to himself throughout a long life, for "Telliamed," the only
+scientific work which is known to have proceeded from his pen, was not
+printed till 1735, when its author had reached the ripe age of
+seventy-nine; and though De Maillet lived three years longer, his book was
+not given to the world before 1748. Even then it was anonymous to those who
+were not in the secret of the anagrammatic character of its title; and the
+preface and dedication are so worded as, in case of necessity, to give the
+printer a fair chance of falling back on the excuse that the work was
+intended for a mere _jeu d'esprit_.
+
+The speculations of the suppositious Indian sage, though quite as sound as
+those of many a "Mosaic Geology," which sells exceedingly well, have no
+great value if we consider them by the light of modern science. The waters
+are supposed to have originally covered the whole globe; to have deposited
+the rocky masses which compose its mountains by processes comparable to
+those which are now forming mud, sand, and shingle; and then to have
+gradually lowered their level, leaving the spoils of their animal and
+vegetable inhabitants embedded in the strata. As the dry land appeared,
+certain of the aquatic animals are supposed to have taken to it, and to
+have become gradually adapted to terrestrial and aërial modes of existence.
+But if we regard the general tenor and style of the reasoning in relation
+to the state of knowledge of the day, two circumstances appear very well
+worthy of remark. The first, that De Maillet had a notion of the
+modifiability of living forms (though without any precise information on
+the subject), and how such modifiability might account for the origin of
+species; the second, that he very clearly apprehended the great modern
+geological doctrine, so strongly insisted upon by Hutton, and so ably and
+comprehensively expounded by Lyell, that we must look to existing causes
+for the explanation of past geological events. Indeed, the following
+passage of the preface, in which De Maillet is supposed to speak of the
+Indian philosopher Telliamed, his _alter ego,_ might have been written
+by the most philosophical uniformitarian of the present day:--
+
+"Ce qu'il y a d'étonnant, est que pour arriver à ces connaissances il
+semble avoir perverti l'ordre naturel, puisqu'au lieu de s'attacher d'abord
+à rechercher l'origine de notre globe il a commence par travailler à
+s'instruire de la nature. Mais à l'entendre, ce renversement de l'ordre a
+été pour lui l'effet d'un génie favorable qui l'a conduit pas à pas et
+comme par la main aux découvertes les plus sublimes. C'est en décomposant
+la substance de ce globe par tine anatomie exacte de toutes ses parties
+qu'il a premierement appris de quelles matières il était composé et quels
+arrangemens ces mêmes matières observaient entre elles. Ces lumieres
+jointes à l'esprit de comparaison toujours nécessaire à quiconque
+entreprend de percer les voiles dont la nature aime à se cacher, ont servi
+de guide à notre philosophe pour parvenir à des connoissances plus
+intéressantes. Par la matière et l'arrangement de ces compositions il
+prétend avoir reconnu quelle est la véritable origine de ce globe que nous
+habitons, comment et par qui il a été formé."-Pp. xix. xx.
+
+But De Maillet was before his age, and as could hardly fail to happen to
+one who speculated on a zoological and botanical question before Linnæus,
+and on a physiological problem before Haller, he fell into great errors
+here and there; and hence, perhaps, the general neglect of his work.
+Robinet's speculations are rather behind, than in advance of, those of De
+Maillet; and though Linnæus may have played with the hypothesis of
+transmutation, it obtained no serious support until Lamarck adopted it, and
+advocated it with great ability in his "Philosophie Zoologique."
+
+Impelled towards the hypothesis of the transmutation of species, partly by
+his general cosmological and geological views; partly by the conception of
+a graduated, though irregularly branching, scale of being, which had arisen
+out of his profound study of plants and of the lower forms of animal life,
+Lamarck, whose general line of thought often closely resembles that of De
+Maillet, made a great advance upon the crude and merely speculative manner
+in which that writer deals with the question of the origin of living
+beings, by endeavouring to find physical causes competent to effect that
+change of one species into another, which De Maillet had only supposed to
+occur. And Lamarck conceived that he had found in Nature such causes, amply
+sufficient for the purpose in view. It is a physiological fact, he says,
+that organs are increased in size by action, atrophied by inaction; it is
+another physiological fact that modifications produced are transmissible to
+offspring. Change the actions of an animal, therefore, and you will change
+its structure, by increasing the development of the parts newly brought
+into use and by the diminution of those less used; but by altering the
+circumstances which surround it you will alter its actions, and hence, in
+the long run, change of circumstance must produce change of organisation.
+All the species of animals, therefore, are, in Lamarck's view, the result
+of the indirect action of changes of circumstance, upon those primitive
+germs which he considered to have originally arisen, by spontaneous
+generation, within the waters of the globe. It is curious, however, that
+Lamarck should insist so strongly [Footnote: See _Phil. Zoologique_,
+vol. i. p. 222. et seq.] as he has done, that circumstances never in any
+degree directly modify the form or the organisation of animals, but only
+operate by changing their wants and consequently their actions; for he
+thereby brings upon himself the obvious question, How, then, do plants,
+which cannot be said to have wants or actions, become modified? To this he
+replies, that they are modified by the changes in their nutritive
+processes, which are effected by changing circumstances; and it does not
+seem to have occurred to him that such changes might be as well supposed to
+take place among animals.
+
+When we have said that Lamarck felt that mere speculation was not the way
+to arrive at the origin of species, but that it was necessary, in order to
+the establishment of any sound theory on the subject, to discover by
+observation or otherwise, some _vera causa_, competent to give rise to
+them; that he affirmed the true order of classification to coincide with
+the order of their development one from another; that he insisted on the
+necessity of allowing sufficient time, very strongly; and that all the
+varieties of instinct and reason were traced back by him to the same cause
+as that which has given rise to species, we have enumerated his chief
+contributions to the advance of the question. On the other hand, from his
+ignorance of any power in Nature competent to modify the structure of
+animals, except the development of parts, or atrophy of them, in
+consequence of a change of needs, Lamarck was led to attach infinitely
+greater weight than it deserves to this agency, and the absurdities into
+which he was led have met with deserved condemnation. Of the struggle for
+existence, on which, as we shall see, Mr. Darwin lays such great stress, he
+had no conception; indeed, he doubts whether there really are such things
+as extinct species, unless they be such large animals as may have met their
+death at the hands of man; and so little does he dream of there being any
+other destructive causes at work, that, in discussing the possible
+existence of fossil shells, he asks, "Pourquoi d'ailleurs seroient-ils
+perdues dès que l'homme n'a pu opérer leur destruction?" ("Phil. Zool.,"
+vol. i. p. 77.) Of the influence of selection Lamarck has as little notion,
+and he makes no use of the wonderful phenomena which are exhibited by
+domesticated animals, and illustrate its powers. The vast influence of
+Cuvier was employed against the Lamarckian views, and, as the untenability
+of some of his conclusions was easily shown, his doctrines sank under the
+opprobrium of scientific, as well as of theological, heterodoxy. Nor have
+the efforts made of late years to revive them tended to re-establish their
+credit in the minds of sound thinkers acquainted with the facts of the
+case; indeed it may be doubted whether Lamarck has not suffered more from
+his friends than from his foes.
+
+Two years ago, in fact, though we venture to question if even the strongest
+supporters of the special creation hypothesis had not, now and then, an
+uneasy consciousness that all was not right, their position seemed more
+impregnable than ever, if not by its own inherent strength, at any rate by
+the obvious failure of all the attempts which had been made to carry it. On
+the other hand, however much the few, who thought deeply on the question of
+species, might be repelled by the generally received dogmas, they saw no
+way of escaping from them save by the adoption of suppositions so little
+justified by experiment or by observation as to be at least equally
+distasteful.
+
+The choice lay between two absurdities and a middle condition of uneasy
+scepticism; which last, however unpleasant and unsatisfactory, was
+obviously the only justifiable state of mind under the circumstances.
+
+Such being the general ferment in the minds of naturalists, it is no wonder
+that they mustered strong in the rooms of the Linnæan Society, on the 1st
+of July of the year 1858, to hear two papers by authors living on opposite
+sides of the globe, working out their results independently, and yet
+professing to have discovered one and the same solution of all the problems
+connected with species. The one of these authors was an able naturalist,
+Mr. Wallace, who had been employed for some years in studying the
+productions of the islands of the Indian Archipelago, and who had forwarded
+a memoir embodying his views to Mr. Darwin, for communication to the
+Linnæan Society. On perusing the essay, Mr. Darwin was not a little
+surprised to find that it embodied some of the leading ideas of a great
+work which he had been preparing for twenty years, and parts of which,
+containing a development of the very same views, had been perused by his
+private friends fifteen or sixteen years before. Perplexed in what manner
+to do full justice both to his friend and to himself, Mr. Darwin placed the
+matter in the hands of Dr. Hooker and Sir Charles Lyell, by whose advice he
+communicated a brief abstract of his own views to the Linnæan Society, at
+the same time that Mr. Wallace's paper was read. Of that abstract, the work
+on the "Origin of Species" is an enlargement; but a complete statement of
+Mr. Darwin's doctrine is looked for in the large and well-illustrated work
+which he is said to be preparing for publication.
+
+The Darwinian hypothesis has the merit of being eminently simple and
+comprehensible in principle, and its essential positions may be stated in a
+very few words: all species have been produced by the development of
+varieties from common stocks; by the conversion of these, first into
+permanent races and then into new species, by the process of _natural
+selection_, which process is essentially identical with that artificial
+selection by which man has originated the races of domestic animals--the
+_struggle for existence_ taking the place of man, and exerting, in the
+case of natural selection, that selective action which he performs in
+artificial selection.
+
+The evidence brought forward by Mr. Darwin in support of his hypothesis is
+of three kinds. First, he endeavours to prove that species may be
+originated by selection; secondly, he attempts to show that natural causes
+are competent to exert selection; and thirdly, he tries to prove that the
+most remarkable and apparently anomalous phænomena exhibited by the
+distribution, development, and mutual relations of species, can be shown to
+be deducible from the general doctrine of their origin, which he propounds,
+combined with the known facts of geological change; and that, even if all
+these phænomena are not at present explicable by it, none are necessarily
+inconsistent with it.
+
+There cannot be a doubt that the method of inquiry which Mr. Darwin has
+adopted is not only rigorously in accordance with the canons of scientific
+logic, but that it is the only adequate method. Critics exclusively trained
+in classics or in mathematics, who have never determined a scientific fact
+in their lives by induction from experiment or observation, prate learnedly
+about Mr. Darwin's method, which is not inductive enough, not Baconian
+enough, forsooth, for them. But even if practical acquaintance with the
+process of scientific investigation is denied them, they may learn, by the
+perusal of Mr. Mill's admirable chapter "On the Deductive Method," that
+there are multitudes of scientific inquiries in which the method of pure
+induction helps the investigator but a very little way.
+
+"The mode of investigation," says Mr. Mill, "which, from the proved
+inapplicability of direct methods of observation and experiment, remains to
+us as the main source of the knowledge we possess, or can acquire,
+respecting the conditions and laws of recurrence of the more complex
+phænomena, is called, in its most general expression, the deductive method,
+and consists of three operations: the first, one of direct induction; the
+second, of ratiocination; and the third, of verification."
+
+Now, the conditions which have determined the existence of species are not
+only exceedingly complex, but, so far as the great majority of them are
+concerned, are necessarily beyond our cognisance. But what Mr. Darwin has
+attempted to do is in exact accordance with the rule laid down by Mr. Mill;
+he has endeavoured to determine certain great facts inductively, by
+observation and experiment; he has then reasoned from the data thus
+furnished; and lastly, he has tested the validity of his ratiocination by
+comparing his deductions with the observed facts of Nature. Inductively,
+Mr. Darwin endeavours to prove that species arise in a given way.
+Deductively, he desires to show that, if they arise in that way, the facts
+of distribution, development, classification, &c., may be accounted for,
+_i.e._ may be deduced from their mode of origin, combined with
+admitted changes in physical geography and climate, during an indefinite
+period. And this explanation, or coincidence of observed with deduced
+facts, is, so far as it extends, a verification of the Darwinian view.
+
+There is no fault to be found with Mr. Darwin's method, then; but it is
+another question whether he has fulfilled all the conditions imposed by
+that method. Is it satisfactorily proved, in fact, that species may be
+originated by selection? that there is such a thing as natural selection?
+that none of the phænomena exhibited by species are inconsistent with the
+origin of species in this way? If these questions can be answered in the
+affirmative, Mr. Darwin's view steps out of the rank of hypotheses into
+those of proved theories; but, so long as the evidence at present adduced
+falls short of enforcing that affirmation, so long, to our minds, must the
+new doctrine be content to remain among the former--an extremely valuable,
+and in the highest degree probable, doctrine, indeed the only extant
+hypothesis which is worth anything in a scientific point of view; but still
+a hypothesis, and not yet the theory of species.
+
+After much consideration, and with assuredly no bias against Mr. Darwin's
+views, it is our clear conviction that, as the evidence stands, it is not
+absolutely proven that a group of animals, having all the characters
+exhibited by species in Nature, has ever been originated by selection,
+whether artificial or natural. Groups having the morphological character of
+species--distinct and permanent races in fact--have been so produced over
+and over again; but there is no positive evidence, at present, that any
+group of animals has, by variation and selective breeding, given rise to
+another group which was, even in the least degree, infertile with the
+first. Mr. Darwin is perfectly aware of this weak point, and brings forward
+a multitude of ingenious and important arguments to diminish the force of
+the objection. We admit the value of these arguments to their fullest
+extent; nay, we will go so far as to express our belief that experiments,
+conducted by a skilful physiologist, would very probably obtain the desired
+production of mutually more or less infertile breeds from a common stock,
+in a comparatively few years; but still, as the case stands at present,
+this "little rift within the lute" is not to be disguised nor overlooked.
+
+In the remainder of Mr. Darwin's argument our own private ingenuity has not
+hitherto enabled us to pick holes of any great importance; and judging by
+what we hear and read, other adventurers in the same field do not seem to
+have been much more fortunate. It has been urged, for instance, that in his
+chapters on the struggle for existence and on natural selection, Mr. Darwin
+does not so much prove that natural selection does occur, as that it must
+occur; but, in fact, no other sort of demonstration is attainable. A race
+does not attract our attention in Nature until it has, in all probability,
+existed for a considerable time, and then it is too late to inquire into
+the conditions of its origin. Again, it is said that there is no real
+analogy between the selection which takes place under domestication, by
+human influence, and any operation which can be effected by Nature, for man
+interferes intelligently. Reduced to its elements, this argument implies
+that an effect produced with trouble by an intelligent agent must, _à
+fortiori,_ be more troublesome, if not impossible, to an unintelligent
+agent. Even putting aside the question whether Nature, acting as she does
+according to definite and invariable laws, can be rightly called an
+unintelligent agent, such a position as this is wholly untenable. Mix salt
+and sand, and it shall puzzle the wisest of men, with his mere natural
+appliances, to separate all the grains of sand from all the grains of salt;
+but a shower of rain will effect the same object in ten minutes. And so,
+while man may find it tax all his intelligence to separate any variety
+which arises, and to breed selectively from it, the destructive agencies
+incessantly at work in Nature, if they find one variety to be more soluble
+in circumstances than the other, will inevitably, in the long run,
+eliminate it.
+
+A frequent and a just objection to the Lamarckian hypothesis of the
+transmutation of species is based upon the absence of transitional forms
+between many species. But against the Darwinian hypothesis this argument
+has no force. Indeed, one of the most valuable and suggestive parts of Mr.
+Darwin's work is that in which he proves, that the frequent absence of
+transitions is a necessary consequence of his doctrine, and that the stock
+whence two or more species have sprung, need in no respect be intermediate
+between these species. If any two species have arisen from a common stock
+in the same way as the carrier and the pouter, say, have arisen from the
+rock-pigeon, then the common stock of these two species need be no more
+intermediate between the two than the rock-pigeon is between the carrier
+and pouter. Clearly appreciate the force of this analogy, and all the
+arguments against the origin of species by selection, based on the absence
+of transitional forms, fall to the ground. And Mr. Darwin's position might,
+we think, have been even stronger than it is if he had not embarrassed
+himself with the aphorism, "_Natura non facit saltum_," which turns up
+so often in his pages. We believe, as we have said above, that Nature does
+make jumps now and then, and a recognition of the fact is of no small
+importance in disposing of many minor objections to the doctrine of
+transmutation.
+
+But we must pause. The discussion of Mr. Darwin's arguments in detail would
+lead us far beyond the limits within which we proposed, at starting, to
+confine this article. Our object has been attained if we have given an
+intelligible, however brief, account of the established facts connected
+with species, and of the relation of the explanation of those facts offered
+by Mr. Darwin to the theoretical views held by his predecessors and his
+contemporaries, and, above all, to the requirements of scientific logic. We
+have ventured to point out that it does not, as yet, satisfy all those
+requirements; but we do not hesitate to assert that it is as superior to
+any preceding or contemporary hypothesis, in the extent of observational
+and experimental basis on which it rests, in its rigorously scientific
+method, and in its power of explaining biological phenomena, as was the
+hypothesis of Copernicus to the speculations of Ptolemy. But the planetary
+orbits turned out to be not quite circular after all, and, grand as was the
+service Copernicus rendered to science, Kepler and Newton had to come after
+him. What if the orbit of Darwinism should be a little too circular? What
+if species should offer residual phænomena, here and there, not explicable
+by natural selection? Twenty years hence naturalists may be in a position
+to say whether this is, or is not, the case; but in either event they will
+owe the author of "The Origin of Species" an immense debt of gratitude. We
+should leave a very wrong impression on the reader's mind if we permitted
+him to suppose that the value of that work depends wholly on the ultimate
+justification of the theoretical views which it contains. On the contrary,
+if they were disproved to-morrow, the book would still be the best of its
+kind--the most compendious statement of well-sifted facts bearing on the
+doctrine of species that has ever appeared. The chapters on Variation, on
+the Struggle for Existence, on Instinct, on Hybridism, on the Imperfection
+of the Geological Record, on Geographical Distribution, have not only no
+equals, but, so far as our knowledge goes, no competitors, within the range
+of biological literature. And viewed as a whole, we do not believe that,
+since the publication of Von Baer's "Researches on Development," thirty
+years ago, any work has appeared calculated to exert so large an influence,
+not only on the future of Biology, but in extending the domination of
+Science over regions of thought into which she has, as yet, hardly
+penetrated.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+CRITICISMS ON "THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES"
+
+[1864]
+
+
+1. UEBER DIE DARWIN'SCHE SCHÖPFUNGSTHEORIE; EIN VORTRAG, Von A. KÖLLIKER.
+Leipzig, 1864.
+
+2. EXAMINATION DU LIVRE DE M. DARWIN SUR L'ORIGINE DES ESPÈCES. Par P.
+FLOURENS. Paris, 1864.
+
+In the course of the present year several foreign commentaries upon Mr.
+Darwin's great work have made their appearance. Those who have perused that
+remarkable chapter of the "Antiquity of Man," in which Sir Charles Lyell
+draws a parallel between the development of species and that of languages,
+will be glad to hear that one of the most eminent philologers of Germany,
+Professor Schleicher, has, independently, published a most instructive and
+philosophical pamphlet (an excellent notice of which is to be found in the
+_Reader_, for February 27th of this year) supporting similar views
+with all the weight of his special knowledge and established authority as a
+linguist. Professor Haeckel, to whom Schleicher addresses himself,
+previously took occasion, in his splendid monograph on the
+_Radiolaria_,[Footnote: _Die Radiolarien: eine Monographie_, p.
+231.] to express his high appreciation of, and general concordance with,
+Mr. Darwin's views.
+
+But the most elaborate criticisms of the "Origin of Species" which have
+appeared are two works of very widely different merit, the one by Professor
+Kölliker, the well-known anatomist and histologist of Würzburg; the other
+by M. Flourens, Perpetual Secretary of the French Academy of Sciences.
+
+Professor Kölliker's critical essay "Upon the Darwinian Theory" is, like
+all that proceeds from the pen of that thoughtful and accomplished writer,
+worthy of the most careful consideration. It comprises a brief but clear
+sketch of Darwin's views, followed by an enumeration of the leading
+difficulties in the way of their acceptance; difficulties which would
+appear to be insurmountable to Professor Kölliker, inasmuch as he proposes
+to replace Mr. Darwin's Theory by one which he terms the "Theory of
+Heterogeneous Generation." We shall proceed to consider first the
+destructive, and secondly, the constructive portion of the essay.
+
+We regret to find ourselves compelled to dissent very widely from many of
+Professor Kölliker's remarks; and from none more thoroughly than from those
+in which he seeks to define what we may term the philosophical position of
+Darwinism.
+
+"Darwin," says Professor Kölliker, "is, in the fullest sense of the word, a
+Teleologist. He says quite distinctly (First Edition, pp. 199, 200) that
+every particular in the structure of an animal has been created for its
+benefit, and he regards the whole series of animal forms only from this
+point of view."
+
+And again:
+
+"7. The teleological general conception adopted by Darwin is a mistaken
+one.
+
+"Varieties arise irrespectively of the notion of purpose, or of utility,
+according to general laws of Nature, and may be either useful, or hurtful,
+or indifferent.
+
+"The assumption that an organism exists only on account of some definite
+end in view, and represents something more than the incorporation of a
+general idea, or law, implies a one-sided conception of the universe.
+Assuredly, every organ has, and every organism fulfils, its end, but its
+purpose is not the condition of its existence. Every organism is also
+sufficiently perfect for the purpose it serves, and in that, at least, it
+is useless to seek for a cause of its improvement."
+
+It is singular how differently one and the same book will impress different
+minds. That which struck the present writer most forcibly on his first
+perusal of the "Origin of Species" was the conviction that Teleology, as
+commonly understood, had received its deathblow at Mr. Darwin's hands. For
+the teleological argument runs thus: an organ or organism (A) is precisely
+fitted to perform a function or purpose (B); therefore it was specially
+constructed to perform that function. In Paley's famous illustration, the
+adaptation of all the parts of the watch to the function, or purpose, of
+showing the time, is held to be evidence that the watch was specially
+contrived to that end; on the ground, that the only cause we know of,
+competent to produce such an effect as a watch which shall keep time, is a
+contriving intelligence adapting the means directly to that end.
+
+Suppose, however, that any one had been able to show that the watch had not
+been made directly by any person, but that it was the result of the
+modification of another watch which kept time but poorly; and that this
+again had proceeded from a structure which could hardly be called a watch
+at all--seeing that it had no figures on the dial and the hands were
+rudimentary; and that going back and back in time we came at last to a
+revolving barrel as the earliest traceable rudiment of the whole fabric.
+And imagine that it had been possible to show that all these changes had
+resulted, first, from a tendency of the structure to vary indefinitely; and
+secondly, from something in the surrounding world which helped all
+variations in the direction of an accurate time-keeper, and checked all
+those in other directions; then it is obvious that the force of Paley's
+argument would be gone. For it would be demonstrated that an apparatus
+thoroughly well adapted to a particular purpose might be the result of a
+method of trial and error worked by unintelligent agents, as well as of the
+direct application of the means appropriate to that end, by an intelligent
+agent.
+
+Now it appears to us that what we have here, for illustration's sake,
+supposed to be done with the watch, is exactly what the establishment of
+Darwin's Theory will do for the organic world. For the notion that every
+organism has been created as it is and launched straight at a purpose, Mr.
+Darwin substitutes the conception of something which may fairly be termed a
+method of trial and error. Organisms vary incessantly; of these variations
+the few meet with surrounding conditions which suit them and thrive; the
+many are unsuited and become extinguished.
+
+According to Teleology, each organism is like a rifle bullet fired straight
+at a mark; according to Darwin, organisms are like grapeshot of which one
+hits something and the rest fall wide.
+
+For the teleologist an organism exists because it was made for the
+conditions in which it is found; for the Darwinian an organism exists
+because, out of many of its kind, it is the only one which has been able to
+persist in the conditions in which it is found.
+
+Teleology implies that the organs of every organism are perfect and cannot
+be improved; the Darwinian theory simply affirms that they work well enough
+to enable the organism to hold its own against such competitors as it has
+met with, but admits the possibility of indefinite improvement. But an
+example may bring into clearer light the profound opposition between the
+ordinary teleological, and the Darwinian, conception.
+
+Cats catch mice, small birds and the like, very well. Teleology tells us
+that they do so because they were expressly constructed for so doing--that
+they are perfect mousing apparatuses, so perfect and so delicately adjusted
+that no one of their organs could be altered, without the change involving
+the alteration of all the rest. Darwinism affirms on the contrary, that
+there was no express construction concerned in the matter; but that among
+the multitudinous variations of the Feline stock, many of which died out
+from want of power to resist opposing influences, some, the cats, were
+better fitted to catch mice than others, whence they throve and persisted,
+in proportion to the advantage over their fellows thus offered to them.
+
+Far from imagining that cats exist _in order_ to catch mice well,
+Darwinism supposes that cats exist because they catch mice well--mousing
+being not the end, but the condition, of their existence. And if the cat
+type has long persisted as we know it, the interpretation of the fact upon
+Darwinian principles would be, not that the cats have remained invariable,
+but that such varieties as have incessantly occurred have been, on the
+whole, less fitted to get on in the world than the existing stock.
+
+If we apprehend the spirit of the "Origin of Species" rightly, then,
+nothing can be more entirely and absolutely opposed to Teleology, as it is
+commonly understood, than the Darwinian Theory. So far from being a
+"Teleologist in the fullest sense of the word," we should deny that he is a
+Teleologist in the ordinary sense at all; and we should say that, apart
+from his merits as a naturalist, he has rendered a most remarkable service
+to philosophical thought by enabling the student of Nature to recognise, to
+their fullest extent, those adaptations to purpose which are so striking in
+the organic world, and which Teleology has done good service in keeping
+before our minds, without being false to the fundamental principles of a
+scientific conception of the universe. The apparently diverging teachings
+of the Teleologist and of the Morphologist are reconciled by the Darwinian
+hypothesis.
+
+But leaving our own impressions of the "Origin of Species," and turning to
+those passages especially cited by Professor Kölliker, we cannot admit that
+they bear the interpretation he puts upon them. Darwin, if we read him
+rightly, does _not_ affirm that every detail in the structure of an
+animal has been created for its benefit. His words are (p. 199):--
+
+"The foregoing remarks lead me to say a few words on the protest lately
+made by some naturalists against the utilitarian doctrine that every detail
+of structure has been produced for the good of its possessor. They believe
+that very many structures have been created for beauty in the eyes of man,
+or for mere variety. This doctrine, if true, would be absolutely fatal to
+my theory--yet I fully admit that many structures are of no direct use to
+their possessor."
+
+And after sundry illustrations and qualifications, he concludes (p. 200):--
+
+"Hence every detail of structure in every living creature (making some
+little allowance for the direct action of physical conditions) may be
+viewed either as having been of special use to some ancestral form, or as
+being now of special use to the descendants of this form--either directly,
+or indirectly, through the complex laws of growth."
+
+But it is one thing to say, Darwinically, that every detail observed in an
+animal's structure is of use to it, or has been of use to its ancestors;
+and quite another to affirm, teleologically, that every detail of an
+animal's structure has been created for its benefit. On the former
+hypothesis, for example, the teeth of the foetal _Baltæna_ have a
+meaning; on the latter, none. So far as we are aware, there is not a phrase
+in the "Origin of Species" inconsistent with Professor Kölliker's position,
+that "varieties arise irrespectively of the notion of purpose, or of
+utility, according to general laws of Nature, and may be either useful, or
+hurtful, or indifferent."
+
+On the contrary, Mr. Darwin writes (Summary of Chap. V.):--
+
+"Our ignorance of the laws of variation is profound. Not in one case out of
+a hundred can we pretend to assign any reason why this or that part varies
+more or less from the same part in the parents... The external conditions
+of life, as climate and food, &c., seem to have induced some slight
+modifications. Habit, in producing constitutional differences, and use, in
+strengthening, and disuse, in weakening and diminishing organs, seem to
+have been more potent in their effects."
+
+And finally, as if to prevent all possible misconception, Mr. Darwin
+concludes his Chapter on Variation with these pregnant words:--
+
+"Whatever the cause may be of each slight difference in the offspring from
+their parents--and a cause for each must exist--it is the steady
+accumulation, through natural selection of such differences, when
+beneficial to the individual, that gives rise to all the more important
+modifications of structure, by which the innumerable beings on the face of
+the earth are enabled to struggle with each other, and the best adapted to
+survive."
+
+We have dwelt at length upon, this subject, because of its great general
+importance, and because we believe that Professor Kölliker's criticisms on
+this head are based upon a misapprehension of Mr. Darwin's
+views--substantially they appear to us to coincide with his own. The other
+objections which Professor Kölliker enumerates and discusses are the
+following: [Footnote: Space will not allow us to give Professor Kölliker's
+arguments in detail; our readers will find a full and accurate version of
+them in the _Reader_ for August 13th and 20th, 1864.]--
+
+"1. No transitional forms between existing species are known; and known
+varieties, whether selected or spontaneous, never go so far as to establish
+new species."
+
+To this Professor Kölliker appears to attach some weight. He makes the
+suggestion that the short-faced tumbler pigeon may be a pathological
+product.
+
+"2. No transitional forms of animals are met with among the organic remains
+of earlier epochs."
+
+Upon this, Professor Kölliker remarks that the absence of transitional
+forms in the fossil world, though not necessarily fatal to Darwin's views,
+weakens his case.
+
+"3. The struggle for existence does not take place."
+
+To this objection, urged by Pelzeln, Kölliker, very justly, attaches no
+weight.
+
+"4. A tendency of organisms to give rise to useful varieties, and a natural
+selection, do not exist.
+
+"The varieties which are found arise in consequence of manifold external
+influences, and it is not obvious why they all, or partially, should be
+particularly useful. Each animal suffices for its own ends, is perfect of
+its kind, and needs no further development. Should, however, a variety be
+useful and even maintain itself, there is no obvious reason why it should
+change any further. The whole conception of the imperfection of organisms
+and the necessity of their becoming perfected is plainly the weakest side
+of Darwin's Theory, and a _pis aller_ (Nothbehelf) because Darwin
+could think of no other principle by which to explain the metamorphoses
+which, as I also believe, have occurred."
+
+Here again we must venture to dissent completely from Professor Kölliker's
+conception of Mr. Darwin's hypothesis. It appears to us to be one of the
+many peculiar merits of that hypothesis that it involves no belief in a
+necessary and continual progress of organisms.
+
+Again, Mr. Darwin, if we read him aright, assumes no special tendency of
+organisms to give rise to useful varieties, and knows nothing of needs of
+development, or necessity of perfection. What he says is, in substance: All
+organisms vary. It is in the highest degree improbable that any given
+variety should have exactly the same relations to surrounding conditions as
+the parent stock. In that case it is either better fitted (when the
+variation may be called useful), or worse fitted, to cope with them. If
+better, it will tend to supplant the parent stock; if worse, it will tend
+to be extinguished by the parent stock.
+
+If (as is hardly conceivable) the new variety is so perfectly adapted to
+the conditions that no improvement upon it is possible,--it will persist,
+because, though it does not cease to vary, the varieties will be inferior
+to itself.
+
+If, as is more probable, the new variety is by no means perfectly adapted
+to its conditions, but only fairly well adapted to them, it will persist,
+so long as none of the varieties which it throws off are better adapted
+than itself.
+
+On the other hand, as soon as it varies in a useful way, _i.e._ when
+the variation is such as to adapt it more perfectly to its conditions, the
+fresh variety will tend to supplant the former.
+
+So far from a gradual progress towards perfection forming any necessary
+part of the Darwinian creed, it appears to us that it is perfectly
+consistent with indefinite persistence in one state, or with a gradual
+retrogression. Suppose, for example, a return of the glacial epoch and a
+spread of polar climatal conditions over the whole globe. The operation of
+natural selection under these circumstances would tend, on the whole, to
+the weeding out of the higher organisms and the cherishing of the lower
+forms of life. Cryptogamic vegetation would have the advantage over
+Phanerogamic; _Hydrozoa_ over Corals; _Crustacea_ over
+_Insecta_, and _Amphipoda_ and _Isopoda_ over the higher
+_Crustacea;_ Cetaceans and Seals over the _Primates_; the
+civilisation of the Esquimaux over that of the European.
+
+"5. Pelzeln has also objected that if the later organisms have proceeded
+from the earlier, the whole developmental series, from the simplest to the
+highest, could not now exist; in such a case the simpler organisms must
+have disappeared."
+
+To this Professor Kölliker replies, with perfect justice, that the
+conclusion drawn by Pelzeln does not really follow from Darwin's premises,
+and that, if we take the facts of Paleontology as they stand, they rather
+support than oppose Darwin's theory.
+
+"6. Great weight must be attached to the objection brought forward by
+Huxley, otherwise a warm supporter of Darwin's hypothesis, that we know of
+no varieties which are sterile with one another, as is the rule among
+sharply distinguished animal forms.
+
+"If Darwin is right, it must be demonstrated that forms may be produced by
+selection, which, like the present sharply distinguished animal forms, are
+infertile, when coupled with one another, and this has not been done."
+
+The weight of this objection is obvious; but our ignorance of the
+conditions of fertility and sterility, the want of carefully conducted
+experiments extending over long series of years, and the strange anomalies
+presented by the results of the cross-fertilisation of many plants, should
+all, as Mr. Darwin has urged, be taken into account in considering it.
+
+The seventh objection is that we have already discussed (_supra_ p.
+82).
+
+The eighth and last stands as follows:--
+
+"8. The developmental theory of Darwin is not needed to enable us to
+understand the regular harmonious progress of the complete series of
+organic forms from the simpler to the more perfect.
+
+"The existence of general laws of Nature explains this harmony, even if we
+assume that all beings have arisen separately and independent of one
+another. Darwin forgets that inorganic nature, in which there can be no
+thought of genetic connexion of forms, exhibits the same regular plan, the
+same harmony, as the organic world; and that, to cite only one example,
+there is as much a natural system of minerals as of plants and animals."
+
+We do not feel quite sure that we seize Professor Kölliker's meaning here,
+but he appears to suggest that the observation of the general order and
+harmony which pervade inorganic nature, would lead us to anticipate a
+similar order and harmony in the organic world. And this is no doubt true,
+but it by no means follows that the particular order and harmony observed
+among them should be that which we see. Surely the stripes of dun horses,
+and the teeth of the _foetal_ _Balæna_, are not explained by the
+"existence of General laws of Nature." Mr. Darwin endeavours to explain the
+exact order of organic nature which exists; not the mere fact that there is
+some order.
+
+And with regard to the existence of a natural system of minerals; the
+obvious reply is that there may be a natural classification of any
+objects--of stones on a sea-beach, or of works of art; a natural
+classification being simply an assemblage of objects in groups, so as to
+express their most important and fundamental resemblances and differences.
+No doubt Mr. Darwin believes that those resemblances and differences upon
+which our natural systems or classifications of animals and plants are
+based, are resemblances and differences which have been produced
+genetically, but we can discover no reason for supposing that he denies the
+existence of natural classifications of other kinds.
+
+And, after all, is it quite so certain that a genetic relation may not
+underlie the classification of minerals? The inorganic world has not always
+been what we see it. It has certainly had its metamorphoses, and, very
+probably, a long "Entwickelungsgeschichte" out of a nebular blastema. Who
+knows how far that amount of likeness among sets of minerals, in virtue of
+which they are now grouped into families and orders, may not be the
+expression of the common conditions to which that particular patch of
+nebulous fog, which may have been constituted by their atoms, and of which
+they may be, in the strictest sense, the descendants, was subjected?
+
+It will be obvious from what has preceded, that we do not agree with
+Professor Kölliker in thinking the objections which he brings forward so
+weighty as to be fatal to Darwin's view. But even if the case were
+otherwise, we should be unable to accept the "Theory of Heterogeneous
+Generation" which is offered as a substitute. That theory is thus stated:--
+
+"The fundamental conception of this hypothesis is, that, under the
+influence of a general law of development, the germs of organisms produce
+others different from themselves. This might happen (1) by the fecundated
+ova passing, in the course of their development, under particular
+circumstances, into higher forms; (2) by the primitive and later organisms
+producing other organisms without fecundation, out of germs or eggs
+(Parthenogenesis)."
+
+In favour of this hypothesis, Professor Kölliker adduces the well-known
+facts of Agamogenesis, or "alternate generation"; the extreme dissimilarity
+of the males and females of many animals; and of the males, females, and
+neuters of those insects which live in colonies: and he defines its
+relations to the Darwinian theory as follows:--
+
+"It is obvious that my hypothesis is apparently very similar to Darwin's,
+inasmuch as I also consider that the various forms of animals have
+proceeded directly from one another. My hypothesis of the creation of
+organisms by heterogeneous generation, however, is distinguished very
+essentially from Darwin's by the entire absence of the principle of useful
+variations and their natural selection: and my fundamental conception is
+this, that a great plan of development lies at the foundation of the origin
+of the whole organic world, impelling the simpler forms to more and more
+complex developments. How this law operates, what influences determine the
+development of the eggs and germs, and impel them to assume constantly new
+forms, I naturally cannot pretend to say; but I can at least adduce the
+great analogy of the alternation of generations. If a _Bipinnaria_, a
+_Brachiolaria_, a _Pluteus_, is competent to produce the
+Echinoderm, which is so widely different from it; if a hydroid polype can
+produce the higher Medusa; if the vermiform Trematode 'nurse' can develop
+within itself the very unlike _Cercaria_, it will not appear
+impossible that the egg, or ciliated embryo, of a sponge, for once, under
+special conditions, might become a hydroid polype, or the embryo of a
+Medusa, an Echinoderm."
+
+It is obvious, from, these extracts, that Professor Kölliker's hypothesis
+is based upon the supposed existence of a close analogy between the
+phænomena of Agamogenesis and the production of new species from
+pre-existing ones. But is the analogy a real one? We think that it is not,
+and, by the hypothesis cannot be.
+
+For what are the phænomena of Agamogenesis, stated generally? An
+impregnated egg develops into a sexless form, A; this gives rise,
+non-sexually, to a second form or forms, B, more or less different from A.
+B may multiply non-sexually again; in the simpler cases, however, it does
+not, but, acquiring sexual characters, produces impregnated eggs from
+whence A, once more, arises.
+
+No case of Agamogenesis is known in which _when A differs widely from
+B_, it is itself capable of sexual propagation. No case whatever is
+known in which the progeny of B, by sexual generation, is other than a
+reproduction of A.
+
+But if this be a true statement of the nature of the process of
+Agamogenesis, how can it enable us to comprehend the production of new
+species from already existing ones? Let us suppose Hyænas to have preceded
+Dogs, and to have produced the latter in this way. Then the Hyæna will
+represent A, and the Dog, B. The first difficulty that presents itself is
+that the Hyæna must be non-sexual, or the process will be wholly without
+analogy in the world of Agamogenesis. But passing over this difficulty, and
+supposing a male and female Dog to be produced at the same time from the
+Hyæna stock, the progeny of the pair, if the analogy of the simpler kinds
+of Agamogenesis [Footnote: If, on the contrary, we follow the analogy of
+the more complex forms of Agamogenesis, such as that exhibited by some
+_Trematoda_ and by the _Aphides_, the Hyæna must produce,
+non-sexually, a brood of sexless Dogs, from which other sexless Dogs must
+proceed. At the end of a certain number of terms of the series, the Dogs
+would acquire sexes and generate young; but these young would be, not Dogs,
+but Hyænas. In fact, we have demonstrated, in Agamogenetic phænomena, that
+inevitable recurrence to the original type, which is asserted to be true of
+variations in general, by Mr. Darwin's opponents; and which, if the
+assertion could be changed into a demonstration, would, in fact, be fatal
+to his hypothesis.] is to be followed, should be a litter, not of puppies,
+but of young Hyænas. For the Agamogenetic series is always, as we have
+seen, A:B:A:B, &c.; whereas, for the production of a new species, the
+series must be A:B:B:B, &c. The production of new species, or genera, is
+the extreme permanent divergence from the primitive stock. All known
+Agamogenetic processes, on the other hand, end in a complete return to the
+primitive stock. How then is the production of new species to be rendered
+intelligible by the analogy of Agamogenesis?
+
+The other alternative put by Professor Kölliker--the passage of fecundated
+ova in the course of their development into higher forms--would, if it
+occurred, be merely an extreme case of variation in the Darwinian sense,
+greater in degree than, but perfectly similar in kind to, that which
+occurred when the well-known Ancon Ram was developed from an ordinary Ewe's
+ovum. Indeed we have always thought that Mr. Darwin has unnecessarily
+hampered himself by adhering so strictly to his favourite "Natura non facit
+saltum." We greatly suspect that she does make considerable jumps in the
+way of variation now and then, and that these saltations give rise to some
+of the gaps which appear to exist in the series of known forms.
+
+Strongly and freely as we have ventured to disagree with Professor
+Kölliker, we have always done so with regret, and we trust without
+violating that respect which is due, not only to his scientific eminence
+and to the careful study which he has devoted to the subject, but to the
+perfect fairness of his argumentation, and the generous appreciation of the
+worth of Mr. Darwin's labours which he always displays. It would be
+satisfactory to be able to say as much for M. Flourens.
+
+But the Perpetual Secretary of the French Academy of Sciences deals with
+Mr. Darwin as the first Napoleon would have treated an "idéologue;" and
+while displaying a painful weakness of logic and shallowness of
+information, assumes a tone of authority, which always touches upon the
+ludicrous, and sometimes passes the limits of good breeding.
+
+For example (p. 56):--
+
+"M. Darwin continue: 'Aucune distinction absolue n'a été et ne peut être
+établie entre les espèces et les variétés.' Je vous ai déjà dit que vous
+vous trompiez; une distinction absolue sépare les variétés d'avec les
+espèces."
+
+"_Je vous ai déjà dit_; moi, M. le Secrétaire perpétuel de l'Académie
+des Sciences: et vous
+
+   "'Qui n'êtes rien,
+   Pas même Académicien;'
+
+what do you mean by asserting the contrary?" Being devoid of the blessings
+of an Academy in England, we are unaccustomed to see our ablest men treated
+in this fashion, even by a "Perpetual Secretary."
+
+Or again, considering that if there is any one quality of Mr. Darwin's work
+to which friends and foes have alike borne witness, it is his candour and
+fairness in admitting and discussing objections, what is to be thought of
+M. Flourens' assertion, that
+
+"M. Darwin ne cite que les auteurs qui partagent ses opinions." (P. 40.)
+
+Once more (p. 65):--
+
+"Enfin l'ouvrage de M. Darwin a paru. On ne peut qu'être frappé du talent
+de l'auteur. Mais quo d'idées obscures, que d'idées fausses! Quel jargon
+métaphysique jeté mal à propos dans l'histoire naturelle, qui tombe dans le
+galimatias dès qu'elle sort des idées claires, des idées justes! Quel
+langage prétentieux et vide! Quelles personnifications puériles et
+surannées! O lucidité! 0 solidité de l'esprit Français, que devenez-vous?"
+
+"Obscure ideas," "metaphysical jargon," "pretentious and empty language,"
+"puerile and superannuated personifications." Mr. Darwin has many and hot
+opponents on this side of the Channel and in Germany, but we do not
+recollect to have found precisely these sins in the long catalogue of those
+hitherto laid to his charge. It is worth while, therefore, to examine into
+these discoveries effected solely by the aid of the "lucidity and solidity"
+of the mind of M. Flourens.
+
+According to M. Flourens, Mr. Darwin's great error is that he has
+personified Nature (p. 10), and further that he has
+
+"imagined a natural selection: he imagines afterwards that this power of
+selecting (_pouvoir d'élire_) which he gives to Nature is similar to
+the power of man. These two suppositions admitted, nothing stops him: he
+plays with Nature as he likes, and makes her do all he pleases." (P. 6.)
+
+And this is the way M. Flourens extinguishes natural selection:
+
+"Voyons donc encore une fois, ce qu'il peut y avoir de fondé dans ce qu'on
+nomme _élection naturelle_.
+
+"_L'élection naturelle_ n'est sous un autre nom que la nature. Pour un
+être organisé, la nature n'est que l'organisation, ni plus ni moins.
+
+"Il faudra donc aussi personnifier _l'organisation,_ et dire que
+_l'organisation_ choisit _l'organisation. L'élection naturelle_
+est cette _forme substantielle_ dont on jouait autrefois avec tant de
+facilité. Aristote disait que 'Si l'art de bâtir était dans le bois, cet
+art agirait comme la nature.' A la place de _l'art de bâtir_ M. Darwin
+met _l'élection naturelle,_ et c'est tout un: l'un n'est pas plus
+chimérique que l'autre." (P. 31.)
+
+And this is really all that M. Flourens can make of Natural Selection. We
+have given the original, in fear lest a translation should be regarded as a
+travesty; but with the original before the reader, we may try to analyse
+the passage. "For an organised being, Nature is only organisation, neither
+more nor less."
+
+Organised beings then have absolutely no relation to inorganic nature: a
+plant does not depend on soil or sunshine, climate, depth in the ocean,
+height above it; the quantity of saline matters in water have no influence
+upon animal life; the substitution of carbonic acid for oxygen in our
+atmosphere would hurt nobody! That these are absurdities no one should know
+better than M. Flourens; but they are logical deductions from the assertion
+just quoted, and from the further statement that natural selection means
+only that "organisation chooses and selects organisation."
+
+For if it be once admitted (what no sane man denies) that the chances of
+life of any given organism are increased by certain conditions (A) and
+diminished by their opposites (B), then it is mathematically certain that
+any change of conditions in the direction of (A) will exercise a selective
+influence in favour of that organism, tending to its increase and
+multiplication, while any change in the direction of (B) will exercise a
+selective influence against that organism, tending to its decrease and
+extinction.
+
+Or, on the other hand, conditions remaining the same, let a given organism
+vary (and no one doubts that they do vary) in two directions: into one form
+(_a_) better fitted to cope with these conditions than the original
+stock, and a second (_b_) less well adapted to them. Then it is no
+less certain that the conditions in question must exercise a selective
+influence in favour of (_a_) and against (_b_), so that
+(_a_) will tend to predominance, and (_b_) to extirpation.
+
+That M. Flourens should be unable to perceive the logical necessity of
+these simple arguments, which lie at the foundation of all Mr. Darwin's
+reasoning; that he should confound an irrefragable deduction from the
+observed relations of organisms to the conditions which lie around them,
+with a metaphysical "forme substantielle," or a chimerical personification
+of the powers of Nature, would be incredible, were it not that other
+passages of his work leave no room for doubt upon the subject.
+
+"On imagine une _élection naturelle_ que, pour plus de ménagement, on
+me dit être _inconsciente_, sans s'apercevoir que le contresens
+littéral est précisément là: _élection inconsciente_." (P. 52.)
+
+"J'ai déjà dit ce qu'il faut penser de _l'élection naturelle_. Ou
+_l'élection naturelle_ n'est rien, ou c'est la nature: mais la nature
+douée _d'élection_, mais la nature personnifiée: dernière erreur du
+dernier siècle: Le XIXe ne fait plus de personnifications." (P. 53.)
+
+M. Flourens cannot imagine an unconscious selection--it is for him a
+contradiction in terms. Did M. Flourens ever visit one of the prettiest
+watering-places of "la belle France," the Baie d'Arcachon? If so, he will
+probably have passed through the district of the Landes, and will have had
+an opportunity of observing the formation of "dunes" on a grand scale. What
+are these "dunes"? The winds and waves of the Bay of Biscay have not much
+consciousness, and yet they have with great care "selected," from among an
+infinity of masses of silex of all shapes and sizes, which have been
+submitted to their action, all the grains of sand below a certain size, and
+have heaped them by themselves over a great area. This sand has been
+"unconsciously selected" from amidst the gravel in which it first lay with
+as much precision as if man had "consciously selected" it by the aid of a
+sieve. Physical Geology is full of such selections--of the picking out of
+the soft from the hard, of the soluble from the insoluble, of the fusible
+from the infusible, by natural agencies to which we are certainly not in
+the habit of ascribing consciousness.
+
+But that which wind and sea are to a sandy beach, the sum of influences,
+which we term the "conditions of existence," is to living organisms. The
+weak are sifted out from the strong. A frosty night "selects" the hardy
+plants in a plantation from among the tender ones as effectually as if it
+were the wind, and they, the sand and pebbles, of our illustration; or, on
+the other hand, as if the intelligence of a gardener had been operative in
+cutting the weaker organisms down. The thistle, which has spread over the
+Pampas, to the destruction of native plants, has been more effectually
+"selected" by the unconscious operation of natural conditions than if a
+thousand agriculturists had spent their time in sowing it.
+
+It is one of Mr. Darwin's many great services to Biological science that he
+has demonstrated the significance of these facts. He has shown that given
+variation and given change of conditions the inevitable result is the
+exercise of such an influence upon organisms that one is helped and another
+is impeded; one tends to predominate, another to disappear; and thus the
+living world bears within itself, and is surrounded by, impulses towards
+incessant change.
+
+But the truths just stated are as certain as any other physical laws, quite
+independently of the truth, or falsehood, of the hypothesis which Mr.
+Darwin has based upon them; and that Mr. Flourens, missing the substance
+and grasping at a shadow, should be blind to the admirable exposition of
+them, which Mr. Darwin has given, and see nothing there but a "dernière
+erreur du dernier siècle"--a personification of Nature--leads us indeed to
+cry with him: "O lucidité! O solidité de l'esprit Français, que
+devenez-vous?"
+
+M. Flourens has, in fact, utterly failed to comprehend the first principles
+of the doctrine which he assails so rudely. His objections to details are
+of the old sort, so battered and hackneyed on this side of the Channel,
+that not even a Quarterly Reviewer could be induced to pick them up for the
+purpose of pelting Mr. Darwin over again. We have Cuvier and the mummies;
+M. Roulin and the domesticated animals of America; the difficulties
+presented by hybridism and by Palæontology; Darwinism a
+_rifacciamento_ of De Maillet and Lamarck; Darwinism a system without
+a commencement, and its author bound to believe in M. Pouchet, &c. &c. How
+one knows it all by heart, and with what relief one reads at p. 65--
+
+"Je laisse M. Darwin!"
+
+But we cannot leave M. Flourens without calling our readers' attention to
+his wonderful tenth chapter, "De la Préexistence des Germes et de
+l'Epigénèse," which opens thus:--
+
+"Spontaneous generation is only a chimaera. This point established, two
+hypotheses remain: that of _pre-existence_ and that of
+_epigenesis_. The one of these hypotheses has as little foundation as
+the other." (p. 163.)
+
+"The doctrine of _epigenesis_ is derived from Harvey: following by
+ocular inspection the development of the new being in the Windsor does, he
+saw each part appear successively, and taking the moment of
+_appearance_ for the moment of _formation_ he imagined
+_epigenesis_." (p. 165.)
+
+On the contrary, says M. Flourens (p. 167),
+
+"The new being is formed at a stroke (_tout d'un coup_), as a whole,
+instantaneously; it is not formed part by part, and at different times. It
+is formed at once at the single _individual_ moment at which the
+conjunction of the male and female elements takes place."
+
+It will be observed that M. Flourens uses language which cannot be
+mistaken. For him, the labours of Von Baer, of Rathke, of Coste, and their
+contemporaries and successors in Germany, France, and England, are
+non-existent: and, as Darwin "_imagina_" natural selection, so Harvey
+"_imagina_" that doctrine which gives him an even greater claim to the
+veneration of posterity than his better known discovery of the circulation
+of the blood.
+
+Language such as that we have quoted is, in fact, so preposterous, so
+utterly incompatible with anything but absolute ignorance of some of the
+best established facts, that we should have passed it over in silence had
+it not appeared to afford some clue to M. Flourens' unhesitating, _ à
+priori_, repudiation of all forms of the doctrine of progressive
+modification of living beings. He whose mind remains uninfluenced by an
+acquaintance with the phænomena of development, must indeed lack one of the
+chief motives towards the endeavour to trace a genetic relation between the
+different existing forms of life. Those who are ignorant of Geology, find
+no difficulty in believing that the world was made as it is; and the
+shepherd, untutored in history, sees no reason to regard the green mounds
+which indicate the site of a Roman camp as aught but part and parcel of the
+primæval hillside. So M. Flourens, who believes that embryos are formed
+"tout d'un coup," naturally finds no difficulty in conceiving that species
+came into existence in the same way.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE GENEALOGY OF ANIMALS [Footnote: _The Natural History of Creation_.
+By Dr. Ernst Haeckel. [_Natürliche Schöpfungs-Geschichte_.--Von Dr.
+Ernst Haeckel, Professor an der Universität Jena.] Berlin, 1868.]
+
+[1869]
+
+
+Considering that Germany now takes the lead of the world in scientific
+investigation, and particularly in biology, Mr. Darwin must be well pleased
+at the rapid spread of his views among some of the ablest and most
+laborious of German naturalists.
+
+Among these, Professor Haeckel, of Jena, is the Coryphæus. I know of no
+more solid and important contributions to biology in the past seven years
+than Haeckel's work on the "Radiolaria," and the researches of his
+distinguished colleague Gegenbaur, in vertebrate anatomy; while in
+Haeckel's "Generelle Morphologie" there is all the force, suggestiveness,
+and, what I may term the systematising power, of Oken, without his
+extravagance. The "Generelle Morphologie" is, in fact, an attempt to put
+the Doctrine of Evolution, so far as it applies to the living world, into a
+logical form; and to work out its practical applications to their final
+results. The work before, us, again, may be said to be an exposition of the
+"Generelle Morphologie" for an educated public, consisting, as it does, of
+the substance of a series of lectures delivered before a mixed audience at
+Jena, in the session 1867-8.
+
+"The Natural History of Creation,"--or, as Professor Haeckel admits it
+would have been better to call his work, "The History of the Development or
+Evolution of Nature,"--deals, in the first six lectures, with the general
+and historical aspects of the question and contains a very interesting and
+lucid account of the views of Linnæus, Cuvier, Agassiz, Goethe, Oken, Kant,
+Lamarck, Lyell, and Darwin, and of the historical filiation of these
+philosophers.
+
+The next six lectures are occupied by a well-digested statement of Mr.
+Darwin's views. The thirteenth lecture discusses two topics which are not
+touched by Mr. Darwin, namely, the origin of the present form of the solar
+system, and that of living matter. Full justice is done to Kant, as the
+originator of that "cosmic gas theory," as the Germans somewhat quaintly
+call it, which is commonly ascribed to Laplace. With respect to spontaneous
+generation, while admitting that there is no experimental evidence in its
+favour, Professor Haeckel denies the possibility of disproving it, and
+points out that the assumption that it has occurred is a necessary part of
+the doctrine of Evolution. The fourteenth lecture, on "Schöpfungs-Perioden
+und Schöpfungs-Urkunden," answers pretty much to the famous disquisition on
+the "Imperfection of the Geological Record" in the "Origin of Species."
+
+The following five lectures contain the most original matter of any, being
+devoted to "Phylogeny," or the working out of the details of the process of
+Evolution in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, so as to prove the line of
+descent of each group of living beings, and to furnish it with its proper
+genealogical tree, or "phylum."
+
+The last lecture considers objections and sums up the evidence in favour of
+biological Evolution.
+
+I shall best testify to my sense of the value of the work thus briefly
+analysed if I now proceed to note down some of the more important
+criticisms which have been suggested to me by its perusal.
+
+I. In more than one place, Professor Haeckel enlarges upon the service
+which the "Origin of Species" has done, in favouring what he terms the
+"causal or mechanical" view of living nature as opposed to the
+"teleological or vitalistic" view. And no doubt it is quite true that the
+doctrine of Evolution is the most formidable opponent of all the commoner
+and coarser forms of Teleology. But perhaps the most remarkable service to
+the philosophy of Biology rendered by Mr. Darwin is the reconciliation of
+Teleology and Morphology, and the explanation of the facts of both which
+his views offer.
+
+The Teleology which supposes that the eye, such as we see it in man or one
+of the higher _Vertebrata_, was made with the precise structure which
+it exhibits, for the purpose of enabling the animal which possesses it to
+see, has undoubtedly received its death-blow. Nevertheless it is necessary
+to remember that there is a wider Teleology, which is not touched by the
+doctrine of Evolution, but is actually based upon the fundamental
+proposition of Evolution. That proposition is, that the whole world, living
+and not living, in the result of the mutual interaction, according to
+definite laws, of the forces possessed by the molecules of which the
+primitive nebulosity of the universe was composed. If this be true, it is
+no less certain that the existing world lay, potentially, in the cosmic
+vapour; and that a sufficient intelligence could, from a knowledge of the
+properties of the molecules of that vapour, have predicted, say the state
+of the Fauna of Britain in 1869, with as much certainty as one can say what
+will happen to the vapour of the breath in a cold winter's day.
+
+Consider a kitchen clock, which ticks loudly, shows the hours, minutes, and
+seconds, strikes, cries "cuckoo!" and perhaps shows the phases of the moon.
+When the clock is wound up, all the phenomena which it exhibits are
+potentially contained in its mechanism, and a clever clockmaker could
+predict all it will do after an examination of its structure.
+
+If the evolution theory is correct, the molecular structure of the cosmic
+gas stands in the same relation to the phenomena of the world as the
+structure of the clock to its phenomena.
+
+Now let us suppose a death-watch, living in the clock-case, to be a learned
+and intelligent student of its works. He might say, "I find here nothing
+but matter and force and pure mechanism from beginning to end," and he
+would be quite right. But if he drew the conclusion that the clock was not
+contrived for a purpose, he would be quite wrong. On the other hand,
+imagine another death-watch of a different turn of mind. He, listening to
+the monotonous "tick! tick!" so exactly like his own, might arrive at the
+conclusion that the clock was itself a monstrous sort of death-watch, and
+that its final cause and purpose was to tick. How easy to point to the
+clear relation of the whole mechanism to the pendulum, to the fact that the
+one thing the clock did always and without intermission was to tick, and
+that all the rest of its phenomena were intermittent and subordinate to
+ticking! For all this, it is certain that kitchen clocks are not contrived
+for the purpose of making a ticking noise.
+
+Thus the teleological theorist would be as wrong as the mechanical
+theorist, among our death-watches; and, probably, the only death-watch who
+would be right would be the one who should maintain that the sole thing
+death-watches could be sure about was the nature of the clock-works and the
+way they move; and that the purpose of the clock lay wholly beyond the
+purview of beetle faculties.
+
+Substitute "cosmic vapour" for "clock," and "molecules" for "works," and
+the application of the argument is obvious. The teleological and the
+mechanical views of nature are not, necessarily, mutually exclusive. On the
+contrary, the more purely a mechanist the speculator is, the more firmly
+does he assume a primordial molecular arrangement, of which all the
+phenomena of the universe are the consequences; and the more completely is
+he thereby at the mercy of the teleologist, who can always defy him to
+disprove that this primordial molecular arrangement was not intended to
+evolve the phenomena of the universe. On the other hand, if the teleologist
+assert that this, that, or the other result of the working of any part of
+the mechanism of the universe is its purpose and final cause, the mechanist
+can always inquire how he knows that it is more than an unessential
+incident--the mere ticking of the clock, which he mistakes for its
+function. And there seems to be no reply to this inquiry, any more than to
+the further, not irrational, question, why trouble one's self about matters
+which are out of reach, when the working of the mechanism itself, which is
+of infinite practical importance, affords scope for all our energies?
+
+Professor Haeckel has invented a new and convenient name "Dysteleology,"
+for the study of the "purposelessnesses" which are observable in living
+organisms--such as the multitudinous cases of rudimentary and apparently
+useless structures. I confess, however, that it has often appeared to me
+that the facts of Dysteleology cut two ways. If we are to assume, as
+evolutionists in general do, that useless organs atrophy, such cases as the
+existence of lateral rudiments of toes, in the foot of a horse, place us in
+a dilemma. For, either these rudiments are of no use to the animal, in
+which case, considering that the horse has existed in its present form
+since the Pliocene epoch, they surely ought to have disappeared; or they
+are of some use to the animal, in which case they are of no use as
+arguments against Teleology. A similar, but still stronger, argument may be
+based upon the existence of teats, and even functional mammary glands, in
+male mammals. Numerous cases of "Gynæcomasty," or functionally active
+breasts in men, are on record, though there is no mammalian species
+whatever in which the male normally suckles the young. Thus, there can be
+little doubt that the mammary gland was as apparently useless in the
+remotest male mammalian ancestor of man as in living men, and yet it has
+not disappeared. Is it then still profitable to the male organism to retain
+it? Possibly; but in that case its dysteleological value is gone.
+[Footnote: The recent discovery of the important part played by the Thyroid
+gland should be a warning to all speculators about useless organs. 1893.]
+
+II. Professor Haeckel looks upon the causes which have led to the present
+diversity of living nature as twofold. Living matter, he tells us, is urged
+by two impulses: a centripetal, which tends to preserve and transmit the
+specific form, and which he identifies with heredity; and a centrifugal,
+which results from the tendency of external conditions to modify the
+organism and effect its adaptation to themselves. The internal impulse is
+conservative, and tends to the preservation of specific, or individual,
+form; the external impulse is metamorphic, and tends to the modification of
+specific, or individual, form.
+
+In developing his views upon this subject, Professor Haeckel introduces
+qualifications which disarm some of the criticisms I should have been
+disposed to offer; but I think that his method of stating the case has the
+inconvenience of tending to leave out of sight the important fact--which is
+a cardinal point in the Darwinian hypothesis--that the tendency to vary, in
+a given organism, may have nothing to do with the external conditions to
+which that individual organism is exposed, but may depend wholly upon
+internal conditions. No one, I imagine, would dream of seeking for the
+cause of the development of the sixth finger and toe in the famous Maltese,
+in the direct influence of the external conditions of his life.
+
+I conceive that both hereditary transmission and adaptation need to be
+analysed into their constituent conditions by the further application of
+the doctrine of the Struggle for Existence. It is a probable hypothesis,
+that what the world is to organisms in general, each organism is to the
+molecules of which it is composed. Multitudes of these, having diverse
+tendencies, are competing with one another for opportunity to exist and
+multiply; and the organism, as a whole, is as much the product of the
+molecules which are victorious as the Fauna, or Flora, of a country is the
+product of the victorious organic beings in it.
+
+On this hypothesis, hereditary transmission is the result of the victory of
+particular molecules contained in the impregnated germ. Adaptation to
+conditions is the result of the favouring of the multiplication of those
+molecules whose organising tendencies are most in harmony with such
+conditions. In this view of the matter, conditions are not actively
+productive, but are passively permissive; they do not cause variation in
+any given direction, but they permit and favour a tendency in that
+direction which already exists.
+
+It is true that, in the long run, the origin of the organic molecules
+themselves, and of their tendencies, is to be sought in the external world;
+but if we carry our inquiries as far back as this, the distinction between
+internal and external impulses vanishes. On the other hand, if we confine
+ourselves to the consideration of a single organism, I think it must be
+admitted that the existence of an internal metamorphic tendency must be as
+distinctly recognised as that of an internal conservative tendency; and
+that the influence of conditions is mainly, if not wholly, the result of
+the extent to which they favour the one, or the other, of these tendencies.
+
+III. There is only one point upon which I fundamentally and entirely
+disagree with Professor Haeckel, but that is the very important one of his
+conception of geological time, and of the meaning of the stratified rocks
+as records and indications of that time. Conceiving that the stratified
+rocks of an epoch indicate a period of depression, and that the intervals
+between the epochs correspond with periods of elevation of which we have no
+record, he intercalates between the different epochs, or periods, intervals
+which he terms "Ante-periods." Thus, instead of considering the Triassic,
+Jurassic, Cretaceous, and Eocene periods, as continuously successive, he
+interposes a period before each, as an "Antetrias-zeit," "Antejura-zeit,"
+"Antecreta-zeit," "Anteo-cenzeit," &c. And he conceives that the abrupt
+changes between the Faunæ of the different formations are due to the lapse
+of time, of which we have no organic record, during their "Ante-periods."
+
+The frequent occurrence of strata containing assemblages of organic forms
+which are intermediate between those of adjacent formations, is, to my
+mind, fatal to this view. In the well-known St. Cassian beds, for example,
+Palaeozoic and Mesozoic forms are commingled, and, between the Cretaceous
+and the Eocene formations, there are similar transitional beds. On the
+other hand, in the middle of the Silurian series, extensive unconformity of
+the strata indicates the lapse of vast intervals of time between the
+deposit of successive beds, without any corresponding change in the Fauna.
+
+Professor Haeckel will, I fear, think me unreasonable, if I say that he
+seems to be still overshadowed by geological superstitions; and that he
+will have to believe in the completeness of the geological record far less
+than he does at present. He assumes, for example, that there was no dry
+land, nor any terrestrial life, before the end of the Silurian epoch,
+simply because, up to the present time, no indications of fresh water, or
+terrestrial organisms, have been found in rocks of older date. And, in
+speculating upon the origin of a given group, he rarely goes further back
+than the "Ante-period," which precedes that in which the remains of animals
+belonging to that group are found. Thus, as fossil remains of the majority
+of the groups of _Reptilia_ are first found in the Trias, they are
+assumed to have originated in the "Antetriassic" period, or between the
+Permian and Triassic epochs.
+
+I confess this is wholly incredible to me. The Permian and the Triassic
+deposits pass completely into one another; there is no sort of
+discontinuity answering to an unrecorded "Antetrias"; and, what is more, we
+have evidence of immensely extensive dry land during the formation of these
+deposits. We know that the dry land of the Trias absolutely teemed with
+reptiles of all groups except Pterodactyles, Snakes, and perhaps Tortoises;
+there is every probability that true Birds existed, and _Mammalia_
+certainly did. Of the inhabitants of the Permian dry land, on the contrary,
+all that have left a record are a few lizards. Is it conceivable that these
+last should really represent the whole terrestrial population of that time,
+and that the development of Mammals, of Birds, and of the highest forms of
+Reptiles, should have been crowded into the time during which the Permian
+conditions quietly passed away, and the Triassic conditions began? Does not
+any such supposition become in the highest degree improbable, when, in the
+terrestrial or fresh-water Labyrinthodonts, which lived on the land of the
+Carboniferous epoch, as well as on that of the Trias, we have evidence that
+one form of terrestrial life persisted, throughout all these ages, with no
+important modification? For my part, having regard to the small amount of
+modification (except in the way of extinction) which the Crocodilian,
+Lacertilian, and Chelonian _Reptilia_ have undergone, from the older
+Mesozoic times to the present day, I cannot but put the existence of the
+common stock from which they sprang far back in the Palæozoic epoch; and I
+should apply a similar argumentation to all other groups of animals.
+
+[The remainder of this essay contains a discussion of questions of taxonomy
+and phylogeny, which is now antiquated. I have reprinted the considerations
+about the reconciliation of Teleology with Morphology, about
+"Dysteleology," and about the struggle for existence within the organism,
+because it has happened to me to be charged with overlooking them.
+
+In discussing Teleology, I ought to have pointed out, as I have done
+elsewhere (_Life and Letters of Charles Darwin_, vol. ii. p. 202),
+that Paley "proleptically accepted the modern doctrine of Evolution,"
+(_Natural Theology_, chap. xxiii.). 1893.]
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+MR. DARWIN'S CRITICS [Footnote: _Contributions to the Theory of Natural
+Selection_. By A. R. Wallace. 1870.--2. _The Genesis of Species_.
+By St. George Mivart, F.R.S. Second Edition. 1871.--3. _Darwin's Descent
+of Man_. Quarterly Review, July 1871.]
+
+[1871]
+
+
+The gradual lapse of time has now separated us by more than a decade from
+the date of the publication of the "Origin of Species"--and whatever may be
+thought or said about Mr. Darwin's doctrines, or the manner in which he has
+propounded them, this much is certain, that, in a dozen years, the "Origin
+of Species" has worked as complete a revolution in biological science as
+the "Principia" did in astronomy--and it has done so, because, in the words
+of Helmholtz, it contains "an essentially new creative thought." [Footnote:
+Helmholtz: _Ueber das Ziel und die Fortschritte der
+Naturwissenschaft_. Eröffnungsrede für die Naturforscherversammlung zu
+Innsbruck. 1869.] And as time has slipped by, a happy change has come over
+Mr. Darwin's critics. The mixture of ignorance and insolence which, at
+first, characterised a large proportion of the attacks with which he was
+assailed, is no longer the sad distinction of anti-Darwinian criticism.
+Instead of abusive nonsense, which merely discredited its writers, we read
+essays, which are, at worst, more or less intelligent and appreciative;
+while, sometimes, like that which appeared in the "North British Review"
+for 1867, they have a real and permanent value.
+
+The several publications of Mr. Wallace and Mr. Mivart contain discussions
+of some of Mr. Darwin's views, which are worthy of particular attention,
+not only on account of the acknowledged scientific competence of these
+writers, but because they exhibit an attention to those philosophical
+questions which underlie all physical science, which is as rare as it is
+needful. And the same may be said of an article in the "Quarterly Review"
+for July 1871, the comparison of which with an article in the same Review
+for July 1860, is perhaps the best evidence which can be brought forward of
+the change which has taken place in public opinion on "Darwinism."
+
+The Quarterly Reviewer admits "the certainty of the action of natural
+selection" (p. 49); and further allows that there is an _à priori_
+probability in favour of the evolution of man from some lower animal form,
+if these lower animal forms themselves have arisen by evolution.
+
+Mr. Wallace and Mr. Mivart go much further than this. They are as stout
+believers in evolution as Mr. Darwin himself; but Mr. Wallace denies that
+man can have been evolved from a lower animal by that process of natural
+selection which he, with Mr. Darwin, holds to have been sufficient for the
+evolution of all animals below man; while Mr. Mivart, admitting that
+natural selection has been one of the conditions of the evolution of the
+animals below man, maintains that natural selection must, even in their
+case, have been supplemented by "some other cause"--of the nature of which,
+unfortunately, he does not give us any idea. Thus Mr. Mivart is less of a
+Darwinian than Mr. Wallace, for he has less faith in the power of natural
+selection. But he is more of an evolutionist than Mr. Wallace, because Mr.
+Wallace thinks it necessary to call in an intelligent agent--a sort of
+supernatural Sir John Sebright--to produce even the animal frame of man;
+while Mr. Mivart requires no Divine assistance till he comes to man's soul.
+
+Thus there is a considerable divergence between Mr. Wallace and Mr. Mivart.
+On the other hand, there are some curious similarities between Mr. Mivart
+and the Quarterly Reviewer, and these are sometimes so close, that, if Mr.
+Mivart thought it worth while, I think he might make out a good case of
+plagiarism against the Reviewer, who studiously abstains from quoting him.
+
+Both the Reviewer and Mr. Mivart reproach Mr. Darwin with being, "like so
+many other physicists," entangled in a radically false metaphysical system,
+and with setting at nought the first principles of both philosophy and
+religion. Both enlarge upon the necessity of a sound philosophical basis,
+and both, I venture to add, make a conspicuous exhibition of its absence.
+The Quarterly Reviewer believes that man "differs more from an elephant or
+a gorilla than do these from the dust of the earth on which they tread,"
+and Mr. Mivart has expressed the opinion that there is more difference
+between man and an ape than there is between an ape and a piece of granite.
+[Footnote: See the _Tablet_ for March 11, 1871.]
+
+And even when Mr. Mivart (p. 86) trips in a matter of anatomy, and creates
+a difficulty for Mr. Darwin out of a supposed close similarity between the
+eyes of fishes and cephalopods, which (as Gegenbaur and others have clearly
+shown) does not exist, the Quarterly Reviewer adopts the argument without
+hesitation (p. 66).
+
+There is another important point, however, in which it is hard to say
+whether Mr. Mivart diverges from the Quarterly Reviewer or not.
+
+The Reviewer declares that Mr. Darwin has, "with needless opposition, set
+at nought the first principles of both philosophy and religion" (p. 90).
+
+It looks, at first, as if this meant, that Mr. Darwin's views being false,
+the opposition to "religion" which flows from them must be needless. But I
+suspect this is not the right view of the meaning of the passage, as Mr.
+Mivart, from whom the Quarterly Reviewer plainly draws so much inspiration,
+tells us that "the consequences which have been drawn from evolution,
+whether exclusively Darwinian or not, to the prejudice of religion, by no
+means follow from it, and are in fact illegitimate" (p. 5).
+
+I may assume, then, that the Quarterly Reviewer and Mr. Mivart admit that
+there is no necessary opposition between "evolution whether exclusively
+Darwinian or not," and religion. But then, what do they mean by this last
+much-abused term? On this point the Quarterly Reviewer is silent. Mr.
+Mivart, on the contrary, is perfectly explicit, and the whole tenor of his
+remarks leaves no doubt that by "religion" he means theology; and by
+theology, that particular variety of the great Proteus, which is expounded
+by the doctors of the Roman Catholic Church, and held by the members of
+that religious community to be the sole form of absolute truth and of
+saving faith.
+
+According to Mr. Mivart, the greatest and most orthodox authorities upon
+matters of Catholic doctrine agree in distinctly asserting "derivative
+creation" or evolution; "and thus their teachings harmonise with all that
+modern science can possibly require" (p. 305).
+
+I confess that this bold assertion interested me more than anything else in
+Mr. Mivart's book. What little knowledge I possessed of Catholic doctrine,
+and of the influence exerted by Catholic authority in former times, had not
+led me to expect that modern science was likely to find a warm welcome
+within the pale of the greatest and most consistent of theological
+organisations.
+
+And my astonishment reached its climax when I found Mr. Mivart citing
+Father Suarez as his chief witness in favour of the scientific freedom
+enjoyed by Catholics--the popular repute of that learned theologian and
+subtle casuist not being such as to make his works a likely place of refuge
+for liberality of thought. But in these days, when Judas Iscariot and
+Robespierre, Henry VIII. and Catiline, have all been shown to be men of
+admirable virtue, far in advance of their age, and consequently the victims
+of vulgar prejudice, it was obviously possible that Jesuit Suarez might be
+in like case. And, spurred by Mr. Mivart's unhesitating declaration, I
+hastened to acquaint myself with such of the works of the great Catholic
+divine as bore upon the question, hoping, not merely to acquaint myself
+with the true teachings of the infallible Church, and free myself of an
+unjust prejudice; but, haply, to enable myself, at a pinch, to put some
+Protestant bibliolater to shame, by the bright example of Catholic freedom
+from the trammels of verbal inspiration.
+
+I regret to say that my anticipations have been cruelly disappointed. But
+the extent to which my hopes have been crushed can only be fully
+appreciated by citing, in the first place, those passages of Mr. Mivart's
+work by which they were excited. In his introductory chapter I find the
+following passages:--
+
+"The prevalence of this theory [of evolution] need alarm no one, for it is,
+without any doubt, perfectly consistent with the strictest and most
+orthodox Christian [Footnote: It should be observed that Mr. Mivart employs
+the term 'Christian' as if it were the equivalent of 'Catholic.'] theology"
+(p. 5).
+
+"Mr. Darwin and others may perhaps be excused if they have not devoted much
+time to the study of Christian philosophy; but they have no right to assume
+or accept without careful examination, as an unquestioned fact, that in
+that philosophy there is a necessary antagonism between the two ideas
+'creation' and 'evolution,' as applied to organic forms.
+
+"It is notorious and patent to all who choose to seek, that many
+distinguished Christian thinkers have accepted, and do accept, both ideas,
+_i.e._ both 'creation' and 'evolution.'
+
+"As much as ten years ago an eminently Christian writer observed: 'The
+creationist theory does not necessitate the perpetual search after
+manifestations of miraculous power and perpetual "catastrophes." Creation
+is not a miraculous interference with the laws of Nature, but the very
+institution of those laws. Law and regularity, not arbitrary intervention,
+was the patristic ideal of creation. With this notion they admitted,
+without difficulty, the most surprising origin of living creatures,
+provided it took place by _law_. They held that when God said, "Let
+the waters produce," "Let the earth produce," He conferred forces on the
+elements of earth and water which enabled them naturally to produce the
+various species of organic beings. This power, they thought, remains
+attached to the elements throughout all time.' The same writer quotes St.
+Augustin and St. Thomas Aquinas, to the effect that, 'in the institution of
+Nature, we do not look for miracles, but for the laws of Nature.' And,
+again, St. Basil speaks of the continued operation of natural laws in the
+production of all organisms.
+
+"So much for the writers of early and mediæval times. As to the present
+day, the author can confidently affirm that there are many as well versed
+in theology as Mr. Darwin is in his own department of natural knowledge,
+who would not be disturbed by the thorough demonstration of his theory.
+Nay, they would not even be in the least painfully affected at witnessing
+the generation of animals of complex organisation by the skilful artificial
+arrangement of natural forces, and the production, in the future, of a fish
+by means analogous to those by which we now produce urea.
+
+"And this because they know that the possibility of such phenomena, though
+by no means actually foreseen, has yet been fully provided for in the old
+philosophy centuries before Darwin, or even centuries before Bacon, and
+that their place in the system can be at once assigned them without even
+disturbing its order or marring its harmony.
+
+"Moreover, the old tradition in this respect has never been abandoned,
+however much it may have been ignored or neglected by some modern writers.
+In proof of this, it may be observed that perhaps no post-mediæval
+theologian has a wider reception amongst Christians throughout the world
+than Suarez, who has a separate section [Footnote: Suarez,
+_Metaphysica_. Edition Vivés. Paris, 1868, vol. i Disput. xv. § 2.] in
+opposition to those who maintain the distinct creation of the various
+kinds--or substantial forms--of organic life" (pp. 19-21).
+
+Still more distinctly does Mr. Mivart express himself in the same sense, in
+his last chapter, entitled "Theology and Evolution" (pp. 302-5).
+
+"It appears, then, that Christian thinkers are perfectly free to accept the
+general evolution theory. But are there any theological authorities to
+justify this view of the matter?
+
+"Now, considering how extremely recent are these biological speculations,
+it might hardly be expected _à priori_ that writers of earlier ages
+should have given expression to doctrines harmonising in any degree with
+such very modern views; nevertheless, this is certainly the case, and it
+would be easy to give numerous examples. It will be better, however, to
+cite one or two authorities of weight. Perhaps no writer of the earlier
+Christian ages could be quoted whose authority is more generally recognised
+than that of St. Augustin. The same may be said of the mediæval period for
+St. Thomas Aquinas: and since the movement of Luther, Suarez may be taken
+as an authority, widely venerated, and one whose orthodoxy has never been
+questioned.
+
+"It must be borne in mind that for a considerable time even after the last
+of these writers no one had disputed the generally received belief as to
+the small age of the world, or at least of the kinds of animals and plants
+inhabiting it. It becomes, therefore, much more striking if views formed
+under such a condition of opinion are found to harmonise with modern ideas
+concerning 'Creation' and organic Life.
+
+"Now St. Augustin insists in a very remarkable manner on the merely
+derivative sense in which God's creation of organic forms is to be
+understood; that is, that God created them by conferring on the material
+world the power to evolve them under suitable conditions."
+
+Mr. Mivart then cites certain passages from St. Augustin, St. Thomas
+Aquinas, and Cornelius à Lapide, and finally adds:--
+
+"As to Suarez, it will be enough to refer to Disp. xv. sec. 2, No. 9, p.
+508, t. i. edition Vivés, Paris; also Nos. 13-15. Many other references to
+the same effect could easily be given, but these may suffice.
+
+"It is then evident that ancient and most venerable theological authorities
+distinctly assert derivative creation, and thus their teachings harmonise
+with all that modern science can possibly require."
+
+It will be observed that Mr. Mivart refers solely to Suarez's fifteenth
+Disputation, though he adds, "Many other references to the same effect
+could easily be given." I shall look anxiously for these references in the
+third edition of the "Genesis of Species." For the present, all I can say
+is, that I have sought in vain, either in the fifteenth Disputation, or
+elsewhere, for any passage in Suarez's writings which, in the slightest
+degree, bears out Mr. Mivart's views as to his opinions. [Footnote: The
+edition of Suarez's _Disputationes_ from which the following citations
+are given, is Birckmann's, in two volumes folio, and is dated 1680.]
+
+The title of this fifteenth Disputation is "De causa formali substantiali,"
+and the second section of that Disputation (to which Mr. Mivart refers) is
+headed, "Quomodo possit forma substantialis fieri in materia et ex
+materia?"
+
+The problem which Suarez discusses in this place may be popularly stated
+thus: According to the scholastic philosophy every natural body has two
+components--the one its "matter" (_materia prima_), the other its
+"substantial form" (_forma substantialis_). Of these the matter is
+everywhere the same, the matter of one body being indistinguishable from
+the matter of any other body. That which differentiates any one natural
+body from all others is its substantial form, which inheres in the matter
+of that body, as the human soul inheres in the matter of the frame of man,
+and is the source of all the activities and other properties of the body.
+
+Thus, says Suarez, if water is heated, and the source of heat is then
+removed, it cools again. The reason of this is that there is a certain
+"_intimius principium_" in the water, which brings it back to the cool
+condition when the external impediment to the existence of that condition
+is removed. This _intimius principium_ is the "substantial form" of
+the water. And the substantial form of the water is not only the cause
+(_radix_) of the coolness of the water, but also of its moisture, of
+its density, and of all its other properties.
+
+It will thus be seen that "substantial forms" play nearly the same part in
+the scholastic philosophy as "forces" do in modern science; the general
+tendency of modern thought being to conceive all bodies as resolvable into
+material particles and forces, in virtue of which last these particles
+assume those dispositions and exercise those powers which are
+characteristic of each particular kind of matter.
+
+But the Schoolmen distinguished two kinds of substantial forms, the one
+spiritual and the other material. The former division is represented by the
+human soul, the _anima rationalis_; and they affirm as a matter, not
+merely of reason, but of faith, that every human soul is created out of
+nothing, and by this act of creation is endowed with the power of existing
+for all eternity, apart from the _materia prima_ of which the
+corporeal frame of man is composed. And the _anima rationalis_, once
+united with the _materia prima_ of the body, becomes its substantial
+form, and is the source of all the powers and faculties of man--of all the
+vital and sensitive phenomena which he exhibits--just as the substantial
+form of water is the source of all its qualities.
+
+The "material substantial forms" are those which inform all other natural
+bodies except that of man; and the object of Suarez in the present
+Disputation, is to show that the axiom "_ex nihilo nihil fit_," though
+not true of the substantial form of man, is true of the substantial forms
+of all other bodies, the endless mutations of which constitute the ordinary
+course of nature. The origin of the difficulty which he discusses is easily
+comprehensible. Suppose a piece of bright iron to be exposed to the air.
+The existence of the iron depends on the presence within it of a
+substantial form, which is the cause of its properties, _e.g._
+brightness, hardness, weight. But, by degrees, the iron becomes converted
+into a mass of rust, which is dull, and soft, and light, and, in all other
+respects, is quite different from the iron. As, in the scholastic view,
+this difference is due to the rust being informed by a new substantial
+form, the grave problem arises, how did this new substantial form come into
+being? Has it been created? or has it arisen by the power of natural
+causation? If the former hypothesis is correct, then the axiom, "_ex
+nihilo nihil fit_," is false, even in relation to the ordinary course of
+nature, seeing that such mutations of matter as imply the continual origin
+of new substantial forms are occurring every moment. But the harmonisation
+of Aristotle with theology was as dear to the Schoolmen, as the smoothing
+down the differences between Moses and science is to our Broad Churchmen,
+and they were proportionably unwilling to contradict one of Aristotle's
+fundamental propositions. Nor was their objection to flying in the face of
+the Stagirite likely to be lessened by the fact that such flight landed
+them in flat Pantheism.
+
+So Father Suarez fights stoutly for the second hypothesis; and I quote the
+principal part of his argumentation as an exquisite specimen of that speech
+which is a "darkening of counsel."
+
+"13. Secundo de omnibus aliis formis substantialibus [sc. materialibus]
+dicendum est non fieri proprie ex nihilo, sed ex potentia præjacentis
+materiæ educi: ideoque in effectione harum formarum nil fieri contra illud
+axioma, _Ex nihilo nihil fit_, si recte intelligatur. Hæc assertio
+sumitur ex Aristotele 1. Physicorum per totum et libro 7. Metaphyss. et ex
+aliis auctoribus, quos statim referam. Et declaratur breviter, nam fieri ex
+nihilo duo dicit, unum est fieri absolute et simpliciter, aliud est quod
+talis effectio fit ex nihilo. Primum propriè dicitur de re subsistente,
+quia ejus est fieri, cujus est esse: id autem proprie quod subsistit et
+habet esse; nam quod alteri adjacet, potius est quo aliud est. Ex hac ergo
+parte, formæ substantiales materiales non fiunt ex nihilo, quia proprie non
+fiunt. Atque hanc rationem reddit Divus Thomas 1 parte, quæstione 45,
+articulo 8, et quæstione 90, articulo 2, et ex dicendis magis explicabitur.
+Sumendo ergo ipsum _fieri_ in hac proprietate et rigore, sic fieri ex
+nihilo est fieri secundum se totum, id est nulla sui parte præsupposita, ex
+quo fiat. Et hac ratione res naturales dum de novo fiunt, non fiunt ex
+nihilo, quia fiunt ex præsupposita materia, ex qua componuntur, et ita non
+fiunt, secundum se totæ, sed secundum aliquid sui. Formæ autem harum rerum,
+quamvis revera totam suam entitatem de novo accipiant, quam antea non
+habebant, quia vero ipsæ non fiunt, ut dictum est, ideo neque ex nihilo
+fiunt. Attamen, quia latiori modo sumendo verbum illud _fieri_ negari
+non potest: quin forma facta sit, eo modo quo nunc est, et antea non erat,
+ut etiam probat ratio dubitandi posita in principio sectionis, ideo
+addendum est, sumpto _fieri_ in hac amplitudine, fieri ex nihilo non
+tamen negare habitudinem materialis causæ intrinsecè componentis id quod
+fit, sed etiam habitudinem causæ materialis per se causantis et
+sustentantis formam quæ fit, seu confit. Diximus enim in superioribus
+materiam et esse causam compositi et formæ dependentis ab illa: ut res ergo
+dicatur ex nihilo fieri uterque modus causalitatis negari debet; et eodem
+sensu accipiendum est illud axioma, ut sit verum: _Ex nihilo nihil
+fit_, scilicet virtute agentis naturalis et finiti nihil fieri, nisi ex
+præsupposito subjecto per se concurrente, et ad compositum et ad formam, si
+utrumque suo modo ab eodem agente fiat. Ex his ergo rectè concluditur,
+formas substantiales materiales non fieri ex nihilo, quia fiunt ex materia,
+quæ in suo genere per se concurrit, et influit ad esse, et fieri talium
+formarum; quia, sicut esse non possunt nisi affixae materiæ, a qua
+sustententur in esse: ita nec fieri possunt, nisi earum effectio et
+penetratio in eadem materia sustentetur. Et hæc est propria et per se
+differentia inter effectionem ex nihilo, et ex aliquo, propter quam, ut
+infra ostendemus, prior modus efficiendi superat vim finitam naturaliam
+agentium, non vero posterior.
+
+"14. Ex his etiam constat, proprie de his formis dici non creari, sed educi
+de potentia materiæ." [Footnote: Suarez, _loc. cit._ Disput. xv. §
+ii.]
+
+If I may venture to interpret these hard sayings, Suarez conceives that the
+evolution of substantial forms in the ordinary course of nature, is
+conditioned not only by the existence of the _materia prima_, but also
+by a certain "concurrence and influence" which that _materia_ exerts;
+and every new substantial form being thus conditioned, and in part, at any
+rate, caused, by a pre-existing something, cannot be said to be created out
+of nothing.
+
+But as the whole tenor of the context shows, Suarez applies this
+argumentation merely to the evolution of material substantial forms in the
+ordinary course of nature. How the substantial forms of animals and plants
+primarily originated, is a question to which, so far as I am able to
+discover, he does not so much as allude in his "Metaphysical Disputations."
+Nor was there any necessity that he should do so, inasmuch as he has
+devoted a separate treatise of considerable bulk to the discussion of all
+the problems which arise out of the account of the Creation which is given
+in the Book of Genesis. And it is a matter of wonderment to me that Mr.
+Mivart, who somewhat sharply reproves "Mr. Darwin and others" for not
+acquainting themselves with the true teachings of his Church, should allow
+himself to be indebted to a heretic like myself for a knowledge of the
+existence of that "Tractatus de opere sex Dierum," [Footnote: _Tractatus
+de opere sex Dierum, seu de Universi Creatione, quatenus sex diebus
+perfecta esse, in libro Genesis cap. i. refertur, et praesertim de
+productione hominis in statu innocentiae._ Ed. Birckmann, 1622.] in
+which the learned Father, of whom he justly speaks, as "an authority widely
+venerated, and whose orthodoxy has never been questioned," directly opposes
+all those opinions for which Mr. Mivart claims the shelter of his
+authority.
+
+In the tenth and eleventh chapters of the first book of this treatise,
+Suarez inquires in what sense the word "day," as employed in the first
+chapter of Genesis, is to be taken. He discusses the views of Philo and of
+Augustin on this question, and rejects them. He suggests that the approval
+of their allegorising interpretations by St. Thomas Aquinas, merely arose
+out of St. Thomas's modesty, and his desire not to seem openly to
+controvert St. Augustin--"voluisse Divus Thomas pro sua modestia
+subterfugere vim argumenti potius quam aperte Augustinum inconstantiæ
+arguere."
+
+Finally, Suarez decides that the writer of Genesis meant that the term
+"day" should be taken in its natural sense; and he winds up the discussion
+with the very just and natural remark that "it is not probable that God, in
+inspiring Moses to write a history of the Creation which was to be believed
+by ordinary people, would have made him use language, the true meaning of
+which it is hard to discover, and still harder to believe." [Footnote:
+"Propter hæc ergo sententia illa Augustini et propter nimiam obscuritatem
+et subtilitatem ejus difficilis creditu est: quia verisimile non est Deum
+inspirasse Moysi, ut historiam de creatione mundi ad fidem totius populi
+adeo necessariam per nomina dierum explicaret, quorum significatio vix
+inveniri et difficillime ab aliquo credi posset." (_Loc. cit._ Lib. I.
+cap. xi. 42.)]
+
+And in chapter xii. 3, Suarez further observes:--
+
+"Ratio enim retinendi veram significationem diei naturalis est illa
+communis, quod verba Scripturæ non sunt ad metaphoras transferenda, nisi
+vel necessitas cogit, vel ex ipsa scriptura constet, et maximè in historica
+narratione et ad instructionem fidei pertinente: sed hæc ratio non minus
+cogit ad intelligendum propriè dierum numerum, quam diei qualitatem, QUIA
+NON MINUS UNO MODO QUAM ALIO DESTRUITUR SINCERITAS, IMO ET VERITAS
+HISTORIÆ. Secundo hoc valde confirmant alia Scripturæ loca, in quibus hi
+sex dies tanquam veri, et inter se distincti commemorantur, ut Exod. 20
+dicitur, _Sex diebus operabis et facies omnia opera tua, septimo autem
+die Sabbatum Domini Dei tui est_. Et infra: _Sex enim diebus fecit
+Dominus cælum et terram et mare et omnia quæ in eis sunt_, et idem
+repetitur in cap. 31. In quibus locis sermonis proprietas colligi potest
+tum ex æquiparatione, nam cum dicitur: _sex diebus operabis_,
+propriissimè intelligitur: tum quia non est verisimile, potuisse populum
+intelligere verba illa in alio sensu, et è contrario incredibile est, Deum
+in suis præceptis tradendis illis verbis ad populum fuisse loquutum, quibus
+deciperetur, falsum sensum concipiendo, si Deus non per sex veros dies
+opera sua fecisset."
+
+These passages leave no doubt that this great doctor of the Catholic
+Church, of unchallenged authority and unspotted orthodoxy, not only
+declares it to be Catholic doctrine that the work of creation took place in
+the space of six natural days; but that he warmly repudiates, as
+inconsistent with our knowledge of the Divine attributes, the supposition
+that the language which Catholic faith requires the believer to hold that
+God inspired, was used in any other sense than that which He knew it would
+convey to the minds of those to whom it was addressed.
+
+And I think that in this repudiation Father Suarez will have the sympathy
+of every man of common uprightness, to whom it is certainly "incredible"
+that the Almighty should have acted in a manner which He would esteem
+dishonest and base in a man.
+
+But the belief that the universe was created in six natural days is
+hopelessly inconsistent with the doctrine of evolution, in so far as it
+applies to the stars and planetary bodies; and it can be made to agree with
+a belief in the evolution of living beings only by the supposition that the
+plants and animals, which are said to have been created on the third,
+fifth, and sixth days, were merely the primordial forms, or rudiments, out
+of which existing plants and animals have been evolved; so that, on these
+days, plants and animals were not created actually, but only potentially.
+
+The latter view is that held by Mr. Mivart, who follows St. Augustin, and
+implies that he has the sanction of Suarez. But, in point of fact, the
+latter great light of orthodoxy takes no small pains to give the most
+explicit and direct contradiction to all such imaginations, as the
+following passages prove. In the first place, as regards plants, Suarez
+discusses the problem:--
+
+"_Quomodo herba virens et cætera vegetabilia hoc_
+[_tertio_] _die fuerint producta_.
+[Footnote: _Loc. cit._ Lib. II. cap. vii. et viii. 1, 32, 35.]
+
+"Præcipua enim difficultas hîc est, quam attingit Div. Thomas 1, par. qu.
+69, art. 2, an hæc productio plantarum hoc die facta intelligenda sit de
+productione ipsarum in proprio esse actuali et formali (ut sic rem
+explicerem) vel de productione tantum in semine et in potentia. Nam Divus
+Augustinus libro quinto Genes, ad liter. cap. 4 et 5 et libro 8, cap. 3,
+posteriorem partem tradit, dicens, terram in hoc die accepisse virtutem
+germinandi omnia vegetabilia quasi concepto omnium illorum semine, non
+tamen statim vegetabilia omnia produxisse. Quod primo suadet verbis illis
+capitis secundi. _In die quo fecit Deus cælum et terram et omne virgultum
+agri priusquam germinaret_. Quomodo enim potuerunt virgulta fieri
+antequam terra germinaret nisi quia causaliter prius et quasi in radice,
+seu in semine facta sunt, et postea in actu producta? Secundo confirmari
+potest, quia verbum illud _germinet terra_ optimè exponitur
+potestativè ut sic dicam, id est accipiat terra vim germinandi. Sicut in
+eodem capite dicitur _crescite et multiplicamini_. Tertio potest
+confirmari, quia actualis productio vegetabilium non tam ad opus
+creationis, quam ad opus propagationis pertinet, quod postea factum est. Et
+hanc sententiam sequitur Eucherius lib. 1, in Gen. cap. 11, et illi faveat
+Glossa, interli. Hugo. et Lyran. dum verbum _germinet_ dicto modo
+exponunt. NIHILOMINUS CONTRARIA SENTENTIA TENENDA EST: SCILICET, PRODUXISSE
+DEUM HOC DIE HERBAM, ARBORES, ET ALIA VEGETABILIA ACTU IN PROPRIA SPECIE ET
+NATURA. Hæc est communis sententia Patrum.--Basil. homil. 5; Exæmer.
+Ambros. lib. 3; Exæmer. cap. 8, 11, et 16; Chrysost. homil. 5 in Gen.
+Damascene. lib. 2 de Fid. cap. 10; Theodor. Cyrilli. Bedæ, Glossæ ordinariæ
+et aliorum in Gen. Et idem sentit Divus Thomas, _supra_, solvens
+argumenta Augustini, quamvis propter reverentiam ejus quasi problematicè
+semper procedat. Denique idem sentiunt omnes qui in his operibus veram
+successionem et temporalem distinctionem agnoscant."
+
+Secondly, with respect to animals, Suarez is no less decided:--
+
+"_De animalium ratione carentium productione quinto et sexto die
+facta_. [Footnote: _Loc. cit_. Lib. II. cap. vii. et viii. 1, 32,
+35.]
+
+"32. Primo ergo nobis certum sit hæc animantia non in virtute tantum aut in
+semine, sed actu, et in seipsis, facta fuisse his diebus in quibus facta
+narrantur. Quanquam Augustinus lib. 3, Gen. ad liter, cap. 5 in sua
+persistens sententia contrarium sentire videatur."
+
+But Suarez proceeds to refute Augustin's opinions at great length, and his
+final judgment may be gathered from the following passage:--
+
+"35. Tertio dicendum est, hæc animalia omnia his diebus producta esse, IN
+PERFECTO STATU, IN SINGULIS INDIVIDUIS, SEU SPECIEBUS SUIS, JUXTA
+UNIUSCUJUSQUE NATURAM.... ITAQUE FUERUNT OMNIA CREATA INTEGRA ET OMNIBUS
+SUIS MEMBRIS PERFECTA."
+
+As regards the creation of animals and plants, therefore, it is clear that
+Suarez, so far from "distinctly asserting derivative creating," denies it
+as distinctly and positively as he can; that he is at much pains to refute
+St. Augustin's opinions; that he does not hesitate to regard the faint
+acquiescence of St. Thomas Aquinas in the views of his brother saint as a
+kindly subterfuge on the part of Divus Thomas; and that he affirms his own
+view to be that which is supported by the authority of the Fathers of the
+Church. So that, when Mr. Mivart tells us that Catholic theology is in
+harmony with all that modern science can possibly require; that "to the
+general theory of evolution, and to the special Darwinian form of it, no
+exception ... need be taken on the ground of orthodoxy;" and that "law and
+regularity, not arbitrary intervention, was the Patristic ideal of
+creation," we have to choose between his dictum, as a theologian, and that
+of a great light of his Church, whom he himself declares to be "widely
+venerated as an authority, and whose orthodoxy has never been questioned."
+
+But Mr. Mivart does not hesitate to push his attempt to harmonise science
+with Catholic orthodoxy to its utmost limit; and, while assuming that the
+soul of man "arises from immediate and direct creation," he supposes that
+his body was "formed at first (as now in each separate individual) by
+derivative, or secondary creation, through natural laws" (p. 331).
+
+This means, I presume, that an animal, having the corporeal form and bodily
+powers of man, may have been developed out of some lower form of life by a
+process of evolution; and that, after this anthropoid animal had existed
+for a longer or shorter time, God made a soul by direct creation, and put
+it into the manlike body, which, heretofore, had been devoid of that
+_anima rationalis_, which is supposed to be man's distinctive
+character.
+
+This hypothesis is incapable of either proof or disproof, and therefore may
+be true; but if Suarez is any authority, it is not Catholic doctrine.
+"Nulla est in homine forma educta de potentia materiæ," [Footnote: Disput.
+xv. § x. No. 27.] is a dictum which is absolutely inconsistent with the
+doctrine of the natural evolution of any vital manifestation of the human
+body.
+
+Moreover, if man existed as an animal before he was provided with a
+rational soul, he must, in accordance with the elementary requirements of
+the philosophy in which Mr. Mivart delights, have possessed a distinct
+sensitive and vegetative soul, or souls. Hence, when the "breath of life"
+was breathed into the manlike animal's nostrils, he must have already been
+a living and feeling creature. But Suarez particularly discusses this
+point, and not only rejects Mr. Mivart's view, but adopts language of very
+theological strength regarding it.
+
+"Possent præterea his adjungi argumenta theologica, ut est illud quod
+sumitur ex illis verbis Genes. 2. _Formavit Deus hominem ex limo terræ et
+inspiravit in faciem ejus spiraculum vitæ et factus est homo in animam
+viventem_: ille enim spiritus, quam Deus spiravit, anima rationalis
+fuit, et PER EADEM FACTUS EST HOMO VIVENS, ET CONSQUENTER, ETIAM SENTIENS.
+
+"Aliud est ex VIII. Synodo Generali quæ est Constantinopolitana IV. can.
+11, qui sic habet. _Apparet quosdam in tantum impietatis venisse ut
+homines duas animas habere dogmatizent: talis igitur impietatis inventores
+et similes sapientes, cum Vetus et Novum Testamentum omnesque Ecclesiæ
+patres unam animam rationalem hominem habere asseverent, Sancta et
+universalis Synodus anathematizat_." [FOOTNOTE: Disput. xv. "De causa
+formali substantiali," § x. No. 24.]
+
+Moreover, if the animal nature of man was the result of evolution, so must
+that of woman have been. But the Catholic doctrine, according to Suarez, is
+that woman was, in the strictest and most literal sense of the words, made
+out of the rib of man.
+
+"Nihilominus sententia Catholica est, verba illa Scripturæ esse ad literam
+intelligenda. AC PROINDE VERE, AC REALITER, TULISSE DEUM COSTAM ADAMÆ, ET,
+EX ILLA, CORPUS EVÆ FORMASSE." [Footnote: _Tractatus de Opere_, Lib.
+III. "De hominis creatione," cap. ii. No. 3.]
+
+Nor is there any escape in the supposition that some woman existed before
+Eve, after the fashion of the Lilith of the rabbis; since Suarez qualifies
+that notion, along with some other Judaic imaginations, as simply
+"damnabilis." [Footnote: _Ibid_. Lib. III. cap. iv. Nos. 8 and 9]
+
+After the perusal of the "Tractatus de Opere" it is, in fact, impossible to
+admit that Suarez held any opinion respecting the origin of species, except
+such as is consistent with the strictest and most literal interpretation of
+the words of Genesis. For Suarez, it is Catholic doctrine, that the world
+was made in six natural days. On the first of these days the _materia
+prima_ was made out of nothing, to receive afterwards those "substantial
+forms" which moulded it into the universe of things; on the third day, the
+ancestors of all living plants suddenly came into being, full-grown,
+perfect, and possessed of all the properties which now distinguish them;
+while, on the fifth and sixth days, the ancestors of all existing animals
+were similarly caused to exist in their complete and perfect state, by the
+infusion of their appropriate material substantial forms into the matter
+which had already been created. Finally, on the sixth day, the _anima
+rationalis_--that rational and immortal substantial form which is
+peculiar to man--was created out of nothing, and "breathed into" a mass of
+matter which, till then, was mere dust of the earth, and so man arose. But
+the species man was represented by a solitary male individual, until the
+Creator took out one of his ribs and fashioned it into a female.
+
+This is the view of the "Genesis of Species" held by Suarez to be the only
+one consistent with Catholic faith: it is because he holds this view to be
+Catholic that he does not hesitate to declare St. Augustin unsound, and St.
+Thomas Aquinas guilty of weakness, when the one swerved from this view and
+the other tolerated the deviation. And, until responsible Catholic
+authority--say, for example, the Archbishop of Westminster--formally
+declares that Suarez was wrong, and that Catholic priests are free to teach
+their flocks that the world was _not_ made in six natural days, and
+that plants and animals were _not_ created in their perfect and
+complete state, but have been evolved by natural processes through long
+ages from certain germs in which they were potentially contained, I, for
+one, shall feel bound to believe that the doctrines of Suarez are the only
+ones which are sanctioned by Infallible Authority, as represented by the
+Holy Father and the Catholic Church.
+
+I need hardly add that they are as absolutely denied and repudiated by
+Scientific Authority, as represented by Reason and Fact. The question
+whether the earth and the immediate progenitors of its present living
+population were made in six natural days or not is no longer one upon which
+two opinions can be held.
+
+The fact that it did not so come into being stands upon as sound a basis as
+any fact of history whatever. It is not true that existing plants and
+animals came into being within three days of the creation of the earth out
+of nothing, for it is certain that innumerable generations of other plants
+and animals lived upon the earth before its present population. And when,
+Sunday after Sunday, men who profess to be our instructors in righteousness
+read out the statement, "In six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the
+sea, and all that in them is," in innumerable churches, they are either
+propagating what they may easily know, and, therefore, are bound to know,
+to be falsities; or, if they use the words in some non-natural sense, they
+fall below the moral standard of the much-abused Jesuit.
+
+Thus far the contradiction between Catholic verity and Scientific verity is
+complete and absolute, quite independently of the truth or falsehood of the
+doctrine of evolution. But, for those who hold the doctrine of evolution,
+all the Catholic verities about the creation of living beings must be no
+less false. For them, the assertion that the progenitors of all existing
+plants were made on the third day, of animals on the fifth and sixth days,
+in the forms they now present, is simply false. Nor can they admit that man
+was made suddenly out of the dust of the earth; while it would be an insult
+to ask an evolutionist whether he credits the preposterous fable respecting
+the fabrication of woman to which Suarez pins his faith. If Suarez has
+rightly stated Catholic doctrine, then is evolution utter heresy. And such
+I believe it to be. In addition to the truth of the doctrine of evolution,
+indeed, one of its greatest merits in my eyes, is the fact that it occupies
+a position of complete and irreconcilable antagonism to that vigorous and
+consistent enemy of the highest intellectual, moral, and social life of
+mankind--the Catholic Church. No doubt, Mr. Mivart, like other putters of
+new wine into old bottles, is actuated by motives which are worthy of
+respect, and even of sympathy; but his attempt has met with the fate which
+the Scripture prophesies for all such.
+
+Catholic theology, like all theologies which are based upon the assumption
+of the truth of the account of the origin of things given in the Book of
+Genesis, being utterly irreconcilable with the doctrine of evolution, the
+student of science, who is satisfied that the evidence upon which the
+doctrine of evolution rests, is incomparably stronger and better than that
+upon which the supposed authority of the Book of Genesis rests, will not
+trouble himself further with these theologies, but will confine his
+attention to such arguments against the view he holds as are based upon
+purely scientific data--and by scientific data I do not merely mean the
+truths of physical, mathematical, or logical science, but those of moral
+and metaphysical science. For by science I understand all knowledge which
+rests upon evidence and reasoning of a like character to that which claims
+our assent to ordinary scientific propositions. And if any one is able to
+make good the assertion that his theology rests upon valid evidence and
+sound reasoning, then it appears to me that such theology will take its
+place as a part of science.
+
+The present antagonism between theology and science does not arise from any
+assumption by the men of science that all theology must necessarily be
+excluded from science, but simply because they are unable to allow that
+reason and morality have two weights and two measures; and that the belief
+in a proposition, because authority tells you it is true, or because you
+wish to believe it, which is a high crime and misdemeanour when the subject
+matter of reasoning is of one kind, becomes under the _alias_ of
+"faith" the greatest of all virtues when the subject matter of reasoning is
+of another kind.
+
+The Bishop of Brechin said well the other day:--"Liberality in religion--I
+do not mean tender and generous allowances for the mistakes of others--is
+only unfaithfulness to truth." [Footnote: Charge at the Diocesan Synod of
+Brechin. _Scotsman_, Sept. 14, 1871.] And, with the same
+qualification, I venture to paraphrase the Bishop's dictum:
+"Ecclesiasticism in science is only unfaithfulness to truth."
+
+Elijah's great question, "Will you serve God or Baal? Choose ye," is
+uttered audibly enough in the ears of every one of us as we come to
+manhood. Let every man who tries to answer it seriously ask himself whether
+he can be satisfied with the Baal of authority, and with all the good
+things his worshippers are promised in this world and the next. If he can,
+let him, if he be so inclined, amuse himself with such scientific
+implements as authority tells him are safe and will not cut his fingers;
+but let him not imagine he is, or can be, both a true son of the Church and
+a loyal soldier of science.
+
+And, on the other hand, if the blind acceptance of authority appears to him
+in its true colours, as mere private judgment _in excelsis_, and if he
+have the courage to stand alone, face to face with the abyss of the eternal
+and unknowable, let him be content, once for all, not only to renounce the
+good things promised by "Infallibility," but even to bear the bad things
+which it prophesies; content to follow reason and fact in singleness and
+honesty of purpose, wherever they may lead, in the sure faith that a hell
+of honest men will, to him, be more endurable than a paradise full of
+angelic shams.
+
+Mr. Mivart asserts that "without a belief in a personal God there is no
+religion worthy of the name." This is a matter of opinion. But it may be
+asserted, with less reason to fear contradiction, that the worship of a
+personal God, who, on Mr. Mivart's hypothesis, must have used language
+studiously calculated to deceive His creatures and worshippers, is "no
+religion worthy of the name." "Incredible est, Deum illis verbis ad populum
+fuisse locutum quibus deciperetur," is a verdict in which, for once, Jesuit
+casuistry concurs with the healthy moral sense of all mankind.
+
+Having happily got quit of the theological aspect of evolution, the
+supporter of that great truth who turns to the scientific objections which
+are brought against it by recent criticism, finds, to his relief, that the
+work before him is greatly lightened by the spontaneous retreat of the
+enemy from nine-tenths of the territory which he occupied ten years ago.
+Even the Quarterly Reviewer not only abstains from venturing to deny that
+evolution has taken place, but he openly admits that Mr. Darwin has forced
+on men's minds "a recognition of the probability, if not more, of
+evolution, and of the certainty of the action of natural selection" (p.
+49).
+
+I do not quite see, myself, how, if the action of natural selection is
+_certain_, the occurrence of evolution is only _probable_;
+inasmuch as the development of a new species by natural selection is, so
+far as it goes, evolution. However, it is not worth while to quarrel with
+the precise terms of a sentence which shows that the high water mark of
+intelligence among those most respectable of Britons, the readers of the
+_Quarterly Review_, has now reached such a level that the next tide
+may lift them easily and pleasantly on the once-dreaded shore of evolution.
+Nor, having got there, do they seem likely to stop, until they have reached
+the inmost heart of that great region, and accepted the ape ancestry of, at
+any rate, the body of man. For the Reviewer admits that Mr. Darwin can be
+said to have established:
+
+"That if the various kinds of lower animals have been evolved one from the
+other by a process of natural generation or evolution, then it becomes
+highly probable, _a priori_, that man's body has been similarly
+evolved; but this, in such a case, becomes equally probable from the
+admitted fact that he is an animal at all" (p. 65).
+
+From the principles laid down in the last sentence it would follow that if
+man were constructed upon a plan as different from that of any other animal
+as that of a sea-urchin is from that of a whale, it would be "equally
+probable" that he had been developed from some other animal as it is now,
+when we know that for every bone, muscle, tooth, and even pattern of tooth,
+in man, there is a corresponding bone, muscle, tooth, and pattern of tooth,
+in an ape. And this shows one of two things--either that the Quarterly
+Reviewer's notions of probability are peculiar to himself, or that he has
+such an overpowering faith in the truth of evolution that no extent of
+structural break between one animal and another is sufficient to destroy
+his conviction that evolution has taken place.
+
+But this by the way. The importance of the admission that there is nothing
+in man's physical structure to interfere with his having been evolved from
+an ape is not lessened because it is grudgingly made and inconsistently
+qualified. And instead of jubilating over the extent of the enemy's
+retreat, it will be more worth while to lay siege to his last
+stronghold--the position that there is a distinction in kind between the
+mental faculties of man and those of brutes, and that in consequence of
+this distinction in kind no gradual progress from the mental faculties of
+the one to those of the other can have taken place.
+
+The Quarterly Reviewer entrenches himself within formidable-looking
+psychological outworks, and there is no getting at him without attacking
+them one by one.
+
+He begins by laying down the following proposition. "'Sensation' is not
+'thought,' and no amount of the former would constitute the most
+rudimentary condition of the latter, though sensations supply the
+conditions for the existence of 'thought' or 'knowledge'" (p. 67).
+
+This proposition is true, or not, according to the sense in which the word
+"thought" is employed. Thought is not uncommonly used in a sense
+co-extensive with consciousness, and, especially, with those states of
+consciousness we call memory. If I recall the impression made by a colour
+or an odour, and distinctly remember blueness or muskiness, I may say with
+perfect propriety that I "think of" blue or musk; and, so long as the
+thought lasts, it is simply a faint reproduction of the state of
+consciousness to which I gave the name in question, when it first became
+known to me as a sensation.
+
+Now, if that faint reproduction of a sensation, which we call the memory of
+it, is properly termed a thought, it seems to me to be a somewhat forced
+proceeding to draw a hard and fast line of demarcation between thoughts and
+sensations. If sensations are not rudimentary thoughts, it may be said that
+some thoughts are rudimentary sensations. No amount of sound constitutes an
+echo, but for all that no one would pretend that an echo is something of
+totally different nature from a sound. Again, nothing can be looser, or
+more inaccurate, than the assertion that "sensations supply the conditions
+for the existence of thought or knowledge." If this implies that sensations
+supply the conditions for the existence of our memory of sensations or of
+our thoughts about sensations, it is a truism which it is hardly worth
+while to state so solemnly. If it implies that sensations supply anything
+else, it is obviously erroneous. And if it means, as the context would seem
+to show it does, that sensations are the subject-matter of all thought or
+knowledge, then it is no less contrary to fact, inasmuch as our emotions,
+which constitute a large part of the subject-matter of thought or of
+knowledge, are not sensations.
+
+More eccentric still is the Quarterly Reviewer's next piece of psychology.
+
+"Altogether, we may clearly distinguish at least six kinds of action to
+which the nervous system ministers:--
+
+"I. That in which impressions received result in appropriate movements
+without the intervention of sensation or thought, as in the cases of injury
+above given.--This is the reflex action of the nervous system.
+
+"II. That in which stimuli from without result in sensations through the
+agency of which their due effects are wrought out.--Sensation.
+
+"III. That in which impressions received result in sensations which give
+rise to the observation of sensible objects.--Sensible perception.
+
+"IV. That in which sensations and perceptions continue to coalesce,
+agglutinate, and combine in more or less complex aggregations, according to
+the laws of the association of sensible perceptions.--Association.
+
+"The above four groups contain only indeliberate operations, consisting, as
+they do at the best, but of mere _presentative_ sensible ideas in no
+way implying any reflective or _representative_ faculty. Such actions
+minister to and form _Instinct_. Besides these, we may distinguish two
+other kinds of mental action, namely:--
+
+"V. That in which sensations and sensible perceptions are reflected on by
+thought, and recognised as our own, and we ourselves recognised by
+ourselves as affected and perceiving.--Self-consciousness.
+
+"VI. That in which we reflect upon our sensations or perceptions, and ask
+what they are, and why they are.--Reason.
+
+"These two latter kinds of action are deliberate operations, performed, as
+they are, by means of representative ideas implying the use of a
+_reflective representative_ faculty. Such actions distinguish the
+_intellect_ or rational faculty. Now, we assert that possession in
+perfection of all the first four (_presentative_) kinds of action by
+no means implies the possession of the last two (_representative_)
+kinds. All persons, we think, must admit the truth of the following
+proposition:--
+
+"Two faculties are distinct, not in degree but _in kind_, if we may
+possess the one in perfection without that fact implying that we possess
+the other also. Still more will this be the case if the two faculties tend
+to increase in an inverse ratio. Yet this is the distinction between the
+_instinctive_ and the _intellectual_ parts of man's nature.
+
+"As to animals, we fully admit that they may possess all the first four
+groups of actions--that they may have, so to speak, mental images of
+sensible objects combined in all degrees of complexity, as governed by the
+laws of association. We deny to them, on the other hand, the possession of
+the last two kinds of mental action. We deny them, that is, the power of
+reflecting on their own existences, or of inquiring into the nature of
+objects and their causes. We deny that they know that they know or know
+themselves in knowing. In other words, we deny them _reason_. The
+possession of the presentative faculty, as above explained, in no way
+implies that of the reflective faculty; nor does any amount of direct
+operation imply the power of asking the reflective question before
+mentioned, as to 'what' and 'why.'" (_Loc. cit_. pp. 67, 68.)
+
+Sundry points are worthy of notice in this remarkable account of the
+intellectual powers. In the first place the Reviewer ignores emotion and
+volition, though they are no inconsiderable "kinds of action to which the
+nervous system ministers," and memory has a place in his classification
+only by implication. Secondly, we are told that the second "kind of action
+to which the nervous system ministers" is "that in which stimuli from
+without result in sensations through the agency of which their due effects
+are wrought out.--Sensation." Does this really mean that, in the writer's
+opinion, "sensation" is the "agent" by which the "due effect" of the
+stimulus, which gives rise to sensation, is "wrought out"? Suppose somebody
+runs a pin into me. The "due effect" of that particular stimulus will
+probably be threefold; namely, a sensation of pain, a start, and an
+interjectional expletive. Does the Quarterly Reviewer really think that the
+"sensation" is the "agent" by which the other two phenomena are wrought
+out?
+
+But these matters are of little moment to anyone but the Reviewer and those
+persons who may incautiously take their physiology, or psychology, from
+him. The really interesting point is this, that when he fully admits that
+animals "may possess all the first four groups of actions," he grants all
+that is necessary for the purposes of the evolutionist. For he hereby
+admits that in animals "impressions received result in sensations which
+give rise to the observation of sensible objects," and that they have what
+he calls "sensible perception." Nor was it possible to help the admission;
+for we have as much reason to ascribe to animals, as we have to attribute
+to our fellow-men, the power, not only of perceiving external objects as
+external, and thus practically recognizing the difference between the self
+and the not-self; but that of distinguishing between like and unlike, and
+between simultaneous and successive things. When a gamekeeper goes out
+coursing with a greyhound in leash, and a hare crosses the field of vision,
+he becomes the subject of those states of consciousness we call visual
+sensation, and that is all he receives from without. Sensation, as such,
+tells him nothing whatever about the cause of these states of
+consciousness; but the thinking faculty instantly goes to work upon the raw
+material of sensation furnished to it through the eye, and gives rise to a
+train of thoughts. First comes the thought that there is an object at a
+certain distance; then arises another thought--the perception of the
+likeness between the states of consciousness awakened by this object to
+those presented by memory, as, on some former occasion, called up by a
+hare; this is succeeded by another thought of the nature of an
+emotion--namely, the desire to possess the hare; then follows a longer or
+shorter train of other thoughts, which end in a volition and an act--the
+loosing of the greyhound from the leash. These several thoughts are the
+concomitants of a process which goes on in the nervous system of the man.
+Unless the nerve-elements of the retina, of the optic nerve, of the brain,
+of the spinal cord, and of the nerves of the arms, went through certain
+physical changes in due order and correlation, the various states of
+consciousness which have been enumerated would not make their appearance.
+So that in this, as in all other intellectual operations, we have to
+distinguish two sets of successive changes--one in the physical basis of
+consciousness, and the other in consciousness itself; one set which may,
+and doubtless will, in course of time, be followed through all their
+complexities by the anatomist and the physicist, and one of which only the
+man himself can have immediate knowledge.
+
+As it is very necessary to keep up a clear distinction between these two
+processes, let the one be called _neurosis_, and the other
+_psychosis_. When the gamekeeper was first trained to his work every
+step in the process of neurosis was accompanied by a corresponding step in
+that of psychosis, or nearly so. He was conscious of seeing something,
+conscious of making sure it was a hare, conscious of desiring to catch it,
+and therefore to loose the greyhound at the right time, conscious of the
+acts by which he let the dog out of the leash. But with practice, though
+the various steps of the neurosis remain--for otherwise the impression on
+the retina would not result in the loosing of the dog--the great majority
+of the steps of the psychosis vanish, and the loosing of the dog follows
+unconsciously, or as we say, without thinking about it, upon the sight of
+the hare. No one will deny that the series of acts which originally
+intervened between the sensation and the letting go of the dog were, in the
+strictest sense, intellectual and rational operations. Do they cease to be
+so when the man ceases to be conscious of them? That depends upon what is
+the essence and what the accident of those operations, which, taken
+together, constitute ratiocination.
+
+Now ratiocination is resolvable into predication, and predication consists
+in marking, in some way, the existence, the co-existence, the succession,
+the likeness and unlikeness, of things or their ideas. Whatever does this,
+reasons; and if a machine produces the effects of reason, I see no more
+ground for denying to it the reasoning power, because it is unconscious,
+than I see for refusing to Mr. Babbage's engine the title of a calculating
+machine on the same grounds.
+
+Thus it seems to me that a gamekeeper reasons, whether he is conscious or
+unconscious, whether his reasoning is carried on by neurosis alone, or
+whether it involves more or less psychosis. And if this is true of the
+gamekeeper, it is also true of the greyhound. The essential resemblances in
+all points of structure and function, so far as they can be studied,
+between the nervous system of the man and that of the dog, leave no
+reasonable doubt that the processes which go on in the one are just like
+those which take place in the other. In the dog, there can be no doubt that
+the nervous matter which lies between the retina and the muscles undergoes
+a series of changes, precisely analogous to those which, in the man, give
+rise to sensation, a train of thought, and volition.
+
+Whether this neurosis is accompanied by such psychosis as ours it is
+impossible to say; but those who deny that the nervous changes, which, in
+the dog, correspond with those which underlie thought in a man, are
+accompanied by consciousness, are equally bound to maintain that those
+nervous changes in the dog, which correspond with those which underlie
+sensation in a man, are also unaccompanied by consciousness. In other
+words, if there is no ground for believing that a dog thinks, neither is
+there any for believing that he feels.
+
+As is well known, Descartes boldly faced this dilemma, and maintained that
+all animals were mere machines and entirely devoid of consciousness. But he
+did not deny, nor can anyone deny, that in this case they are reasoning
+machines, capable of performing all those operations which are performed by
+the nervous system of man when he reasons. For even supposing that in man,
+and in man only, psychosis is superadded to neurosis--the neurosis which is
+common to both man and animal gives their reasoning processes a fundamental
+unity. But Descartes' position is open to very serious objections if the
+evidence that animals feel is insufficient to prove that they really do so.
+What is the value of the evidence which leads one to believe that one's
+fellow-man feels? The only evidence in this argument of analogy is the
+similarity of his structure and of his actions to one's own. And if that is
+good enough to prove that one's fellow-man feels, surely it is good enough
+to prove that an ape feels. For the differences of structure and function
+between men and apes are utterly insufficient to warrant the assumption
+that while men have those states of consciousness we call sensations apes
+have nothing of the kind. Moreover, we have as good evidence that apes are
+capable of emotion and volition as we have that men other than ourselves
+are. But if apes possess three out of the four kinds of states of
+consciousness which we discover in ourselves, what possible reason is there
+for denying them the fourth? If they are capable of sensation, emotion, and
+volition, why are they to be denied thought (in the sense of predication)?
+
+No answer has ever been given to these questions. And as the law of
+continuity is as much opposed, as is the common sense of mankind, to the
+notion that all animals are unconscious machines, it may safely be assumed
+that no sufficient answer ever will be given to them.
+
+There is every reason to believe that consciousness is a function of
+nervous matter, when that nervous matter has attained a certain degree of
+organisation, just as we know the other "actions to which the nervous
+system ministers," such as reflex action and the like, to be. As I have
+ventured to state my view of the matter elsewhere, "our thoughts are the
+expression of molecular changes in that matter of life which is the source
+of our other vital phenomena."
+
+Mr. Wallace objects to this statement in the following terms:--
+
+"Not having been able to find any clue in Professor Huxley's writings to
+the steps by which he passes from those vital phenomena, which consist
+only, in their last analysis, of movements by particles of matter, to those
+other phenomena which we term thought, sensation, or consciousness; but,
+knowing that so positive an expression of opinion from him will have great
+weight with many persons, I shall endeavour to show, with as much brevity
+as is compatible with clearness, that this theory is not only incapable of
+proof, but is also, as it appears to me, inconsistent with accurate
+conceptions of molecular physics."
+
+With all respect for Mr. Wallace, it appears to me that his remarks are
+entirely beside the question. I really know nothing whatever, and never
+hope to know anything, of the steps by which the passage from molecular
+movement to states of consciousness is effected; and I entirely agree with
+the sense of the passage which he quotes from Professor Tyndall, apparently
+imagining that it is in opposition to the view I hold.
+
+All that I have to say is, that, in my belief, consciousness and molecular
+action are capable of being expressed by one another, just as heat and
+mechanical action are capable of being expressed in terms of one another.
+Whether we shall ever be able to express consciousness in foot-pounds, or
+not, is more than I will venture to say; but that there is evidence of the
+existence of some correlation between mechanical motion and consciousness,
+is as plain as anything can be. Suppose the poles of an electric battery to
+be connected by a platinum wire. A certain intensity of the current gives
+rise in the mind of a bystander to that state of consciousness we call a
+"dull red light"--a little greater intensity to another which we call a
+"bright red light;" increase the intensity, and the light becomes white;
+and, finally, it dazzles, and a new state of consciousness arises, which we
+term pain. Given the same wire and the same nervous apparatus, and the
+amount of electric force required to give rise to these several states of
+consciousness will be the same, however often the experiment is repeated.
+And as the electric force, the light waves, and the nerve-vibrations caused
+by the impact of the light-waves on the retina, are all expressions of the
+molecular changes which are taking place in the elements of the battery; so
+consciousness is, in the same sense, an expression of the molecular changes
+which take place in that nervous matter, which is the organ of
+consciousness.
+
+And, since this, and any number of similar examples that may be required,
+prove that one form of consciousness, at any rate, is, in the strictest
+sense, the expression of molecular change, it really is not worth while to
+pursue the inquiry, whether a fact so easily established is consistent with
+any particular system of molecular physics or not.
+
+Mr. Wallace, in fact, appears to me to have mixed up two very distinct
+propositions: the one, the indisputable truth that consciousness is
+correlated with molecular changes in the organ of consciousness; the other,
+that the nature of that correlation is known, or can be conceived, which is
+quite another matter. Mr. Wallace, presumably, believes in that correlation
+of phenomena which we call cause and effect as firmly as I do. But if he
+has ever been able to form the faintest notion how a cause gives rise to
+its effect, all I can say is that I envy him. Take the simplest case
+imaginable--suppose a ball in motion to impinge upon another ball at rest.
+I know very well, as a matter of fact, that the ball in motion will
+communicate some of its motion to the ball at rest, and that the motion of
+the two balls, after collision, is precisely correlated with the masses of
+both balls and the amount of motion of the first. But how does this come
+about? In what manner can we conceive that the _vis viva_ of the first
+ball passes into the second? I confess I can no more form any conception of
+what happens in this case, than I can of what takes place when the motion
+of particles of my nervous matter, caused by the impact of a similar ball
+gives rise to the state of consciousness I call pain. In ultimate analysis
+everything is incomprehensible, and the whole object of science is simply
+to reduce the fundamental incomprehensibilities to the smallest possible
+number.
+
+But to return to the Quarterly Reviewer. He admits that animals have
+"mental images of sensible objects, combined in all degrees of complexity,
+as governed by the laws of association." Presumably, by this confused and
+imperfect statement the Reviewer means to admit more than the words imply.
+For mental images of sensible objects, even though "combined in all degrees
+of complexity," are, and can be, nothing more than mental images of
+sensible objects. But judgments, emotions, and volitions cannot by any
+possibility be included under the head of "mental images of sensible
+objects." If the greyhound had no better mental endowment than the Reviewer
+allows him, he might have the "mental image" of the "sensible object"--the
+hare--and that might be combined with the mental images of other sensible
+objects, to any degree of complexity, but he would have no power of judging
+it to be at a certain distance from him; no power of perceiving its
+similarity to his memory of a hare; and no desire to get at it.
+Consequently he would stand stock still, and the noble art of coursing
+would have no existence. On the other hand, as that art is largely
+practised, it follows that greyhounds alone possess a number of mental
+powers, the existence of which, in any animal, is absolutely denied by the
+Quarterly Reviewer.
+
+Finally, what are the mental powers which he reserves as the especial
+prerogative of man? They are two. First, the recognition of "ourselves by
+ourselves as affected and perceiving.--Self-consciousness."
+
+Secondly. "The reflection upon our sensations and perceptions, and asking
+what they are and why they are.--Reason."
+
+To the faculty defined in the last sentence, the Reviewer, without
+assigning the least ground for thus departing from both common usage and
+technical propriety, applies the name of reason. But if man is not to be
+considered a reasoning being, unless he asks what his sensations and
+perceptions are, and why they are, what is a Hottentot, or an Australian
+"black-fellow"; or what the "swinked hedger" of an ordinary agricultural
+district? Nay, what becomes of an average country squire or parson? How
+many of these worthy persons who, as their wont is, read the _Quarterly
+Review_, would do other than stand agape, if you asked them whether they
+had ever reflected what their sensations and perceptions are and why they
+are?
+
+So that if the Reviewer's new definition of reason be correct, the majority
+of men, even among the most civilised nations, are devoid of that supreme
+characteristic of manhood. And if it be as absurd as I believe it to be,
+then, as reason is certainly not self-consciousness, and since it, as
+certainly, is one of the "actions to which the nervous system ministers,"
+we must, if the Reviewer's classification is to be adopted, seek it among
+those four faculties which he allows animals to possess. And thus, for the
+second time, he really surrenders, while seeming to defend, his position.
+
+The Quarterly Reviewer, as we have seen, lectures the evolutionists upon
+their want of knowledge of philosophy altogether. Mr. Mivart is not less
+pained at Mr. Darwin's ignorance of moral science. It is grievous to him
+that Mr. Darwin (and _nous autres_) should not have grasped the
+elementary distinction between material and formal morality; and he lays
+down as an axiom, of which no tyro ought to be ignorant, the position that
+"acts, unaccompanied by mental acts of conscious will directed towards the
+fulfilment of duty," are "absolutely destitute of the most incipient degree
+of real or formal goodness."
+
+Now this may be Mr. Mivart's opinion, but it is a proposition which really
+does not stand on the footing of an undisputed axiom. Mr. Mill denies it in
+his work on Utilitarianism. The most influential writer of a totally
+opposed school, Mr. Carlyle, is never weary of denying it, and upholding
+the merit of that virtue which is unconscious; nay, it is, to my
+understanding, extremely hard to reconcile Mr. Mivart's dictum with that
+noble summary of the whole duty of man--"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God
+with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength; and
+thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." According to Mr. Mivart's
+definition, the man who loves God and his neighbour, and, out of sheer love
+and affection for both, does all he can to please them, is, nevertheless,
+destitute of a particle of real goodness.
+
+And it further happens that Mr. Darwin, who is charged by Mr. Mivart with
+being ignorant of the distinction between material and formal goodness,
+discusses the very question at issue in a passage which is well worth
+reading (vol. i. p. 87), and also comes to a conclusion opposed to Mr.
+Mivart's axiom. A proposition which has been so much disputed and
+repudiated, should, under no circumstances, have been thus confidently
+assumed to be true. For myself, I utterly reject it, inasmuch as the
+logical consequence of the adoption of any such principle is the denial of
+all moral value to sympathy and affection. According to Mr. Mivart's axiom,
+the man who, seeing another struggling in the water, leaps in at the risk
+of his own life to save him, does that which is "destitute of the most
+incipient degree of real goodness," unless, as he strips off his coat, he
+says to himself, "Now, mind, I am going to do this because it is my duty
+and for no other reason;" and the most beautiful character to which
+humanity can attain, that of the man who does good without thinking about
+it, because he loves justice and mercy and is repelled by evil, has no
+claim on our moral approbation. The denial that a man acts morally because
+he does not think whether he does so or not, may be put upon the same
+footing as the denial of the title of an arithmetician to the calculating
+boy, because he did not know how he worked his sums. If mankind ever
+generally accept and act upon Mr. Mivart's axiom, they will simply become a
+set of most unendurable prigs; but they never have accepted it, and I
+venture to hope that evolution has nothing so terrible in store for the
+human race.
+
+But if an action, the motive of which is nothing but affection or sympathy,
+may be deserving of moral approbation and really good, who that has ever
+had a dog of his own will deny that animals are capable of such actions?
+Mr. Mivart indeed says:--"It may be safely affirmed, however, that there is
+no trace in brutes of any actions simulating morality which are not
+explicable by the fear of punishment, by the hope of pleasure, or by
+personal affection" (p. 221). But it may be affirmed, with equal truth,
+that there is no trace in men of any actions which are not traceable to the
+same motives. If a man does anything, he does it either because he fears to
+be punished if he does not do it, or because he hopes to obtain pleasure by
+doing it, or because he gratifies his affections [Footnote: In separating
+pleasure and the gratification of affection, I simply follow Mr. Mivart
+without admitting the justice of the separation.] by doing it.
+
+Assuming the position of the absolute moralists, let it be granted that
+there is a perception of right and wrong innate in every man. This means,
+simply, that when certain ideas are presented to his mind, the feeling of
+approbation arises; and when certain others, the feeling of disapprobation.
+To do your duty is to earn the approbation of your conscience, or moral
+sense; to fail in your duty is to feel its disapprobation, as we all say.
+Now, is approbation a pleasure or a pain? Surely a pleasure. And is
+disapprobation a pleasure or a pain? Surely a pain. Consequently, all that
+is really meant by the absolute moralists is that there is, in the very
+nature of man, something which enables him to be conscious of these
+particular pleasures and pains. And when they talk of immutable and eternal
+principles of morality, the only intelligible sense which I can put upon
+the words, is that the nature of man being what it is, he always has been,
+and always will be, capable of feeling these particular pleasures and
+pains. _À priori,_ I have nothing to say against this proposition.
+Admitting its truth, I do not see how the moral faculty is on a different
+footing from any of the other faculties of man. If I choose to say that it
+is an immutable and eternal law of human nature that "ginger is hot in the
+mouth," the assertion has as much foundation of truth as the other, though
+I think it would be expressed in needlessly pompous language. I must
+confess that I have never been able to understand why there should be such
+a bitter quarrel between the intuitionists and the utilitarians. The
+intuitionist is, after all, only a utilitarian who believes that a
+particular class of pleasures and pains has an especial importance, by
+reason of its foundation in the nature of man, and its inseparable
+connection with his very existence as a thinking being. And as regards the
+motive of personal affection: Love, as Spinoza profoundly says, is the
+association of pleasure with that which is loved. [Footnote: "Nempe, Amor
+nihil aliud est, quam Lætitia, concomitante idea causæ
+externæ."--_Ethices_, III. xiii.] Or, to put it to the common sense of
+mankind, is the gratification of affection a pleasure or a pain? Surely a
+pleasure. So that whether the motive which leads us to perform an action is
+the love of our neighbour, or the love of God, it is undeniable that
+pleasure enters into that motive.
+
+Thus much in reply to Mr. Mivart's arguments. I cannot but think that it is
+to be regretted that he ekes them out by ascribing to the doctrines of the
+philosophers with whom he does not agree, logical consequences which have
+been over and over again proved not to flow from them: and when reason
+fails him, tries the effect of an injurious nickname. According to the
+views of Mr. Spencer, Mr. Mill, and Mr. Darwin, Mr. Mivart tells us,
+"_virtue is a mere kind of retrieving:_" and, that we may not miss the
+point of the joke, he puts it in italics. But what if it is? Does that make
+it less virtue? Suppose I say that sculpture is a "mere way" of
+stone-cutting, and painting a "mere way" of daubing canvas, and music a
+"mere way" of making a noise, the statements are quite true; but they only
+show that I see no other method of depreciating some of the noblest aspects
+of humanity than that of using language in an inadequate and misleading
+sense about them. And the peculiar inappropriateness of this particular
+nickname to the views in question, arises from the circumstance which Mr.
+Mivart would doubtless have recollected, if his wish to ridicule had not
+for the moment obscured his judgment--that whether the law of evolution
+applies to man or not, that of hereditary transmission certainly does. Mr.
+Mivart will hardly deny that a man owes a large share of the moral
+tendencies which he exhibits to his ancestors; and the man who inherits a
+desire to steal from a kleptomaniac, or a tendency to benevolence from a
+Howard, is, so far as he illustrates hereditary transmission, comparable to
+the dog who inherits the desire to fetch a duck out of the water from his
+retrieving sire. So that, evolution, or no evolution, moral qualities are
+comparable to a "kind of retrieving;" though the comparison, if meant for
+the purposes of casting obloquy on evolution, does not say much for the
+fairness of those who make it.
+
+The Quarterly Reviewer and Mr. Mivart base their objections to the
+evolution of the mental faculties of man from those of some lower animal
+form upon what they maintain to be a difference in kind between the mental
+and moral faculties of men and brutes; and I have endeavoured to show, by
+exposing the utter unsoundness of their philosophical basis, that these
+objections are devoid of importance.
+
+The objections which Mr. Wallace brings forward to the doctrine of the
+evolution of the mental faculties of man from those of brutes by natural
+causes, are of a different order, and require separate consideration.
+
+If I understand him rightly, he by no means doubts that both the bodily and
+the mental faculties of man have been evolved from those of some lower
+animal; but he is of opinion that some agency beyond that which has been
+concerned in the evolution of ordinary animals has been operative in the
+case of man. "A superior intelligence has guided the development of man in
+a definite direction and for a special purpose, just as man guides the
+development of many animal and vegetable forms." [Footnote: "The Limits of
+Natural Selection as applied to Man" (_loc. cit._ p. 359).] I
+understand this to mean that, just as the rock-pigeon has been produced by
+natural causes, while the evolution of the tumbler from the blue rock has
+required the special intervention of the intelligence of man, so some
+anthropoid form may have been evolved by variation and natural selection;
+but it could never have given rise to man, unless some superior
+intelligence had played the part of the pigeon-fancier.
+
+According to Mr. Wallace, "whether we compare the savage with the higher
+developments of man, or with the brutes around him, we are alike driven to
+the conclusion, that, in his large and well-developed brain, he possesses
+an organ quite disproportioned to his requirements" (p. 343); and he asks,
+"What is there in the life of the savage but the satisfying of the cravings
+of appetite in the simplest and easiest way? What thoughts, idea, or
+actions are there that raise him many grades above the elephant or the
+ape?" (p. 342.) I answer Mr. Wallace by citing a remarkable passage which
+occurs in his instructive paper on "Instinct in Man and Animals."
+
+"Savages make long journeys in many directions, and, their whole faculties
+being directed to the subject, they gain a wide and accurate knowledge of
+the topography, not only of their own district, but of all the regions
+round about. Every one who has travelled in a new direction communicates
+his knowledge to those who have travelled less, and descriptions of routes
+and localities, and minute incidents of travel, form one of the main
+staples of conversation around the evening fire. Every wanderer or captive
+from another tribe adds to the store of information, and, as the very
+existence of individuals and of whole families and tribes depends upon the
+completeness of this knowledge, all the acute perceptive faculties of the
+adult savage are directed to acquiring and perfecting it. The good hunter
+or warrior thus comes to know the bearing of every hill and mountain range,
+the directions and junctions of all the streams, the situation of each
+tract characterised by peculiar vegetation, not only within the area he has
+himself traversed, but perhaps for a hundred miles around it. His acute
+observation enables him to detect the slightest undulations of the surface,
+the various changes of subsoil and alterations in the character of the
+vegetation that would be quite imperceptible to a stranger. His eye is
+always open to the direction in which he is going; the mossy side of trees,
+the presence of certain plants under the shade of rocks, the morning and
+evening flight of birds, are to him indications of direction almost as sure
+as the sun in the heavens" (pp. 207, 208).
+
+I have seen enough of savages to be able to declare that nothing can be
+more admirable than this description of what a savage has to learn. But it
+is incomplete. Add to all this the knowledge which a savage is obliged to
+gain of the properties of plants, of the characters and habits of animals,
+and of the minute indications by which their course is discoverable:
+consider that even an Australian can make excellent baskets and nets, and
+neatly fitted and beautifully balanced spears; that he learns to use these
+so as to be able to transfix a quartern loaf at sixty yards; and that very
+often, as in the case of the American Indians, the language of a savage
+exhibits complexities which a well-trained European finds it difficult to
+master: consider that every time a savage tracks his game he employs a
+minuteness of observation, and an accuracy of inductive and deductive
+reasoning which, applied to other matters, would assure some reputation to
+a man of science, and I think we need ask no further why he possesses such
+a fair supply of brains. In complexity and difficulty, I should say that
+the intellectual labour of a "good hunter or warrior" considerably exceeds
+that of an ordinary Englishman. The Civil Service Examiners are held in
+great terror by young Englishmen; but even their ferocity never tempted
+them to require a candidate to possess such a knowledge of a parish as Mr.
+Wallace justly points out savages may possess of an area a hundred miles or
+more in diameter.
+
+But suppose, for the sake of argument, that a savage has more brains than
+seems proportioned to his wants, all that can be said is that the objection
+to natural selection, if it be one, applies quite as strongly to the lower
+animals. The brain of a porpoise is quite wonderful for its mass, and for
+the development of the cerebral convolutions. And yet since we have ceased
+to credit the story of Arion, it is hard to believe that porpoises are much
+troubled with intellect: and still more difficult is it to imagine that
+their big brains are only a preparation for the advent of some accomplished
+cetacean of the future. Surely, again, a wolf must have too much brains, or
+else how is it that a dog with only the same quantity and form of brain is
+able to develop such singular intelligence? The wolf stands to the dog in
+the same relation as the savage to the man; and, therefore, if Mr.
+Wallace's doctrine holds good, a higher power must have superintended the
+breeding up of wolves from some inferior stock, in order to prepare them to
+become dogs.
+
+Mr. Wallace further maintains that the origin of some of man's mental
+faculties by the preservation of useful variations is not possible. Such,
+for example, are "the capacity to form ideal conceptions of space and time,
+of eternity and infinity; the capacity for intense artistic feelings of
+pleasure in form, colour, and composition; and for those abstract notions
+of form and number which render geometry and arithmetic possible." "How,"
+he asks, "were all or any of these faculties first developed, when they
+could have been of no possible use to man in his early stages of
+barbarism?"
+
+Surely the answer is not far to seek. The lowest savages are as devoid of
+any such conceptions as the brutes themselves. What sort of conceptions of
+space and time, of form and number, can be possessed by a savage who has
+not got so far as to be able to count beyond five or six, who does not know
+how to draw a triangle or a circle, and has not the remotest notion of
+separating the particular quality we call form, from the other qualities of
+bodies? None of these capacities are exhibited by men, unless they form
+part of a tolerably advanced society. And, in such a society, there are
+abundant conditions by which a selective influence is exerted in favour of
+those persons who exhibit an approximation towards the possession of these
+capacities.
+
+The savage who can amuse his fellows by telling a good story over the
+nightly fire, is held by them in esteem and rewarded, in one way or
+another, for so doing--in other words, it is an advantage to him to possess
+this power. He who can carve a paddle, or the figure-head of a canoe
+better, similarly profits beyond his duller neighbour. He who counts a
+little better than others, gets most yams when barter is going on, and
+forms the shrewdest estimate of the numbers of an opposing tribe. The
+experience of daily life shows that the conditions of our present social
+existence exercise the most extraordinarily powerful selective influence in
+favour of novelists, artists, and strong intellects of all kinds; and it
+seems unquestionable that all forms of social existence must have had the
+same tendency, if we consider the indisputable facts that even animals
+possess the power of distinguishing form and number, and that they are
+capable of deriving pleasure from particular forms and sounds. If we admit,
+as Mr. Wallace does, that the lowest savages are not raised "many grades
+above the elephant and the ape;" and if we further admit, as I contend must
+be admitted, that the conditions of social life tend, powerfully, to give
+an advantage to those individuals who vary in the direction of intellectual
+or æsthetic excellence, what is there to interfere with the belief that
+these higher faculties, like the rest, owe their development to natural
+selection?
+
+Finally, with respect to the development of the moral sense out of the
+simple feelings of pleasure and pain, liking and disliking, with which the
+lower animals are provided, I can find nothing in Mr. Wallace's reasonings
+which has not already been met by Mr. Mill, Mr. Spencer, or Mr. Darwin.
+
+I do not propose to follow the Quarterly Reviewer and Mr. Mivart through
+the long string of objections in matters of detail which they bring against
+Mr. Darwin's views. Every one who has considered the matter carefully will
+be able to ferret out as many more "difficulties"; but he will also, I
+believe, fail as completely as they appear to me to have done, in bringing
+forward any fact which is really contradictory of Mr. Darwin's views.
+Occasionally, too, their objections and criticisms are based upon errors of
+their own. As, for example, when Mr. Mivart and the Quarterly Reviewer
+insist upon the resemblances between the eyes of _Cephalopoda_ and
+_Vertebrata_, quite forgetting that there are striking and altogether
+fundamental differences between them; or when the Quarterly Reviewer
+corrects Mr. Darwin for saying that the gibbons, "without having been
+taught, can walk or run upright with tolerable quickness, though they move
+awkwardly, and much less securely than man." The Quarterly Reviewer says,
+"This is a little misleading, inasmuch as it is not stated that this
+upright progression is effected by placing the enormously long arms behind
+the head, or holding them out backwards as a balance in progression."
+
+Now, before carping at a small statement like this, the Quarterly Reviewer
+should have made sure that he was quite right. But he happens to be quite
+wrong. I suspect he got his notion of the manner in which a gibbon walks
+from a citation in "Man's Place in Nature." But at that time I had not seen
+a gibbon walk. Since then I have, and I can testify that nothing can be
+more precise than Mr. Darwin's statement. The gibbon I saw walked without
+either putting his arms behind his head or holding them out backwards. All
+he did was to touch the ground with the outstretched fingers of his long
+arms now and then, just as one sees a man who carries a stick, but does not
+need one, touch the ground with it as he walks along.
+
+Again, a large number of the objections brought forward by Mr. Mivart and
+the Quarterly Reviewer apply to evolution in general, quite as much as to
+the particular form of that doctrine advocated by Mr. Darwin; or, to their
+notions of Mr. Darwin's views and not to what they really are. An excellent
+example of this class of difficulties is to be found in Mr. Mivart's
+chapter on "Independent Similarities of Structure." Mr. Mivart says that
+these cannot be explained by an "absolute and pure Darwinian," but "that an
+innate power and evolutionary law, aided by the corrective action of
+natural selection, should have furnished like needs with like aids, is not
+at all improbable" (p. 82).
+
+I do not exactly know what Mr. Mivart means by an "absolute and pure
+Darwinian;" indeed Mr. Mivart makes that creature hold so many singular
+opinions that I doubt if I can ever have seen one alive. But I find nothing
+in his statement of the view which he imagines to be originated by himself,
+which is really inconsistent with what I understand to be Mr. Darwin's
+views.
+
+I apprehend that the foundation of the theory of natural selection is the
+fact that living bodies tend incessantly to vary. This variation is neither
+indefinite, nor fortuitous, nor does it take place in all directions, in
+the strict sense of these words.
+
+Accurately speaking, it is not indefinite, nor does it take place in all
+directions, because it is limited by the general characters of the type to
+which the organism exhibiting the variation belongs. A whale does not tend
+to vary in the direction of producing feathers, nor a bird in the direction
+of developing whalebone. In popular language there is no harm in saying
+that the waves which break upon the sea-shore are indefinite, fortuitous,
+and break in all directions. In scientific language, on the contrary, such
+a statement would be a gross error, inasmuch as every particle of foam is
+the result of perfectly definite forces, operating according to no less
+definite laws. In like manner, every variation of a living form, however
+minute, however apparently accidental, is inconceivable except as the
+expression of the operation of molecular forces or "powers" resident within
+the organism. And, as these forces certainly operate according to definite
+laws, their general result is, doubtless, in accordance with some general
+law which subsumes them all. And there appears to be no objection to call
+this an "evolutionary law." But nobody is the wiser for doing so, or has
+thereby contributed, in the least degree, to the advance of the doctrine of
+evolution, the great need of which is a theory of variation.
+
+When Mr. Mivart tells us that his "aim has been to support the doctrine
+that these species have been evolved by ordinary _natural laws_ (for
+the most part unknown), aided by the _subordinate_ action of 'natural
+selection'" (pp. 332-3), he seems to be of opinion that his enterprise has
+the merit of novelty. All I can say is that I have never had the slightest
+notion that Mr. Darwin's aim is in any way different from this. If I affirm
+that "species have been evolved by variation [Footnote: Including under
+this head hereditary transmission.] (a natural process, the laws of which
+are for the most part unknown), aided by the subordinate action of natural
+selection," it seems to me that I enunciate a proposition which constitutes
+the very pith and marrow of the first edition of the "Origin of Species."
+And what the evolutionist stands in need of just now, is not an iteration
+of the fundamental principle of Darwinism, but some light upon the
+questions, What are the limits of variation? and, If a variety has arisen,
+can that variety be perpetuated, or even intensified, when selective
+conditions are indifferent, or perhaps unfavourable to its existence? I
+cannot find that Mr. Darwin has ever been very dogmatic in answering these
+questions. Formerly, he seems to have inclined to reply to them in the
+negative, while now his inclination is the other way. Leaving aside those
+broad questions of theology, philosophy, and ethics, by the discussion of
+which neither the Quarterly Reviewer nor Mr. Mivart can be said to have
+damaged Darwinism--whatever else they have injured--this is what their
+criticisms come to. They confound a struggle for some rifle-pits with an
+assault on the fortress.
+
+In some respects, finally, I can only characterise the Quarterly Reviewer's
+treatment of Mr. Darwin as alike unjust and unbecoming. Language of this
+strength requires justification, and on that ground I add the remarks which
+follow.
+
+The Quarterly Reviewer opens his essay by a careful enumeration of all
+those points upon which, during the course of thirteen years of incessant
+labour, Mr. Darwin has modified his opinions. It has often and justly been
+remarked, that what strikes a candid student of Mr. Darwin's works is not
+so much his industry, his knowledge, or even the surprising fertility of
+his inventive genius; but that unswerving truthfulness and honesty which
+never permit him to hide a weak place, or gloss over a difficulty, but lead
+him, on all occasions, to point out the weak places in his own armour, and
+even sometimes, it appears to me, to make admissions against himself which
+are quite unnecessary. A critic who desires to attack Mr. Darwin has only
+to read his works with a desire to observe, not their merits, but their
+defects, and he will find, ready to hand, more adverse suggestions than are
+likely ever to have suggested themselves to his own sharpness, without Mr.
+Darwin's self-denying aid.
+
+Now this quality of scientific candour is not so common that it needs to be
+discouraged; and it appears to me to deserve other treatment than that
+adopted by the Quarterly Reviewer, who deals with Mr. Darwin as an Old
+Bailey barrister deals with a man against whom he wishes to obtain a
+conviction, _per fas aut nefas_, and opens his case by endeavouring to
+create a prejudice against the prisoner in the minds of the jury. In his
+eagerness to carry out this laudable design, the Quarterly Reviewer cannot
+even state the history of the doctrine of natural selection without an
+oblique and entirely unjustifiable attempt to depreciate Mr. Darwin. "To
+Mr. Darwin," says he, "and (through Mr. Wallace's reticence) to Mr. Darwin
+alone, is due the credit of having first brought it prominently forward and
+demonstrated its truth." No one can less desire than I do, to throw a doubt
+upon Mr. Wallace's originality, or to question his claim to the honour of
+being one of the originators of the doctrine of natural selection; but the
+statement that Mr. Darwin has the sole credit of originating the doctrine
+because of Mr. Wallace's reticence is simply ridiculous. The proof of this
+is, in the first place, afforded by Mr. Wallace himself, whose noble
+freedom from petty jealousy in this matter smaller folk would do well to
+imitate, and who writes thus:--"I have felt all my life, and I still feel,
+the most sincere satisfaction that Mr. Darwin had been at work long before
+me and that it was not left for me to attempt to write the 'Origin of
+Species.' I have long since measured my own strength, and know well that it
+would be quite unequal to that task." So that if there was any reticence at
+all in the matter, it was Mr. Darwin's reticence during the long twenty
+years of study which intervened between the conception and the publication
+of his theory, which gave Mr. Wallace the chance of being an independent
+discoverer of the importance of natural selection. And, finally, if it be
+recollected that Mr. Darwin's and Mr. Wallace's essays were published
+simultaneously in the "Journal of the Linnæan Society" for 1858, it follows
+that the Reviewer, while obliquely depreciating Mr. Darwin's deserts, has
+in reality awarded to him a priority which, in legal strictness, does not
+exist.
+
+Mr. Mivart, whose opinions so often concur with those of the Quarterly
+Reviewer, puts the case in a way, which I much regret to be obliged to say,
+is, in my judgment, quite as incorrect; though the injustice may be less
+glaring. He says that the theory of natural selection is, in general,
+exclusively associated with the name of Mr. Darwin, "on account of the
+noble self-abnegation of Mr. Wallace." As I have said, no one can honour
+Mr. Wallace more than I do, both for what he has done and for what he has
+not done, in his relation to Mr. Darwin. And perhaps nothing is more
+creditable to him than his frank declaration that he could not have written
+such a work as the "Origin of Species." But, by this declaration, the
+person most directly interested in the matter repudiates, by anticipation,
+Mr. Mivart's suggestion that Mr. Darwin's eminence is more or less due to
+Mr. Wallace's modesty.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+EVOLUTION IN BIOLOGY
+
+[1878]
+
+
+In the former half of the eighteenth century, the term "evolution" was
+introduced into biological writings, in order to denote the mode in which
+some of the most eminent physiologists of that time conceived that the
+generations of living things took place; in opposition to the hypothesis
+advocated, in the preceding century, by Harvey in that remarkable work
+[Footnote: The _Exercitationes de Generatione Animalium_, which Dr.
+George Ent extracted from him and published in 1651.] which would give him
+a claim to rank among the founders of biological science, even had he not
+been the discoverer of the circulation of the blood.
+
+One of Harvey's prime objects is to defend and establish, on the basis of
+direct observation, the opinion already held by Aristotle; that, in the
+higher animals at any rate, the formation of the new organism by the
+process of generation takes place, not suddenly, by simultaneous accretion
+of rudiments of all, or of the most important, of the organs of the adult;
+nor by sudden metamorphosis of a formative substance into a miniature of
+the whole, which subsequently grows; but by _epigenesis_, or
+successive differentiation of a relatively homogeneous rudiment into the
+parts and structures which are characteristic of the adult.
+
+"Et primò, quidem, quoniam per _epigenesin_ sive partium
+superexorientium additamentum pullum fabricari certum est: quænam pars ante
+alias omnes exstruatur, et quid de illa ejusque generandi modo observandum
+veniat, dispiciemus. Ratum sane est et in ovo manifestè apparet quod
+_Aristoteles_ de perfectorum animalium generatione enuntiat: nimirum,
+non omnes partes simul fieri, sed ordine aliam post aliam; primùmque
+existere particulam genitalem, cujus virtute postea (tanquam ex principio
+quodam) reliquæ omnes partes prosiliant. Qualem in plantarum seminibus
+(fabis, putà, aut glandibus) gemmam sive apicem protuberantem cernimus,
+totius futuræ arboris principium. _Estque hæc particula, velut filius
+emancipatus seorsumquc collocatus, et principium per se vivens; unde
+postea, membrorum ordo describitur; et quæcunque ad absolvendum animal
+pertinent, disponuntur._ [Footnote: _De Generatione Animalium_,
+lib. ii. cap. x.] Quoniam enim _nulla pars se ipsam generat; sed postquam
+generata est, se ipsam jam auget; ideo eam primùm oriri necesse est, quæ
+principium augendi contineat (sive enim planta, sive animal est, æque
+omnibus inest quod vim habeat vegetandi, sive nutriendi_), [Footnote:
+_De Generatione_, lib. ii. cap. iv.] simulque reliquas omnes partes
+suo quamque ordine distinguat et formet; proindeque in eadem primogenita
+particula anima primario inest, sensus, motusque, et totius vitæ auctor et
+principium." (Exercitatio 51.)
+
+Harvey proceeds to contrast this view with that of the "Medici," or
+followers of Hippocrates and Galen, who, "badly philosophising," imagined
+that the brain, the heart, and the liver were simultaneously first
+generated in the form of vesicles; and, at the same time, while expressing
+his agreement with Aristotle in the principle of epigenesis, he maintains
+that it is the blood which is the primal generative part, and not, as
+Aristotle thought, the heart.
+
+In the latter part of the seventeenth century, the doctrine of epigenesis,
+thus advocated by Harvey, was controverted, on the ground of direct
+observation, by Malpighi, who affirmed that the body of the chick is to be
+seen in the egg, before the _punctum sanguineum_ makes it appearance.
+But, from this perfectly correct observation a conclusion which is by no
+means warranted was drawn; namely, that the chick, as a whole, really
+exists in the egg antecedently to incubation; and that what happens in the
+course of the latter process is no addition of new parts, "alias post alias
+natas," as Harvey puts it, but a simple expansion, or unfolding, of the
+organs which already exist, though they are too small and inconspicuous to
+be discovered. The weight of Malpighi's observations therefore fell into
+the scale of that doctrine which Harvey terms _metamorphosis_, in
+contradistinction to epigenesis.
+
+The views of Malpighi were warmly welcomed, on philosophical grounds, by
+Leibnitz, [Footnote: "Cependant, pour revenir aux formes ordinaires ou aux
+âmes matérielles, cette durée qu'il leur faut attribuer à la place de celle
+qu'on avoit attribuée aux atomes pourroit faire douter si elles ne vont pas
+de corps en corps; ce qui seroit la métempsychose, à peu près comme
+quelques philosophes ont cru la transmission du mouvement et celle des
+espèces. Mais cette imagination est bien éloignée de la nature des choses.
+Il n'y a point de tel passage; et c'est ici où les transformations de
+Messieurs Swammerdam, Malpighi, et Leewenhoek, qui sont des plus excellens
+observateurs de notre tems, sont venues à mon secours, et m'ont fait
+admettre plus aisément, que l'animal, et toute autre substance organisée ne
+commence point lorsque nous le croyons, et que sa generation apparente
+n'est qu'une développement et une espèce d'augmentation. Aussi ai je
+remarqué que l'auteur de la _Recherche de la Verité_, M. Regis, M.
+Hartsoeker, et d'autres habiles hommes n'ont pas été fort éloignés de ce
+sentiment." Leibnitz, _Système Nouveau de la Nature_, 1695. The
+doctrine of "Embôitement" is contained in the _Considérations sur le
+Principe de Vie_, 1705; the preface to the _Theodicée_, 1710; and
+the _Principes de la Nature et de la Grace_ (§ 6), 1718.] who found in
+them a support to his hypothesis of monads, and by Malebranche; [Footnote:
+"Il est vrai que la pensée la plus raisonnable et la plus conforme à
+l'experience sur cette question très difficile de la formation du foetus;
+c'est que les enfans sont déja presque tout formés avant même l'action par
+laquelle ils sont conçus; et que leurs mères ne font que leur donner
+l'accroissement ordinaire dans le temps de la grossesse." _De la
+Recherche de la Verité_, livre ii. chap. vii. p. 334, 7th ed., 1721.]
+while, in the middle of the eighteenth century, not only speculative
+considerations, but a great number of new and interesting observations on
+the phenomena of generation, led the ingenious Bonnet, and Haller,
+[Footnote: The writer is indebted to Dr. Allen Thomson for reference to the
+evidence contained in a note to Haller's edition of Boerhaave's
+_Prælectiones Academicæ_, vol. v. pt. ii. p. 497, published in 1744,
+that Haller originally advocated epigenesis.] the first physiologist of the
+age, to adopt, advocate, and extend them.
+
+Bonnet affirms that, before fecundation, the hen's egg contains an
+excessively minute but complete chick; and that fecundation and incubation
+simply cause this germ to absorb nutritious matters, which are deposited in
+the interstices of the elementary structures of which the miniature chick,
+or germ, is made up. The consequence of this intussusceptive growth is the
+"development" or "evolution" of the germ into the visible bird. Thus an
+organised individual (_tout organisé_) "is a composite body consisting
+of the original, or _elementary_, parts and of the matters which have
+been associated with them by the aid of nutrition;" so that, if these
+matters could be extracted from the individual (_tout_), it would, so
+to speak, become concentrated in a point, and would thus be restored to its
+primitive condition of a _germ_; "just as by extracting from a bone
+the calcareous substance which is the source of its hardness, it is reduced
+to its primitive state of gristle or membrane." [Footnote:
+_Considérations sur les Corps organisés, chap. x.] "Evolution" and
+"development" are, for Bonnet, synonymous terms; and since by "evolution"
+he means simply the expansion of that which was invisible into visibility,
+he was naturally led to the conclusion, at which Leibnitz had arrived by a
+different line of reasoning, that no such thing as generation, in the
+proper sense of the word, exists in Nature. The growth of an organic being
+is simply a process of enlargement as a particle of dry gelatine may be
+swelled up by the intussusception of water; its death is a shrinkage, such
+as the swelled jelly might undergo on desiccation. Nothing really new is
+produced in the living world, but the germs which develop have existed
+since the beginning of things; and nothing really dies, but, when what we
+call death takes place, the living thing shrinks back into its germ state.
+[Footnote: Bonnet had the courage of his opinions, and in the
+_Palingénésie Philosophique_, part vi. chap, iv., he develops a
+hypothesis which he terms "évolution naturelle;" and which, making
+allowance for his peculiar views of the nature of generation, bears no
+small resemblance to what is understood by "evolution" at the present
+day:--
+
+"Si la volonté divine a créé par un seul Acte l'Universalité des êtres,
+d'où venoient ces plantes et ces animaux dont Moyse nous decrit la
+Production au troisieme et au cinquieme jour du renouvellement de notre
+monde?
+
+"Abuserois-je de la liberté de conjectures si je disois, que les Plantes et
+les Animaux qui existent aujourd'hui sont parvenus par une sorte
+d'evolution naturelle des Etres organises qui peuplaient ce premier Monde,
+sorti immédiatement des MAINS du CREATEUR?...
+
+"Ne supposons que trois révolutions. La Terre vient de sortir des MAINS du
+CREATEUR. Des causes preparées par sa SAGESSE font développer de toutes
+parts les Germes. Les Etres organisés commencent à jouir de l'existence.
+Ils étoient probablement alors bien différens de ce qu'ils sont
+aujourd'hui. Ils l'etoient autant que ce premier Monde différoit de celui
+que nous habitons. Nous manquons de moyens pour juger de ces dissemblances,
+et peut-être que le plus habile Naturaliste qui auroit été placé dans ce
+premier Monde y auroit entièrement méconnu nos Plantes et nos Animaux."]
+
+The two parts of Bonnet's hypothesis, namely, the doctrine that all living
+things proceed from pre-existing germs, and that these contain, one
+inclosed within the other, the germs of all future living things, which is
+the hypothesis of "_emboîtement_;" and the doctrine that every germ
+contains in miniature all the organs of the adult, which is the hypothesis
+of evolution or development, in the primary senses of these words, must be
+carefully distinguished. In fact, while holding firmly by the former,
+Bonnet more or less modified the latter in his later writings, and, at
+length, he admits that a "germ" need not be an actual miniature of the
+organism; but that it may be merely an "original preformation" capable of
+producing the latter. [Footnote: "Ce mot (germe) ne désignera pas seulement
+un corps organisé _réduit en petit_; il désignera encore toute espèce
+de _préformation originelle dont un Tout organique peut résulter comme de
+son principe immédiat."--Palingénésie Philosophique_, part X. chap. II.]
+
+But, thus defined, the germ is neither more nor less than the "particula
+genitalis" of Aristotle, or the "primordium vegetale" or "ovum" of Harvey;
+and the "evolution" of such a germ would not be distinguishable from
+"epigenesis."
+
+Supported by the great authority of Haller, the doctrine of evolution, or
+development, prevailed throughout the whole of the eighteenth century, and
+Cuvier appears to have substantially adopted Bonnet's later views, though
+probably he would not have gone all lengths in the direction of
+"emboîtement." In a well-known note to Laurillard's "Éloge," prefixed to
+the last edition of the "Ossemens fossiles," the "radical de l'être" is
+much the same thing as Aristotle's "particula genitalis" and Harvey's
+"ovum." [Footnote: "M. Cuvier considérant que tous les êtres organisés sont
+dérivés de parens, et ne voyant dans la nature aucune force capable de
+produire l'organisation, croyait à la pré-existence des germes; non pas à
+la pré-existence d'un être tout formé, puisqu'il est bien évident que ce
+n'est que par des développemens successifs que l'être acquiert sa forme;
+mais, si l'on peut s'exprimer ainsi, à la pré-existence du _radical de
+l'être_, radical qui existe avant que la série des évolutions ne
+commence, et qui remonte certainement, suivant la belle observation de
+Bonnet, à plusieurs generations."--Laurillard, _Éloge de Cuvier_, note
+12.]
+
+Bonnet's eminent contemporary, Buffon, held nearly the same views with
+respect to the nature of the germ, and expresses them even more
+confidently.
+
+"Ceux qui ont cru que le coeur étoit le premier formé, se sont trompés;
+ceux qui disent que c'est le sang se trompent aussi: tout est formé en même
+temps. Si l'on ne consulte que l'observation, le poulet se voit dans l'oeuf
+avant qu'il ait été couvé." [Footnote: _Histoire Naturelle_, tom. ii.
+ed. ii. 1750, p. 350.]
+
+"J'ai ouvert une grande quantité d'oeufs à differens temps avant et après
+l'incubation, et je me suis convaincu par mes yeux que le poulet existe en
+entier dans le milieu de la cicatricule au moment qu'il sort du corps de la
+poule." [Footnote: _Ibid_., p. 351.]
+
+The "moule intérieur" of Buffon is the aggregate of elementary parts which
+constitute the individual, and is thus the equivalent of Bonnet's germ,
+[Footnote: See particularly Buffon, _l. c._ p. 41.] as defined in the
+passage cited above. But Buffon further imagined that innumerable
+"molecules organiques" are dispersed throughout the world, and that
+alimentation consists in the appropriation by the parts of an organism of
+those molecules which are analogous to them. Growth, therefore, was, on
+this hypothesis, a process partly of simple evolution, and partly of what
+has been termed "syngenesis." Buffon's opinion is, in fact, a sort of
+combination of views, essentially similar to those of Bonnet, with others,
+somewhat similar to those of the "Medici" whom Harvey condemns. The
+"molecules organiques" are physical equivalents of Leibnitz's "monads."
+
+It is a striking example of the difficulty of getting people to use their
+own powers of investigation accurately, that this form of the doctrine of
+evolution should have held its ground so long; for it was thoroughly and
+completely exploded, not long after its enunciation, by Casper Friederich
+Wolff, who in his "Theoria Generationis," published in 1759, placed the
+opposite theory of epigenesis upon the secure foundation of fact, from
+which it has never been displaced. But Wolff had no immediate successors.
+The school of Cuvier was lamentably deficient in embryologists; and it was
+only in the course of the first thirty years of the present century, that
+Prévost and Dumas in France, and, later on, Döllinger, Pander, Von Bär,
+Rathke, and Remak in Germany, founded modern embryology; while, at the same
+time, they proved the utter incompatibility of the hypothesis of evolution,
+as formulated by Bonnet and Haller, with easily demonstrable facts.
+
+Nevertheless, though the conceptions originally denoted by "evolution" and
+"development" were shown to be untenable, the words retained their
+application to the process by which the embryos of living beings gradually
+make their appearance; and the terms "Development," "Entwickelung," and
+"Evolutio," are now indiscriminately used for the series of genetic changes
+exhibited by living beings, by writers who would emphatically deny that
+"Development" or "Entwickelung" or "Evolutio," in the sense in which these
+words were usually employed by Bonnet or by Haller, ever occurs.
+
+Evolution, or development, is, in fact, at present employed in biology as a
+general name for the history of the steps by which any living being has
+acquired the morphological and the physiological characters which
+distinguish it. As civil history may be divided into biography, which is
+the history of individuals, and universal history, which is the history of
+the human race, so evolution falls naturally into two categories--the
+evolution of the individual, and the evolution of the sum of living beings.
+It will be convenient to deal with the modern doctrine of evolution under
+these two heads.
+
+I. _The Evolution of the Individual_.
+
+No exception is at this time, known to the general law, established upon an
+immense multitude of direct observations, that every living thing is
+evolved from a particle of matter in which no trace of the distinctive
+characters of the adult form of that living thing is discernible. This
+particle is termed a _germ_. Harvey [Footnote: _Execitationes de
+Generatione_. Ex. 62, "Ovum esse primordium commune omnibus
+animalibus."] says--
+
+"Omnibus viventibus primordium insit, ex quo et a quo proveniant. Liceat
+hoc nobis _primordium vegetale_ nominare; nempe substantiam quandam
+corpoream vitam habentem potentiâ; vel quoddam per se existens, quod aptum
+sit, in vegetativam formam, ab interno principio operante, mutari. Quale
+nempe primordium, ovum est et plantarum semen; tale etiam viviparorum
+conceptus, et insectorum _vermis_ ab Aristotele dictus: diversa
+scilicet diversorum viventium primordia."
+
+The definition of a germ as "matter potentially alive, and having within
+itself the tendency to assume a definite living form," appears to meet all
+the requirements of modern science. For, notwithstanding it might be justly
+questioned whether a germ is not merely potentially, but rather actually,
+alive, though its vital manifestations are reduced to a minimum, the term
+"potential" may fairly be used in a sense broad enough to escape the
+objection. And the qualification of "potential" has the advantage of
+reminding us that the great characteristic of the germ is not so much what
+it is, but what it may, under suitable conditions, become. Harvey shared
+the belief of Aristotle--whose writings he so often quotes and of whom he
+speaks as his precursor and model, with the generous respect with which one
+genuine worker should regard another--that such germs may arise by a
+process of "equivocal generation" out of not-living matter; and the
+aphorism so commonly ascribed to him, "_omne vivum ex ovo_" and which
+is indeed a fair summary of his reiterated assertions, though incessantly
+employed against the modern advocates of spontaneous generation, can be
+honestly so used only by those who have never read a score of pages of the
+"Exercitationes." Harvey, in fact, believed as implicitly as Aristotle did
+in the equivocal generation of the lower animals. But, while the course of
+modern investigation has only brought out into greater prominence the
+accuracy of Harvey's conception of the nature and mode of development of
+germs, it has as distinctly tended to disprove the occurrence of equivocal
+generation, or abiogenesis, in the present course of nature. In the immense
+majority of both plants and animals, it is certain that the germ is not
+merely a body in which life is dormant or potential, but that it is itself
+simply a detached portion of the substance of a pre-existing living body;
+and the evidence has yet to be adduced which will satisfy any cautious
+reasoner that "omne vivum ex vivo" is not as well-established a law of the
+existing course of nature as "omne vivum ex ovo."
+
+In all instances which have yet been investigated, the substance of this
+germ has a peculiar chemical composition, consisting of at fewest four
+elementary bodies, viz., carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, united
+into the ill-defined compound known as protein, and associated with much
+water, and very generally, if not always, with sulphur and phosphorus in
+minute proportions. Moreover, up to the present time, protein is known only
+as a product and constituent of living matter. Again, a true germ is either
+devoid of any structure discernible by optical means, or, at most, it is a
+simple nucleated cell. [Footnote: In some cases of sexless multiplication
+the germ is a cell-aggregate--if we call germ only that which is already
+detached from the parent organism.]
+
+In all cases the process of evolution consists in a succession of changes
+of the form, structure, and functions of the germ, by which it passes, step
+by step, from an extreme simplicity, or relative homogeneity, of visible
+structure, to a greater or less degree of complexity or heterogeneity; and
+the course of progressive differentiation is usually accompanied by growth,
+which is effected by intussusception. This intussusception, however, is a
+very different process from that imagined either by Buffon or by Bonnet.
+The substance by the addition of which the germ is enlarged is in no case
+simply absorbed, ready-made, from the not-living world and packed between
+the elementary constituents of the germ, as Bonnet imagined; still less
+does it consist of the "molecules organiques" of Buffon. The new material
+is, in great measure, not only absorbed but assimilated, so that it becomes
+part and parcel of the molecular structure of the living body into which it
+enters. And, so far from the fully developed organism being simply the germ
+_plus_ the nutriment which it has absorbed, it is probable that the
+adult contains neither in form, nor in substance, more than an
+inappreciable fraction of the constituents of the germ, and that it is
+almost, if not wholly, made up of assimilated and metamorphosed nutriment.
+In the great majority of cases, at any rate, the full-grown organism
+becomes what it is by the absorption of not-living matter, and its
+conversion into living matter of a specific type. As Harvey says (Ex. 45),
+all parts of the body are nourished "ab eodem succo alibili, aliter
+aliterque cambiato," "ut plantæ omnes ex eodem communi nutrimento (sive
+rore seu terræ humore)."
+
+In all animals and plants above the lowest the germ is a nucleated cell,
+using that term in its broadest sense; and the first step in the process of
+the evolution of the individual is the division of this cell into two or
+more portions. The process of division is repeated, until the organism,
+from being unicellular, becomes multicellular. The single cell becomes a
+cell-aggregate; and it is to the growth and metamorphosis of the cells of
+the cell-aggregate thus produced, that all the organs and tissues of the
+adult owe their origin.
+
+In certain animals belonging to every one of the chief groups into which
+the _Metazoa_ are divisible, the cells of the cell-aggregate which
+results from the process of yelk-division, and which is termed a
+_morula_, diverge from one another in such a manner as to give rise to
+a central space, around which they dispose themselves as a coat or
+envelope; and thus the morula becomes a vesicle filled with fluid, the
+_planula_. The wall of the planula is next pushed in on one side, or
+invaginated, whereby it is converted into a double-walled sac with an
+opening, the _blastopore_, which leads into the cavity lined by the
+inner wall. This cavity is the primitive alimentary cavity or
+_archenteron_; the inner or invaginated layer is the _hypoblast_;
+the outer the _epiblast_; and the embryo, in this stage, is termed a
+_gastrula_. In all the higher animals a layer of cells makes its
+appearance between the hypoblast and the epiblast, and is termed the
+_mesoblast_. In the further course of development the epiblast becomes
+the ectoderm or epidermic layer of the body; the hypoblast becomes the
+epithelium of the middle portion of the alimentary canal; and the mesoblast
+gives rise to all the other tissues, except the central nervous system,
+which originates from an ingrowth of the epiblast.
+
+With more or less modification in detail, the embryo has been observed to
+pass through these successive evolutional stages in sundry Sponges,
+Coelenterates, Worms, Echinoderms, Tunicates, Arthropods, Mollusks, and
+Vertebrates; and there are valid reasons for the belief that all animals of
+higher organisation than the _Protozoa_, agree in the general
+character of the early stages of their individual evolution. Each, starting
+from the condition of a simple nucleated cell, becomes a cell-aggregate;
+and this passes through a condition which represents the gastrula stage,
+before taking on the features distinctive of the group to which it belongs.
+Stated in this form, the "gastræa theory" of Haeckel appears to the present
+writer to be one of most important and best founded of recent
+generalisations. So far as individual plants and animals are concerned,
+therefore, evolution is not a speculation but a fact; and it takes place by
+epigenesis.
+
+"Animal...per _epigenesin_ procreatur, materiam simul attrahit, parat,
+concoquit, et eâdem utitur; formatur simul et augetur ... primum futuri
+corporis concrementum ... prout augetur, dividitur sensim et distinguitur
+in partes, non simul omnes, sed alias post alias natas, et ordine quasque
+suo emergentes." [Footnote: Harvey, _Exercitationes de Generatione_.
+Ex. 45, "Quænam sit pulli materia et quomodo fiat in Ovo."] In these words,
+by the divination of genius, Harvey, in the seventeenth century, summed up
+the outcome of the work of all those who, with appliances he could not
+dream of, are continuing his labours in the nineteenth century.
+
+Nevertheless, though the doctrine of epigenesis, as understood by Harvey,
+has definitively triumphed over the doctrine of evolution, as understood by
+his opponents of the eighteenth century, it is not impossible that, when
+the analysis of the process of development is carried still further, and
+the origin of the molecular components of the physically gross, though
+sensibly minute, bodies which we term germs is traced, the theory of
+development will approach more nearly to metamorphosis than to epigenesis.
+Harvey thought that impregnation influenced the female organism as a
+contagion; and that the blood, which he conceived to be the first rudiment
+of the germ, arose in the clear fluid of the "colliquamentum" of the ovum
+by a process of concrescence, as a sort of living precipitate. We now know,
+on the contrary, that the female germ or ovum, in all the higher animals
+and plants, is a body which possesses the structure of a nucleated cell;
+that impregnation consists in the fusion of the substance [Footnote: [At
+any rate of the nuclei of the two germ-cells. 1893]] of another more or
+less modified nucleated cell, the male germ, with the ovum; and that the
+structural components of the body of the embryo are all derived, by a
+process of division, from the coalesced male and female germs. Hence it is
+conceivable, and indeed probable, that every part of the adult contains
+molecules, derived both from the male and from the female parent; and that,
+regarded as a mass of molecules, the entire organism may he compared to a
+web of which the warp is derived from the female and the woof from the
+male. And each of these may constitute one individuality, in the same sense
+as the whole organism is one individual, although the matter of the
+organism has been constantly changing. The primitive male and female
+molecules may play the part of Buffon's "moules organiques," and mould the
+assimilated nutriment, each according to its own type, into innumerable new
+molecules. From this point of view the process, which, in its superficial
+aspect, is epigenesis, appears in essence, to be evolution, in the modified
+sense adopted in Bonnet's later writings; and development is merely the
+expansion of a potential organism or "original preformation" according to
+fixed laws.
+
+II. _The Evolution of the Sum of Living Beings_.
+
+The notion that all the kinds of animals and plants may have come into
+existence by the growth and modification of primordial germs is as old as
+speculative thought; but the modern scientific form of the doctrine can be
+traced historically to the influence of several converging lines of
+philosophical speculation and of physical observation, none of which go
+farther back than the seventeenth century. These are:--
+
+1. The enunciation by Descartes of the conception that the physical
+universe, whether living or not living, is a mechanism, and that, as such,
+it is explicable on physical principles.
+
+2. The observation of the gradations of structure, from extreme simplicity
+to very great complexity, presented by living things, and of the relation
+of these graduated forms to one another.
+
+3. The observation of the existence of an analogy between the series of
+gradations presented by the species which compose any great group of
+animals or plants, and the series of embryonic conditions of the highest
+members of that group.
+
+4. The observation that large groups of species of widely different habits
+present the same fundamental plan of structure; and that parts of the same
+animal or plant, the functions of which are very different, likewise
+exhibit modifications of a common plan.
+
+5. The observation of the existence of structures, in a rudimentary and
+apparently useless condition, in one species of a group, which are fully
+developed and have definite functions in other species of the same group.
+
+6. The observation of the effects of varying conditions in modifying living
+organisms.
+
+7. The observation of the facts of geographical distribution.
+
+8. The observation of the facts of the geological succession of the forms
+of life.
+
+1. Notwithstanding the elaborate disguise which fear of the powers that
+were led Descartes to throw over his real opinions, it is impossible to
+read the "Principes de la Philosophie" without acquiring the conviction
+that this great philosopher held that the physical world and all things in
+it, whether living or not living, have originated by a process of
+evolution, due to the continuous operation of purely physical causes, out
+of a primitive relatively formless matter. [Footnote: As Buffon has well
+said:--"L'idée de ramener l'explication de tous les phénomènes à des
+principes mecaniques est assurement grande et belle, ce pas est le plus
+hardi qu'on peut faire en philosophie, et c'est Descartes qui l'a
+fait."--_l. c._ p. 50.]
+
+The following passage is especially instructive:--
+
+"Et tant s'en faut que je veuille que l'on croie toutes les choses que
+j'écrirai, que même je pretends en proposer ici quelques unes que je crois
+absolument être fausses; à savoir, je ne doute point quo le monde n'ait été
+créé au commencement avec autant de perfection qu'il eu a; en sorte que le
+soleil, la terre, la lune, et les étoiles ont été dès lors; et que la terre
+n'a pas eu seulement en soi les semences des plantes, mais que les plantes
+même en ont couvert une partie; et qu' Adam et Eve n'ont pas été créés
+enfans mais en âge d'hommes parfaits. La religion chrétienne veut que nous
+le croyons ainsi, et la raison naturelle nous persuade entièrement cette
+vérité; car si nous considérons la toute puissance de Dieu, nous devons
+juger que tout ce qu'il a fait a eu dès le commencement toute la perfection
+qu'il devoit avoir. Mais néanmoins, comme on connôitroit beaucoup mieux
+quelle a été la nature d'Adam et celle des arbres de Paradis si on avoit
+examiné comment les enfants se forment peu à peu dans le ventre de leurs
+mères et comment les plantes sortent de leurs semences, que si on avoit
+seulement considéré quels ils ont été quand Dieu les a créés: tout de même,
+nous ferons mieux entendre quelle est généralement la nature de toutes les
+choses qui sont au monde si nous pouvons imaginer quelques principes qui
+soient fort intelligibles et fort simples, desquels nous puissions voir
+clairement que les astres et la terre et enfin tout ce monde visible auroit
+pu être produit ainsi que de quelques semences (bien que, nous sachions
+qu'il n'a pas été produit en cette façon) que si nous la decrivions
+seulement comme il est, ou bien comme nous croyons qu'il a été créé. Et
+parceque je pense avoir trouvé des principes qui sont tels, je tacherai ici
+de les expliquer." [Footnote: _Principes de la Philosophie_, Troisième
+partie, § 45.]
+
+If we read between the lines of this singular exhibition of force of one
+kind and weakness of another, it is clear that Descartes believed that he
+had divined the mode in which the physical universe had been evolved; and
+the "Traité de l'Homme," and the essay "Sur les Passions" afford abundant
+additional evidence that he sought for, and thought he had found, an
+explanation of the phenomena of physical life by deduction from purely
+physical laws.
+
+Spinoza abounds in the same sense, and is as usual perfectly candid--
+
+"Naturæ leges et regulæ, secundum quas omnia fiunt et ex unis formis in
+alias mutantur, sunt ubique et semper eadem." [Footnote: _Ethices_,
+Pars tertia, Præfatio.] Leibnitz's doctrine of continuity necessarily led
+him in the same direction; and, of the infinite multitude of monads with
+which he peopled the world, each is supposed to be the focus of an endless
+process of evolution and involution. In the "Protogæa," xxvi., Leibnitz
+distinctly suggests the mutability of species--
+
+"Alii mirantur in saxis passim species videri quas vel in orbe cognito, vel
+saltem in vicinis locis frustra quæras. 'Ita Cornua Ammonis,' quæ ex
+nautilorum numero habeantur, passim et forma et magnitudine (nam et pedali
+diametro aliquando reperiuntur) ab omnibus illis naturis discrepare dicunt,
+quas præbet mare. Sed quis absconditos ejus recessus aut subterraneas
+abyssos pervestigavit? quam multa nobis animalia antea ignota offert novus
+orbis? Et credibile est per magnas illas conversiones etiam animalium
+species plurimum immutatas."
+
+Thus, in the end of the seventeenth century, the seed was sown which has,
+at intervals, brought forth recurrent crops of evolutional hypotheses,
+based, more or less completely, on general reasonings.
+
+Among the earliest of these speculations is that put forward by Benoit de
+Maillet in his "Telliamed," which, though printed in 1735, was not
+published until twenty-three years later. Considering that this book was
+written before the time of Haller, or Bonnet, or Linnæus, or Hutton, it
+surely deserves more respectful consideration than it usually receives. For
+De Maillet not only has a definite conception of the plasticity of living
+things, and of the production of existing species by the modification of
+their predecessors; but he clearly apprehends the cardinal maxim of modern
+geological science, that the explanation of the structure of the globe is
+to be sought in the deductive application to geological phenomena of the
+principles established inductively by the study of the present course of
+nature. Somewhat later, Maupertuis [Footnote: _Système de la Nature_.
+"Essai sur la Formation des Corps Organisés," 1751, xiv.] suggested a
+curious hypothesis as to the causes of variation, which he thinks may be
+sufficient to account for the origin of all animals from a single pair.
+Robinet [Footnote: _Considérations Philosophiques sur la gradation
+naturelle des formes de l'être; ou les essais de la nature qui apprend a
+faire l'homme,_ 1768.] followed out much the same line of thought as De
+Maillet, but less soberly; and Bonnet's speculations in the "Palingénésie,"
+which appeared in 1769, have already been mentioned. Buffon (1753-1778), at
+first a partisan of the absolute immutability of species, subsequently
+appears to have believed that larger or smaller groups of species have been
+produced by the modification of a primitive stock; but he contributed
+nothing to the general doctrine of evolution.
+
+Erasmus Darwin ("Zoonomia," 1794), though a zealous evolutionist, can
+hardly be said to have made any real advance on his predecessors; and,
+notwithstanding that Goethe (1791-4) had the advantage of a wide knowledge
+of morphological facts, and a true insight into their signification, while
+he threw all the power of a great poet into the expression of his
+conceptions, it may be questioned whether he supplied the doctrine of
+evolution with a firmer scientific basis than it already possessed.
+Moreover, whatever the value of Goethe's labours in that field, they were
+not published before 1820, long after evolutionism had taken a new
+departure from the works of Treviranus and Lamarck--the first of its
+advocates who were equipped for their task with the needful large and
+accurate knowledge of the phenomena of life, as a whole. It is remarkable
+that each of these writers seems to have been led, independently and
+contemporaneously, to invent the same name of "Biology" for the science of
+the phenomena of life; and thus, following Buffon, to have recognised the
+essential unity of these phenomena, and their contradistinction from those
+of inanimate nature. And it is hard to say whether Lamarck or Treviranus
+has the priority in propounding the main thesis of the doctrine of
+evolution; for though the first volume of Treviranus's "Biologie" appeared
+only in 1802, he says, in the preface to his later work, the "Erscheinungen
+und Gesetze des organischen Lebens," dated 1831, that he wrote the first
+volume of the "Biologie" "nearly five-and-thirty years ago," or about 1796.
+
+Now, in 1794, there is evidence that Lamarck held doctrines which present a
+striking contrast to those which are to be found in the "Philosophie
+Zoologique," as the following passages show:--
+
+"685. Quoique mon unique objet dans cet article n'ait été que de traiter de
+la cause physique de l'entretien de la vie des êtres organiques, malgré
+cela j'ai osé avancer en débutant, que l'existence de ces êtres étonnants
+n'appartiennent nullement à la nature; que tout ce qu'on peut entendre par
+le mot _nature_, ne pouvoit donner la vie, c'est-à-dire, que toutes
+les qualités de la matière, jointes à toutes les circonstances possibles,
+et même à l'activité répandue dans l'univers, ne pouvaient point produire
+un être muni du mouvement organique, capable de reproduire son semblable,
+et sujet à la mort.
+
+"686. Tous les individus de cette nature, qui existent, proviennent
+d'individus semblables qui tous ensemble constituent l'espèce entière. Or,
+je crois qu'il est aussi impossible à l'homme de connôitre la cause
+physique du premier individu de chaque espèce, que d'assigner aussi
+physiquement la cause de l'existence de la matière ou de l'univers entier.
+C'est au moins ce que le résultat de mes connaissances et de mes réflexions
+me portent à penser. S'il existe beaucoup de variétés produites par l'effet
+des circonstances, ces variétés ne denaturent point les espèces; mais on se
+trompe, sans doute souvent, en indiquant comme espèce, ce qui n'est que
+variété; et alors je sens que cette erreur peut tirer à conséquence dans
+les raisonnements que l'on fait sur cette matière." [Footnote:
+_Recherches sur les causes des principaux faits physiques_, par J.B.
+Lamarck. Paris. Seconde année de la République. In the preface, Lamarck
+says that the work was written in 1776, and presented to the Academy in
+1780; but it was not published before 17994, and, at that time, it
+presumably expressed Lamarck's mature views. It would be interesting to
+know what brought about the change of opinion manifested in the
+_Recherches sur l'organisation des corps vivants_, published only
+seven years later.]
+
+The first three volumes of Treviranus's "Biologie," which contain his
+general views of evolution, appeared between 1802 and 1805. The "Recherches
+sur l'organisation des corps vivants," in which the outlines of Lamarck's
+doctrines are given, was published in 1802, but the full development of his
+views, in the "Philosophie Zoologique," did not take place until 1809.
+
+The "Biologie" and the "Philosophie Zoologique" are both very remarkable
+productions, and are still worthy of attentive study, but they fell upon
+evil times. The vast authority of Cuvier was employed in support of the
+traditionally respectable hypotheses of special creation and of
+catastrophism; and the wild speculations of the "Discours sur les
+Révolutions de la Surface du Globe" were held to be models of sound
+scientific thinking, while the really much more sober and philosophical
+hypotheses of the "Hydrogeologie" were scouted. For many years it was the
+fashion to speak of Lamarck with ridicule, while Treviranus was altogether
+ignored.
+
+Nevertheless, the work had been done. The conception of evolution was
+henceforward irrepressible, and it incessantly reappears, in one shape or
+another, [Footnote: See the "Historical Sketch" prefixed to the last
+edition of the _Origin of Species_.] up to the year 1858, when Mr.
+Darwin and Mr. Wallace published their "Theory of Natural Selection." The
+"Origin of Species" appeared in 1859; and it is within the knowledge of all
+whose memories go back to that time, that, henceforward, the doctrine of
+evolution has assumed a position and acquired an importance which it never
+before possessed. In the "Origin of Species," and in his other numerous and
+important contributions to the solution of the problem of biological
+evolution, Mr. Darwin confines himself to the discussion of the causes
+which have brought about the present condition of living matter, assuming
+such matter to have once come into existence. On the other hand, Mr.
+Spencer [Footnote: _First Principles_. and _Principles of
+Biology_, 1860-1864.] and Professor Haeckel [Footnote: _Generelle
+Marphologie_, 1866.] have dealt with the whole problem of evolution. The
+profound and vigorous writings of Mr. Spencer embody the spirit of
+Descartes in the knowledge of our own day, and may be regarded as the
+"Principes de la Philosophie" of the nineteenth century; while, whatever
+hesitation may not unfrequently be felt by less daring minds, in following
+Haeckel in many of his speculations, his attempt to systematise the
+doctrine of evolution and to exhibit its influence as the central thought
+of modern biology, cannot fail to have a far-reaching influence on the
+progress of science.
+
+If we seek for the reason of the difference between the scientific position
+of the doctrine of evolution a century ago, and that which it occupies now,
+we shall find it in the great accumulation of facts, the several classes of
+which have been enumerated above, under the second to the eighth heads. For
+those which are grouped under the second to the seventh of these classes,
+respectively, have a clear significance on the hypothesis of evolution,
+while they are unintelligible if that hypothesis be denied. And those of
+the eighth group are not only unintelligible without the assumption of
+evolution, but can be proved never to be discordant with that hypothesis,
+while, in some cases, they are exactly such as the hypothesis requires. The
+demonstration of these assertions would require a volume, but the general
+nature of the evidence on which they rest may be briefly indicated.
+
+2. The accurate investigation of the lowest forms of animal life, commenced
+by Leeuwenhoek and Swammerdam, and continued by the remarkable labours of
+Reaumur, Trembley, Bonnet, and a host of other observers, in the latter
+part of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth centuries,
+drew the attention of biologists to the gradation in the complexity of
+organisation which is presented by living beings, and culminated in the
+doctrine of the "échelle des êtres," so powerfully and clearly stated by
+Bonnet; and, before him, adumbrated by Locke and by Leibnitz. In the then
+state of knowledge, it appeared that all the species of animals and plants
+could be arranged in one series; in such a manner that, by insensible
+gradations, the mineral passed into the plant, the plant into the polype,
+the polype into the worm, and so, through gradually higher forms of life,
+to man, at the summit of the animated world.
+
+But, as knowledge advanced, this conception ceased to be tenable in the
+crude form in which it was first put forward. Taking into account existing
+animals and plants alone, it became obvious that they fell into groups
+which were more or less sharply separated from one another; and, moreover,
+that even the species of a genus can hardly ever be arranged in linear
+series. Their natural resemblances and differences are only to be expressed
+by disposing them as if they were branches springing from a common
+hypothetical centre.
+
+Lamarck, while affirming the verbal proposition that animals form a single
+series, was forced by his vast acquaintance with the details of zoology to
+limit the assertion to such a series as may be formed out of the
+abstractions constituted by the common characters of each group. [Footnote:
+"Il s'agit donc de prouver que la série qui constitue l'échelle animale
+réside essentiellement dans la distribution des masses principales qui la
+composent et non dans celle des espèces ni même toujours dans celle des
+genres."--_Philosophie Zoologique_. chap. v.]
+
+Cuvier on anatomical, and Von Baer on embryological grounds, made the
+further step of proving that, even in this limited sense, animals cannot be
+arranged in a single series, but that there are several distinct plans of
+organisation to be observed among them, no one of which, in its highest and
+most complicated modification, leads to any of the others.
+
+The conclusions enunciated by Cuvier and Von Baer have been confirmed, in
+principle, by all subsequent research into the structure of animals and
+plants. But the effect of the adoption of these conclusions has been rather
+to substitute a new metaphor for that of Bonnet than to abolish the
+conception expressed by it. Instead of regarding living things as capable
+of arrangement in one series like the steps of a ladder, the results of
+modern investigation compel us to dispose them as if they were the twigs
+and branches of a tree. The ends of the twigs represent individuals, the
+smallest groups of twigs species, larger groups genera, and so on, until we
+arrive at the source of all these ramifications of the main branch, which
+is represented by a common plan of structure. At the present moment, it is
+impossible to draw up any definition, based on broad anatomical or
+developmental characters, by which any one of Cuvier's great groups shall
+be separated from all the rest. On the contrary, the lower members of each
+tend to converge towards the lower members of all the others. The same may
+be said of the vegetable world. The apparently clear distinction between
+flowering and flowerless plants has been broken down by the series of
+gradations between the two exhibited by the _Lycopodiaceæ,
+Rhizocarpeæ_, and _Gymnospermeæ_. The groups of _Fungi_,
+_Lichenes_, and _Algæ_ have completely run into one another, and,
+when the lowest forms of each are alone considered, even the animal and
+vegetable kingdoms cease to have a definite frontier.
+
+If it is permissible to speak of the relations of living forms to one
+another metaphorically, the similitude chosen must undoubtedly be that of a
+common root, whence two main trunks, one representing the vegetable and one
+the animal world, spring; and, each dividing into a few main branches,
+these subdivide into multitudes of branchlets and these into smaller groups
+of twigs.
+
+As Lamarck has well said--[Footnote: _Philosophie Zoologique_,
+première partie, chap. iii.] "Il n'y a que ceux qui se sont longtemps et
+fortement occupés de la détermination des espèces, et qui ont consulté de
+riches collections, qui peuvent savoir jusqu'à quel point les
+_espèces_, parmi les corps vivants se fondent les unes dans les
+autres, et qui ont pu se convaincre que, dans les parties où nous voyons
+des _espèces_ isolès, cela n'est ainsi que parcequ'il nous en manque
+d'autres qui en sont plus voisines et que nous n'avons pas encore
+recueillies.
+
+"Je ne veux pas dire pour cela que les animaux qui existent forment une
+série très-simple et partout également nuancée; mais je dis qu'ils forment
+une série ramense, irréguliérement graduée et qui n'a point de
+discontinuité dans ses parties, ou qui, du moins, n'en a toujours pas eu,
+s'il est vrai que, par suite de quelques espèces perdues, il s'en trouve
+quelque part. Il en resulte que les _espèces_ qui terminent chaque
+rameau de la série générale tiennent, au moins d'un côté, à d'autres
+espèces voisines qui se nuancent avec elles. Voilà ce que l'état bien connu
+des choses me met maintenant à portée de demontrer. Je n'ai besoin d'aucune
+hypothèse ni d'aucune supposition pour cela: j'en atteste tous les
+naturalistes observateurs."
+
+3. In a remarkable essay [Footnote: "Entwurf einer Darstellung der zwischen
+dem Embryozustände der höheren Thiere und dem permanenten der niederen
+stattfindenden Parallele," _Beyträge zur Vergleichenden Anatomie_, Bd.
+ii. 1811.] Meckel remarks--
+
+"There is no good physiologist who has not been struck by the observation
+that the original form of all organisms is one and the same, and that out
+of this one form, all, the lowest as well as the highest, are developed in
+such a manner that the latter pass through the permanent forms of the
+former as transitory stages. Aristotle, Haller, Harvey, Kielmeyer,
+Autenrieth, and many others, have either made this observation
+incidentally, or, especially the latter, have drawn particular attention to
+it, and deduced therefrom results of permanent importance for physiology."
+
+Meckel proceeds to exemplify the thesis, that the lower forms of animals
+represent stages in the course of the development of the higher, with a
+large series of illustrations.
+
+After comparing the Salamanders and the perennibranchiate _Urodela_
+with the Tadpoles and the Frogs, and enunciating the law that the more
+highly any animal is organised the more quickly does it pass through the
+lower stages, Meckel goes on to say--
+
+"From these lowest Vertebrata to the highest, and to the highest forms
+among these, the comparison between the embryonic conditions of the higher
+animals and the adult states of the lower can be more completely and
+thoroughly instituted than if the survey is extended to the Invertebrata,
+inasmuch as the latter are in many respects constructed upon an altogether
+too dissimilar type; indeed they often differ from one another far more
+than the lowest vertebrate does from the highest mammal; yet the following
+pages will show that the comparison may also be extended to them with
+interest. In fact, there is a period when, as Aristotle long ago said, the
+embryo of the highest animal has the form of a mere worm; and, devoid of
+internal and external organisation, is merely an almost structureless lump
+of polype substance. Notwithstanding the origin of organs, it still for a
+certain time, by reason of its want of an internal bony skeleton, remains
+worm and mollusk, and only later enters into the series of the Vertebrata,
+although traces of the vertebral column even in the earliest periods
+testify its claim to a place in that series."--_Op, cit_ pp. 4, 5.
+
+If Meckel's proposition is so far qualified, that the comparison of adult
+with embryonic forms is restricted within the limits of one type of
+organisation; and, if it is further recollected that the resemblance
+between the permanent lower form and the embryonic stage of a higher form
+is not special but general, it is in entire accordance with modern
+embryology; although there is no branch of biology which has grown so
+largely, and improved its methods so much, since Meckel's time, as this. In
+its original form, the doctrine of "arrest of development," as advocated by
+Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and Serres, was no doubt an overstatement of the
+case. It is not true, for example, that a fish is a reptile arrested in its
+development, or that a reptile was ever a fish: but it is true that the
+reptile embryo, at one stage of its development, is an organism which, if
+it had an independent existence, must be classified among fishes; and all
+the organs of the reptile pass, in the course of their development, through
+conditions which are closely analogous to those which are permanent in some
+fishes.
+
+4. That branch of biology which is termed Morphology is a commentary upon,
+and expansion of, the proposition that widely different animals or plants,
+and widely different parts of animals or plants, are constructed upon the
+same plan. From the rough comparison of the skeleton of a bird with that of
+a man by Belon, in the sixteenth century (to go no farther back), down to
+the theory of the limbs and the theory of the skull at the present day; or,
+from the first demonstration of the homologies of the parts of a flower by
+C. F. Wolff, to the present elaborate analysis of the floral organs,
+morphology exhibits a continual advance towards the demonstration of a
+fundamental unity among the seeming diversities of living structures. And
+this demonstration has been completed by the final establishment of the
+cell theory, which involves the admission of a primitive conformity, not
+only of all the elementary structures in animals and plants respectively,
+but of those in the one of these great divisions of living things with
+those in the other. No _à priori_ difficulty can be said to stand in
+the way of evolution, when it can be shown that all animals and all plants
+proceed by modes of development, which are similar in principle, from a
+fundamental protoplasmic material.
+
+5. The innumerable cases of structures, which are rudimentary and
+apparently useless, in species, the close allies of which possess
+well-developed and functionally important homologous structures, are
+readily intelligible on the theory of evolution, while it is hard to
+conceive their _raison d'être_ on any other hypothesis. However, a
+cautious reasoner will probably rather explain such cases deductively from
+the doctrine of evolution than endeavour to support the doctrine of
+evolution by them. For it is almost impossible to prove that any structure,
+however rudimentary, is useless--that is to say, that it plays no part
+whatever in the economy; and, if it is in the slightest degree useful,
+there is no reason why, on the hypothesis of direct creation, it should not
+have been created. Nevertheless, double-edged as is the argument from
+rudimentary organs, there is probably none which has produced a greater
+effect in promoting the general acceptance of the theory of evolution.
+
+6. The older advocates of evolution sought for the causes of the process
+exclusively in the influence of varying conditions, such as climate and
+station, or hybridisation, upon living forms. Even Treviranus has got no
+farther than this point. Lamarck introduced the conception of the action of
+an animal on itself as a factor in producing modification. Starting from
+the well-known fact that the habitual use of a limb tends to develop the
+muscles of the limb, and to produce a greater and greater facility in using
+it, he made the general assumption that the effort of an animal to exert an
+organ in a given direction tends to develop the organ in that direction.
+But a little consideration showed that, though Lamarck had seized what, as
+far it goes, is a true cause of modification, it is a cause the actual
+effects of which are wholly inadequate to account for any considerable
+modification in animals, and which can have no influence at all in the
+vegetable world; and probably nothing contributed so much to discredit
+evolution, in the early part of this century, as the floods of easy
+ridicule which were poured upon this part of Lamarck's speculation. The
+theory of natural selection, or survival of the fittest, was suggested by
+Wells in 1813, and further elaborated by Matthew in 1831. But the pregnant
+suggestions of these writers remained practically unnoticed and forgotten,
+until the theory was independently devised and promulgated by Darwin and
+Wallace in 1858, and the effect of its publication was immediate and
+profound.
+
+Those who were unwilling to accept evolution, without better grounds than
+such as are offered by Lamarck, or the author of that particularly
+unsatisfactory book, the "Vestiges of the Natural History of the Creation,"
+and who therefore preferred to suspend their judgment on the question,
+found in the principle of selective breeding, pursued in all its
+applications with marvellous knowledge and skill by Mr. Darwin, a valid
+explanation of the occurrence of varieties and races; and they saw clearly
+that, if the explanation would apply to species, it would not only solve
+the problem of their evolution, but that it would account for the facts of
+teleology, as well as for those of morphology; and for the persistence of
+some forms of life unchanged through long epochs of time, while others
+undergo comparatively rapid metamorphosis.
+
+How far "natural selection" suffices for the production of species remains
+to be seen. Few can doubt that, if not the whole cause, it is a very
+important factor in that operation; and that it must play a great part in
+the sorting out of varieties into those which are transitory and those
+which are permanent.
+
+But the causes and conditions of variation have yet to be thoroughly
+explored; and the importance of natural selection will not be impaired,
+even if further inquiries should prove that variability is definite, and is
+determined in certain directions rather than in others, by conditions
+inherent in that which varies. It is quite conceivable that every species
+tends to produce varieties of a limited number and kind, and that the
+effect of natural selection is to favour the development of some of these,
+while it opposes the development of others along their predetermined lines
+of modification.
+
+7. No truths brought to light by biological investigation were better
+calculated to inspire distrust of the dogmas intruded upon science in the
+name of theology, than those which relate to the distribution of animals
+and plants on the surface of the earth. Very skilful accommodation was
+needful, if the limitation of sloths to South America, and of the
+ornithorhynchus to Australia, was to be reconciled with the literal
+interpretation of the history of the deluge; and with the establishment of
+the existence of distinct provinces of distribution, any serious belief in
+the peopling of the world by migration from Mount Ararat came to an end.
+
+Under these circumstances, only one alternative was left for those who
+denied the occurrence of evolution--namely, the supposition that the
+characteristic animals and plants of each great province were created as
+such, within the limits in which we find them. And as the hypothesis of
+"specific centres," thus formulated, was heterodox from the theological
+point of view, and unintelligible under its scientific aspect, it may be
+passed over without further notice, as a phase of transition from the
+creational to the evolutional hypothesis.
+
+8. In fact, the strongest and most conclusive arguments in favour of
+evolution are those which are based upon the facts of geographical, taken
+in conjunction with those of geological, distribution.
+
+Both Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace lay great stress on the close relation
+which obtains between the existing fauna of any region and that of the
+immediately antecedent geological epoch in the same region; and rightly,
+for it is in truth inconceivable that there should be no genetic connection
+between the two. It is possible to put into words the proposition that all
+the animals and plants of each geological epoch were annihilated and that a
+new set of very similar forms was created for the next epoch; but it may be
+doubted if any one who ever tried to form a distinct mental image of this
+process of spontaneous generation on the grandest scale, ever really
+succeeded in realising it.
+
+Within the last twenty years, the attention of the best palæontologists has
+been withdrawn from the hodman's work of making "new species" of fossils,
+to the scientific task of completing our knowledge of individual species,
+and tracing out the succession of the forms presented by any given type in
+time.
+
+Those who desire to inform themselves of the nature and extent of the
+evidence bearing on these questions may consult the works of Rütimeyer,
+Gaudry, Kowalewsky, Marsh, and the writer of the present article. It must
+suffice, in this place, to say that the successive forms of the Equine type
+have been fully worked out; while those of nearly all the other existing
+types of Ungulate mammals and of the _Carnivora_ have been almost as
+closely followed through the Tertiary deposits; the gradations between
+birds and reptiles have been traced; and the modifications undergone by the
+_Crocodilia_, from the Triassic epoch to the present day, have been
+demonstrated. On the evidence of palæontology, the evolution of many
+existing forms of animal life from their predecessors is no longer an
+hypothesis, but an historical fact; it is only the nature of the
+physiological factors to which that evolution is due which is still open to
+discussion.
+
+[At page 209, the reference to Erasmus Darwin does not do justice to that
+ingenious writer, who, in the 39th section of the _Zoonomia_, clearly
+and repeatedly enunciates the theory of the inheritance of acquired
+modifications. For example "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 irritation, or of associations; and many of these acquired
+forms or propensities are transmitted to their posterity." _Zoonomia_
+I., p. 506. 1893.]
+
+
+
+VII
+
+THE COMING OF AGE OF "THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES"
+
+[1880]
+
+
+Many of you will be familiar with the aspect of this small green-covered
+book. It is a copy of the first edition of the "Origin of Species," and
+bears the date of its production--the 1st of October 1859. Only a few
+months, therefore, are needed to complete the full tale of twenty-one years
+since its birthday.
+
+Those whose memories carry them back to this time will remember that the
+infant was remarkably lively, and that a great number of excellent persons
+mistook its manifestations of a vigorous individuality for mere
+naughtiness; in fact there was a very pretty turmoil about its cradle. My
+recollections of the period are particularly vivid, for, having conceived a
+tender affection for a child of what appeared to me to be such remarkable
+promise, I acted for some time in the capacity of a sort of under-nurse,
+and thus came in for my share of the storms which threatened the very life
+of the young creature. For some years it was undoubtedly warm work; but
+considering how exceedingly unpleasant the apparition of the newcomer must
+have been to those who did not fall in love with him at first sight, I
+think it is to the credit of our age that the war was not fiercer, and that
+the more bitter and unscrupulous forms of opposition died away as soon as
+they did.
+
+I speak of this period as of something past and gone, possessing merely an
+historical, I had almost said an antiquarian interest. For, during the
+second decade of the existence of the "Origin of Species," opposition,
+though by no means dead, assumed a different aspect. On the part of all
+those who had any reason to respect themselves, it assumed a thoroughly
+respectful character. By this time, the dullest began to perceive that the
+child was not likely to perish of any congenital weakness or infantile
+disorder, but was growing into a stalwart personage, upon whom mere goody
+scoldings and threatenings with the birch-rod were quite thrown away.
+
+In fact, those who have watched the progress of science within the last ten
+years will bear me out to the full, when I assert that there is no field of
+biological inquiry in which the influence of the "Origin of Species" is not
+traceable; the foremost men of science in every country are either avowed
+champions of its leading doctrines, or at any rate abstain from opposing
+them; a host of young and ardent investigators seek for and find
+inspiration and guidance in Mr. Darwin's great work; and the general
+doctrine of evolution, to one side of which it gives expression, obtains,
+in the phenomena of biology, a firm base of operations whence it may
+conduct its conquest of the whole realm of Nature.
+
+History warns us, however, that it is the customary fate of new truths to
+begin as heresies and to end as superstitions; and, as matters now stand,
+it is hardly rash to anticipate that, in another twenty years, the new
+generation, educated under the influences of the present day, will be in
+danger of accepting the main doctrines of the "Origin of Species," with as
+little reflection, and it may be with as little justification, as so many
+of our contemporaries, twenty years ago, rejected them.
+
+Against any such a consummation let us all devoutly pray; for the
+scientific spirit is of more value than its products, and irrationally held
+truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors. Now the essence of the
+scientific spirit is criticism. It tells us that whenever a doctrine claims
+our assent we should reply, Take it if you can compel it. The struggle for
+existence holds as much in the intellectual as in the physical world. A
+theory is a species of thinking, and its right to exist is coextensive with
+its power of resisting extinction by its rivals.
+
+From this point of view, it appears to me that it would be but a poor way
+of celebrating the Coming of Age of the "Origin of Species," were I merely
+to dwell upon the facts, undoubted and remarkable as they are, of its
+far-reaching influence and of the great following of ardent disciples who
+are occupied in spreading and developing its doctrines. Mere insanities and
+inanities have before now swollen to portentous size in the course of
+twenty years. Let us rather ask this prodigious change in opinion to
+justify itself: let us inquire whether anything has happened since 1859,
+which will explain, on rational grounds, why so many are worshipping that
+which they burned, and burning that which they worshipped. It is only in
+this way that we shall acquire the means of judging whether the movement we
+have witnessed is a mere eddy of fashion, or truly one with the
+irreversible current of intellectual progress, and, like it, safe from
+retrogressive reaction.
+
+Every belief is the product of two factors: the first is the state of the
+mind to which the evidence in favour of that belief is presented; and the
+second is the logical cogency of the evidence itself. In both these
+respects, the history of biological science during the last twenty years
+appears to me to afford an ample explanation of the change which has taken
+place; and a brief consideration of the salient events of that history will
+enable us to understand why, if the "Origin of Species" appeared now, it
+would meet with a very different reception from that which greeted it in
+1859.
+
+One-and-twenty years ago, in spite of the work commenced by Hutton and
+continued with rare skill and patience by Lyell, the dominant view of the
+past history of the earth was catastrophic. Great and sudden physical
+revolutions, wholesale creations and extinctions of living beings, were the
+ordinary machinery of the geological epic brought into fashion by the
+misapplied genius of Cuvier. It was gravely maintained and taught that the
+end of every geological epoch was signalised by a cataclysm, by which every
+living being on the globe was swept away, to be replaced by a brand-new
+creation when the world returned to quiescence. A scheme of nature which
+appeared to be modelled on the likeness of a succession of rubbers of
+whist, at the end of each of which the players upset the table and called
+for a new pack, did not seem to shock anybody.
+
+I may be wrong, but I doubt if, at the present time, there is a single
+responsible representative of these opinions left. The progress of
+scientific geology has elevated the fundamental principle of
+uniformitarianism, that the explanation of the past is to be sought in the
+study of the present, into the position of an axiom; and the wild
+speculations of the catastrophists, to which we all listened with respect a
+quarter of a century ago, would hardly find a single patient hearer at the
+present day. No physical geologist now dreams of seeking, outside the range
+of known natural causes, for the explanation of anything that happened
+millions of years ago, any more than he would be guilty of the like
+absurdity in regard to current events.
+
+The effect of this change of opinion upon biological speculation is
+obvious. For, if there have been no periodical general physical
+catastrophes, what brought about the assumed general extinctions and
+re-creations of life which are the corresponding biological catastrophes?
+And, if no such interruptions of the ordinary course of nature have taken
+place in the organic, any more than in the inorganic, world, what
+alternative is there to the admission of evolution?
+
+The doctrine of evolution in biology is the necessary result of the logical
+application of the principles of uniformitarianism to the phenomena of
+life. Darwin is the natural successor of Hutton and Lyell, and the "Origin
+of Species" the logical sequence of the "Principles of Geology."
+
+The fundamental doctrine of the "Origin of Species," as of all forms of the
+theory of evolution applied to biology, is "that the innumerable species,
+genera, and families of organic beings with which the world is peopled have
+all descended, each within its own class or group, from common parents, and
+have all been modified in the course of descent." [Footnote: _Origin of
+Species_, ed. I, p. 457.]
+
+And, in view of the facts of geology, it follows that all living animals
+and plants "are the lineal descendants of those which lived long before the
+Silurian epoch." [Footnote: _Origin of Species_, p. 458.]
+
+It is an obvious consequence of this theory of descent with modification,
+as it is sometimes called, that all plants and animals, however different
+they may now be, must, at one time or other, have been connected by direct
+or indirect intermediate gradations, and that the appearance of isolation
+presented by various groups of organic beings must be unreal.
+
+No part of Mr. Darwin's work ran more directly counter to the
+prepossessions of naturalists twenty years ago than this. And such
+prepossessions were very excusable, for there was undoubtedly a great deal
+to be said, at that time, in favour of the fixity of species and of the
+existence of great breaks, which there was no obvious or probable means of
+filling up, between various groups of organic beings.
+
+For various reasons, scientific and unscientific, much had been made of the
+hiatus between man and the rest of the higher mammalia, and it is no wonder
+that issue was first joined on this part of the controversy. I have no wish
+to revive past and happily forgotten controversies; but I must state the
+simple fact that the distinctions in the cerebral and other characters,
+which were so hotly affirmed to separate man from all other animals in
+1860, have all been demonstrated to be non-existent, and that the contrary
+doctrine is now universally accepted and taught.
+
+But there were other cases in which the wide structural gaps asserted to
+exist between one group of animals and another were by no means fictitious;
+and, when such structural breaks were real, Mr. Darwin could account for
+them only by supposing that the intermediate forms which once existed had
+become extinct. In a remarkable passage he says--
+
+"We may thus account even for the distinctness of whole classes from each
+other--for instance, of birds from all other vertebrate animals--by the
+belief that many animal forms of life have been utterly lost, through which
+the early progenitors of birds were formerly connected with the early
+progenitors of the other vertebrate classes." [Footnote: _Origin of
+Species_, p. 431.] Adverse criticism made merry over such suggestions as
+these. Of course it was easy to get out of the difficulty by supposing
+extinction; but where was the slightest evidence that such intermediate
+forms between birds and reptiles as the hypothesis required ever existed?
+And then probably followed a tirade upon this terrible forsaking of the
+paths of "Baconian induction."
+
+But the progress of knowledge has justified Mr. Darwin to an extent which
+could hardly have been anticipated. In 1862, the specimen of
+_Archæopteryx_, which, until the last two or three years, has remained
+unique, was discovered; and it is an animal which, in its feathers and the
+greater part of its organisation, is a veritable bird, while, in other
+parts, it is as distinctly reptilian.
+
+In 1868, I had the honour of bringing under your notice, in this theatre,
+the results of investigations made, up to that time, into the anatomical
+characters of certain ancient reptiles, which showed the nature of the
+modifications in virtue of which the type of the quadrupedal reptile passed
+into that of a bipedal bird; and abundant confirmatory evidence of the
+justice of the conclusions which I then laid before you has since come to
+light.
+
+In 1875, the discovery of the toothed birds of the cretaceous formation in
+North America by Professor Marsh completed the series of transitional forms
+between birds and reptiles, and removed Mr. Darwin's proposition that "many
+animal forms of life have been utterly lost, through which the early
+progenitors of birds were formerly connected with the early progenitors of
+the other vertebrate classes," from the region of hypothesis to that of
+demonstrable fact.
+
+In 1859, there appeared to be a very sharp and clear hiatus between
+vertebrated and invertebrated animals, not only in their structure, but,
+what was more important, in their development. I do not think that we even
+yet know the precise links of connection between the two; but the
+investigations of Kowalewsky and others upon the development of
+_Amphioxus_ and of the _Tunicata_ prove, beyond a doubt, that the
+differences which were supposed to constitute a barrier between the two are
+non-existent. There is no longer any difficulty in understanding how the
+vertebrate type may have arisen from the invertebrate, though the full
+proof of the manner in which the transition was actually effected may still
+be lacking.
+
+Again, in 1859, there appeared to be a no less sharp separation between the
+two great groups of flowering and flowerless plants. It is only
+subsequently that the series of remarkable investigations inaugurated by
+Hofmeister has brought to light the extraordinary and altogether unexpected
+modifications of the reproductive apparatus in the _Lycopodiaceæ_, the
+_Rhizocarpeæ_, and the _Gymnospermeæ_, by which the ferns and the
+mosses are gradually connected with the Phanerogamic division of the
+vegetable world.
+
+So, again, it is only since 1859 that we have acquired that wealth of
+knowledge of the lowest forms of life which demonstrates the futility of
+any attempt to separate the lowest plants from the lowest animals, and
+shows that the two kingdoms of living nature have a common borderland which
+belongs to both, or to neither.
+
+Thus it will be observed that the whole tendency of biological
+investigation, since 1859, has been in the direction of removing the
+difficulties which the apparent breaks in the series created at that time;
+and the recognition of gradation is the first step towards the acceptance
+of evolution.
+
+As another great factor in bringing about the change of opinion which has
+taken place among naturalists, I count the astonishing progress which has
+been made in the study of embryology. Twenty years ago, not only were we
+devoid of any accurate knowledge of the mode of development of many groups
+of animals and plants, but the methods of investigation were rude and
+imperfect. At the present time, there is no important group of organic
+beings the development of which has not been carefully studied; and the
+modern methods of hardening and section-making enable the embryologist to
+determine the nature of the process, in each case, with a degree of
+minuteness and accuracy which is truly astonishing to those whose memories
+carry them back to the beginnings of modern histology. And the results of
+these embryological investigations are in complete harmony with the
+requirements of the doctrine of evolution. The first beginnings of all the
+higher forms of animal life are similar, and however diverse their adult
+conditions, they start from a common foundation. Moreover, the process of
+development of the animal or the plant from its primary egg, or germ, is a
+true process of evolution--a progress from almost formless to more or less
+highly organised matter, in virtue of the properties inherent in that
+matter.
+
+To those who are familiar with the process of development, all _a
+priori_ objections to the doctrine of biological evolution appear
+childish. Any one who has watched the gradual formation of a complicated
+animal from the protoplasmic mass, which constitutes the essential element
+of a frog's or a hen's egg, has had under his eyes sufficient evidence that
+a similar evolution of the whole animal world from the like foundation is,
+at any rate, possible.
+
+Yet another product of investigation has largely contributed to the removal
+of the objections to the doctrine of evolution current in 1859. It is the
+proof afforded by successive discoveries that Mr. Darwin did not
+over-estimate the imperfection of the geological record. No more striking
+illustration of this is needed than a comparison of our knowledge of the
+mammalian fauna of the Tertiary epoch in 1859 with its present condition.
+M. Gaudry's researches on the fossils of Pikermi were published in 1868,
+those of Messrs. Leidy, Marsh, and Cope, on the fossils of the Western
+Territories of America, have appeared almost wholly since 1870, those of M.
+Filhol on the phosphorites of Quercy in 1878. The general effect of these
+investigations has been to introduce to us a multitude of extinct animals,
+the existence of which was previously hardly suspected; just as if
+zoologists were to become acquainted with a country, hitherto unknown, as
+rich in novel forms of life as Brazil or South Africa once were to
+Europeans. Indeed, the fossil fauna of the Western Territories of America
+bid fair to exceed in interest and importance all other known Tertiary
+deposits put together; and yet, with the exception of the case of the
+American tertiaries, these investigations have extended over very limited
+areas; and, at Pikermi, were confined to an extremely small space.
+
+Such appear to me to be the chief events in the history of the progress of
+knowledge during the last twenty years, which account for the changed
+feeling with which the doctrine of evolution is at present regarded by
+those who have followed the advance of biological science, in respect of
+those problems which bear indirectly upon that doctrine.
+
+But all this remains mere secondary evidence. It may remove dissent, but it
+does not compel assent. Primary and direct evidence in favour of evolution
+can be furnished only by palæontology. The geological record, so soon as it
+approaches completeness, must, when properly questioned, yield either an
+affirmative or a negative answer: if evolution has taken place, there will
+its mark be left; if it has not taken place, there will lie its refutation.
+
+What was the state of matters in 1859? Let us hear Mr. Darwin, who may be
+trusted always to state the case against himself as strongly as possible.
+
+"On this doctrine of the extermination of an infinitude of connecting links
+between the living and extinct inhabitants of the world, and at each
+successive period between the extinct and still older species, why is not
+every geological formation charged with such links? Why does not every
+collection of fossil remains afford plain evidence of the gradation and
+mutation of the forms of life? We meet with no such evidence, and this is
+the most obvious and plausible of the many objections which may be urged
+against my theory." [Footnote: _Origin of Species_, ed. 1, p. 463.]
+
+Nothing could have been more useful to the opposition than this
+characteristically candid avowal, twisted as it immediately was into an
+admission that the writer's views were contradicted by the facts of
+palæontology. But, in fact, Mr. Darwin made no such admission. What he says
+in effect is, not that palæontological evidence is against him, but that it
+is not distinctly in his favour; and, without attempting to attenuate the
+fact, he accounts for it by the scantiness and the imperfection of that
+evidence.
+
+What is the state of the case now, when, as we have seen, the amount of our
+knowledge respecting the mammalia of the Tertiary epoch is increased
+fifty-fold, and in some directions even approaches completeness?
+
+Simply this, that, if the doctrine of evolution had not existed,
+palaeontologists must have invented it, so irresistibly is it forced upon
+the mind by the study of the remains of the Tertiary mammalia which have
+been brought to light since 1859.
+
+Among the fossils of Pikermi, Gaudry found the successive stages by which
+the ancient civets passed into the more modern hyænas; through the Tertiary
+deposits of Western America, Marsh tracked the successive forms by which
+the ancient stock of the horse has passed into its present form; and
+innumerable less complete indications of the mode of evolution of other
+groups of the higher mammalia have been obtained. In the remarkable memoir
+on the phosphorites of Quercy, to which I have referred, M. Filhol
+describes no fewer than seventeen varieties of the genus _Cynodictis_,
+which fill up all the interval between the viverine animals and the
+bear-like dog _Amphicyon_; nor do I know any solid ground of objection
+to the supposition that, in this _Cynodictis-Amphicyon_ group, we have
+the stock whence all the Viveridæ, Felidæ, Hyænidæ, Canidæ, and perhaps the
+Procyonidæ and Ursidæ, of the present fauna have been evolved. On the
+contrary, there is a great deal to be said in favour.
+
+In the course of summing up his results, M. Filhol observes:--
+
+"During the epoch of the phosphorites, great changes took place in animal
+forms, and almost the same types as those which now exist became defined
+from one another.
+
+"Under the influence of natural conditions of which we have no exact
+knowledge, though traces of them are discoverable, species have been
+modified in a thousand ways: races have arisen which, becoming fixed, have
+thus produced a corresponding number of secondary species."
+
+In 1859, language of which this is an unintentional paraphrase, occurring
+in the "Origin of Species," was scouted as wild speculation; at present, it
+is a sober statement of the conclusions to which an acute and
+critically-minded investigator is led by large and patient study of the
+facts of palæontology. I venture to repeat what I have said before, that so
+far as the animal world is concerned, evolution is no longer a speculation,
+but a statement of historical fact. It takes its place alongside of those
+accepted truths which must be reckoned with by philosophers of all schools.
+
+Thus when, on the first day of October next, "The Origin of Species" comes
+of age, the promise of its youth will be amply fulfilled; and we shall be
+prepared to congratulate the venerated author of the book, not only that
+the greatness of his achievement and its enduring influence upon the
+progress of knowledge have won him a place beside our Harvey; but, still
+more, that, like Harvey, he has lived long enough to outlast detraction and
+opposition, and to see the stone that the builders rejected become the
+head-stone of the corner.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+CHARLES DARWIN
+
+[_Nature_, April 27th, 1882]
+
+
+Very few, even among those who have taken the keenest interest in the
+progress of the revolution in natural knowledge set afoot by the
+publication of "The Origin of Species," and who have watched, not without
+astonishment, the rapid and complete change which has been effected both
+inside and outside the boundaries of the scientific world in the attitude
+of men's minds towards the doctrines which are expounded in that great
+work, can have been prepared for the extraordinary manifestation of
+affectionate regard for the man, and of profound reverence for the
+philosopher, which followed the announcement, on Thursday last, of the
+death of Mr. Darwin.
+
+Not only in these islands, where so many have felt the fascination of
+personal contact with an intellect which had no superior, and with a
+character which was even nobler than the intellect; but, in all parts of
+the civilised world, it would seem that those whose business it is to feel
+the pulse of nations and to know what interests the masses of mankind, were
+well aware that thousands of their readers would think the world the poorer
+for Darwin's death, and would dwell with eager interest upon every incident
+of his history. In France, in Germany, in Austro-Hungary, in Italy, in the
+United States, writers of all shades of opinion, for once unanimous, have
+paid a willing tribute to the worth of our great countryman, ignored in
+life by the official representatives of the kingdom, but laid in death
+among his peers in Westminster Abbey by the will of the intelligence of the
+nation.
+
+It is not for us to allude to the sacred sorrows of the bereaved home at
+Down; but it is no secret that, outside that domestic group, there are many
+to whom Mr. Darwin's death is a wholly irreparable loss. And this not
+merely because of his wonderfully genial, simple, and generous nature; his
+cheerful and animated conversation, and the infinite variety and accuracy
+of his information; but because the more one knew of him, the more he
+seemed the incorporated ideal of a man of science. Acute as were his
+reasoning powers, vast as was his knowledge, marvellous as was his
+tenacious industry, under physical difficulties which would have converted
+nine men out of ten into aimless invalids; it was not these qualities,
+great as they were, which impressed those who were admitted to his intimacy
+with involuntary veneration, but a certain intense and almost passionate
+honesty by which all his thoughts and actions were irradiated, as by a
+central fire.
+
+It was this rarest and greatest of endowments which kept his vivid
+imagination and great speculative powers within due bounds; which compelled
+him to undertake the prodigious labours of original investigation and of
+reading, upon which his published works are based; which made him accept
+criticisms and suggestions from anybody and everybody, not only without
+impatience, but with expressions of gratitude sometimes almost comically in
+excess of their value; which led him to allow neither himself nor others to
+be deceived by phrases, and to spare neither time nor pains in order to
+obtain clear and distinct ideas upon every topic with which he occupied
+himself.
+
+One could not converse with Darwin without being reminded of Socrates.
+There was the same desire to find some one wiser than himself; the same
+belief in the sovereignty of reason; the same ready humour; the same
+sympathetic interest in all the ways and works of men. But instead of
+turning away from the problems of Nature as hopelessly insoluble, our
+modern philosopher devoted his whole life to attacking them in the spirit
+of Heraclitus and of Democritus, with results which are the substance of
+which their speculations were anticipatory shadows.
+
+The due appreciation, or even enumeration, of these results is neither
+practicable nor desirable at this moment. There is a time for all things--a
+time for glorying in our ever-extending conquests over the realm of Nature,
+and a time for mourning over the heroes who have led us to victory.
+
+None have fought better, and none have been more fortunate, than Charles
+Darwin. He found a great truth trodden underfoot, reviled by bigots, and
+ridiculed by all the world; he lived long enough to see it, chiefly by his
+own efforts, irrefragably established in science, inseparably incorporated
+with the common thoughts of men, and only hated and feared by those who
+would revile, but dare not. What shall a man desire more than this? Once
+more the image of Socrates rises unbidden, and the noble peroration of the
+"Apology" rings in our ears as if it were Charles Darwin's farewell:--
+
+"The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways--I to die and you to
+live. Which is the better, God only knows."
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE DARWIN MEMORIAL
+
+[June 9th, 1885]
+
+
+_Address by the President of the Royal Society, in the name of the
+Memorial Committee, on handing over the statue of Darwin to H.R.H. the
+Prince of Wales, as representative of the Trustees of the British
+Museum_.
+
+YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS,--It is now three years since the announcement of the
+death of our famous countryman, Charles Darwin, gave rise to a
+manifestation of public feeling, not only in these realms, but throughout
+the civilised world, which, if I mistake not, is without precedent in the
+modest annals of scientific biography.
+
+The causes of this deep and wide outburst of emotion are not far to seek.
+We had lost one of these rare ministers and interpreters of Nature whose
+names mark epochs in the advance of natural knowledge. For, whatever be the
+ultimate verdict of posterity upon this or that opinion which Mr. Darwin
+has propounded; whatever adumbrations or anticipations of his doctrines may
+be found in the writings of his predecessors; the broad fact remains that,
+since the publication and by reason of the publication, of "The Origin of
+Species" the fundamental conceptions and the aims of the students of living
+Nature have been completely changed. From that work has sprung a great
+renewal, a true "instauratio magna" of the zoological and botanical
+sciences.
+
+But the impulse thus given to scientific thought rapidly spread beyond the
+ordinarily recognised limits of biology. Psychology, Ethics, Cosmology were
+stirred to their foundations, and the "Origin of Species" proved itself to
+be the fixed point which the general doctrine of evolution needed in order
+to move the world. "Darwinism," in one form or another, sometimes strangely
+distorted and mutilated, became an everyday topic of men's speech, the
+object of an abundance both of vituperation and of praise, more often than
+of serious study.
+
+It is curious now to remember how largely, at first, the objectors
+predominated; but considering the usual fate of new views, it is still more
+curious to consider for how short a time the phase of vehement opposition
+lasted. Before twenty years had passed, not only had the importance of Mr.
+Darwin's work been fully recognised, but the world had discerned the
+simple, earnest, generous character of the man, that shone through every
+page of his writings.
+
+I imagine that reflections such as these swept through the minds alike of
+loving friends and of honourable antagonists when Mr. Darwin died; and that
+they were at one in the desire to honour the memory of the man who, without
+fear and without reproach, had successfully fought the hardest intellectual
+battle of these days.
+
+It was in satisfaction of these just and generous impulses that our great
+naturalist's remains were deposited in Westminster Abbey; and that,
+immediately afterwards, a public meeting, presided over by my lamented
+predecessor, Mr. Spottiswoode, was held in the rooms of the Royal Society,
+for the purpose of considering what further step should be taken towards
+the same end.
+
+It was resolved to invite subscriptions, with the view of erecting a statue
+of Mr. Darwin in some suitable locality; and to devote any surplus to the
+advancement of the biological sciences.
+
+Contributions at once flowed in from Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark,
+France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden,
+Switzerland, the United States, and the British Colonies, no less than from
+all parts of the three kingdoms; and they came from all classes of the
+community. To mention one interesting case, Sweden sent in 2296
+subscriptions "from all sorts of people," as the distinguished man of
+science who transmitted them wrote, "from the bishop to the seamstress, and
+in sums from five pounds to two pence."
+
+The Executive Committee has thus been enabled to carry out the objects
+proposed. A "Darwin Fund" has been created, which is to be held in trust by
+the Royal Society, and is to be employed in the promotion of biological
+research.
+
+The execution of the statue was entrusted to Mr. Boehm; and I think that
+those who had the good fortune to know Mr. Darwin personally will admire
+the power of artistic divination which has enabled the sculptor to place
+before us so very characteristic a likeness of one whom he had not seen.
+
+It appeared to the Committee that, whether they regarded Mr. Darwin's
+career or the requirements of a work of art, no site could be so
+appropriate as this great hall, and they applied to the Trustees of the
+British Museum for permission to erect it in its present position.
+
+That permission was most cordially granted, and I am desired to tender the
+best thanks of the Committee to the Trustees for their willingness to
+accede to our wishes.
+
+I also beg leave to offer the expression of our gratitude to your Royal
+Highness for kindly consenting to represent the Trustees to-day. It only
+remains for me, your Royal Highness, my Lords and Gentlemen, Trustees of
+the British Museum, in the name of the Darwin Memorial Committee, to
+request you to accept this statue of Charles Darwin.
+
+We do not make this request for the mere sake of perpetuating a memory; for
+so long as men occupy themselves with the pursuit of truth, the name of
+Darwin runs no more risk of oblivion than does that of Copernicus, or that
+of Harvey.
+
+Nor, most assuredly, do we ask you to preserve the statue in its cynosural
+position in this entrance-hall of our National Museum of Natural History as
+evidence that Mr. Darwin's views have received your official sanction; for
+science does not recognise such sanctions, and commits suicide when it
+adopts a creed.
+
+No; we beg you to cherish this Memorial as a symbol by which, as generation
+after generation of students of Nature enter yonder door, they shall be
+reminded of the ideal according to which they must shape their lives, if
+they would turn to the best account the opportunities offered by the great
+institution under your charge.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+OBITUARY [Footnote: From the Obituary Notices of the _Proceedings of the
+Royal Society_, vol. 44.]
+
+[1888]
+
+
+Charles Robert Darwin was the fifth child and second son of Robert Waring
+Darwin and Susannah Wedgwood, and was born on the 12th February, 1809, at
+Shrewsbury, where his father was a physician in large practice.
+
+Mrs. Robert Darwin died when her son Charles was only eight years old, and
+he hardly remembered her. A daughter of the famous Josiah Wedgwood, who
+created a new branch of the potter's art, and established the great works
+of Etruria, could hardly fail to transmit important mental and moral
+qualities to her children; and there is a solitary record of her direct
+influence in the story told by a schoolfellow, who remembers Charles Darwin
+"bringing a flower to school, and saying that his mother had taught him
+how, by looking at the inside of the blossom, the name of the plant could
+be discovered." (I., p. 28. [Footnote: The references throughout this
+notice are to the _Life and Letters_, unless the contrary is expressly
+stated.])
+
+The theory that men of genius derive their qualities from their mothers,
+however, can hardly derive support from Charles Darwin's case, in the face
+of the patent influence of his paternal forefathers. Dr. Darwin, indeed,
+though a man of marked individuality of character, a quick and acute
+observer, with much practical sagacity, is said not to have had a
+scientific mind. But when his son adds that his father "formed a theory for
+almost everything that occurred" (I., p. 20), he indicates a highly
+probable source for that inability to refrain from forming an hypothesis on
+every subject which he confesses to be one of the leading characteristics
+of his own mind, some pages further on (I., p. 103). Dr. R. W. Darwin,
+again, was the third son of Erasmus Darwin, also a physician of great
+repute, who shared the intimacy of Watt and Priestley, and was widely known
+as the author of "Zoonomia," and other voluminous poetical and prose works
+which had a great vogue in the latter half of the eighteenth century. The
+celebrity which they enjoyed was in part due to the attractive style (at
+least according to the taste of that day) in which the author's extensive,
+though not very profound, acquaintance with natural phenomena was set
+forth; but in a still greater degree, probably, to the boldness of the
+speculative views, always ingenious and sometimes fantastic, in which he
+indulged. The conception of evolution set afoot by De Maillet and others,
+in the early part of the century, not only found a vigorous champion in
+Erasmus Darwin, but he propounded an hypothesis as to the manner in which
+the species of animals and plants have acquired their characters, which is
+identical in principle with that subsequently rendered famous by Lamarck.
+
+That Charles Darwin's chief intellectual inheritance came to him from the
+paternal side, then, is hardly doubtful. But there is nothing to show that
+he was, to any sensible extent, directly influenced by his grandfather's
+biological work. He tells us that a perusal of the "Zoonomia" in early life
+produced no effect upon him, although he greatly admired it; and that, on
+reading it again, ten or fifteen years afterwards, he was much
+disappointed, "the proportion of speculation being so large to the facts
+given." But with his usual anxious candour he adds, "Nevertheless, it is
+probable that the hearing, rather early in life, such views maintained and
+praised, may have favoured my upholding them, in a different form, in my
+'Origin of Species.'" (I., p. 38.) Erasmus Darwin was in fact an
+anticipator of Lamarck, and not of Charles Darwin; there is no trace in his
+works of the conceptions by the addition of which his grandson
+metamorphosed the theory of evolution as applied to living things and gave
+it a new foundation.
+
+Charles Darwin's childhood and youth afforded no intimation that he would
+he, or do, anything out of the common run. In fact, the prognostications of
+the educational authorities into whose hands he first fell were most
+distinctly unfavourable; and they counted the only boy of original genius
+who is known to have come under their hands as no better than a dunce. The
+history of the educational experiments to which Darwin was subjected is
+curious, and not without a moral for the present generation. There were
+four of them, and three were failures. Yet it cannot be said that the
+materials on which the pedagogic powers operated were other than good. In
+his boyhood Darwin was strong, well-grown, and active, taking the keen
+delight in field sports and in every description of hard physical exercise
+which is natural to an English country-bred lad; and, in respect of things
+of the mind, he was neither apathetic, nor idle, nor one-sided. The
+"Autobiography" tells us that he "had much zeal for whatever interested"
+him, and he was interested in many and very diverse topics. He could work
+hard, and liked a complex subject better than an easy one. The "clear
+geometrical proofs" of Euclid delighted him. His interest in practical
+chemistry, carried out in an extemporised laboratory, in which he was
+permitted to assist by his elder brother, kept him late at work, and earned
+him the nickname of "gas" among his schoolfellows. And there could have
+been no insensibility to literature in one who, as a boy, could sit for
+hours reading Shakespeare, Milton, Scott, and Byron; who greatly admired
+some of the Odes of Horace; and who, in later years, on board the "Beagle,"
+when only one book could be carried on an expedition, chose a volume of
+Milton for his companion.
+
+Industry, intellectual interests, the capacity for taking pleasure in
+deductive reasoning, in observation, in experiment, no less than in the
+highest works of imagination: where these qualities are present any
+rational system of education should surely be able to make something of
+them. Unfortunately for Darwin, the Shrewsbury Grammar School, though good
+of its kind, was an institution of a type universally prevalent in this
+country half a century ago, and by no means extinct at the present day. The
+education given was "strictly classical," "especial attention" being "paid
+to verse-making," while all other subjects, except a little ancient
+geography and history, were ignored. Whether, as in some famous English
+schools at that date and much later, elementary arithmetic was also left
+out of sight does not appear; but the instruction in Euclid which gave
+Charles Darwin so much satisfaction was certainly supplied by a private
+tutor. That a boy, even in his leisure hours, should permit himself to be
+interested in any but book-learning seems to have been regarded as little
+better than an outrage by the head master, who thought it his duty to
+administer a public rebuke to young Darwin for wasting his time on such a
+contemptible subject as chemistry. English composition and literature,
+modern languages, modern history, modern geography, appear to have been
+considered to be as despicable as chemistry.
+
+For seven long years Darwin got through his appointed tasks; construed
+without cribs, learned by rote whatever was demanded, and concocted his
+verses in approved schoolboy fashion. And the result, as it appeared to his
+mature judgment, was simply negative. "The school as a means of education
+to me was simply a blank." (I. p. 32.) On the other hand, the extraneous
+chemical exercises, which the head master treated so contumeliously, are
+gratefully spoken of as the "best part" of his education while at school.
+Such is the judgment of the scholar on the school; as might be expected, it
+has its counterpart in the judgment of the school on the scholar. The
+collective intelligence of the staff of Shrewsbury School could find
+nothing but dull mediocrity in Charles Darwin. The mind that found
+satisfaction in knowledge, but very little in mere learning; that could
+appreciate literature, but had no particular aptitude for grammatical
+exercises; appeared to the "strictly classical" pedagogue to be no mind at
+all. As a matter of fact, Darwin's school education left him ignorant of
+almost all the things which it would have been well for him to know, and
+untrained in all the things it would have been useful for him to be able to
+do, in after life. Drawing, practice in English composition, and
+instruction in the elements of the physical sciences, would not only have
+been infinitely valuable to him in reference to his future career, but
+would have furnished the discipline suited to his faculties, whatever that
+career might be. And a knowledge of French and German, especially the
+latter, would have removed from his path obstacles which he never fully
+overcame.
+
+Thus, starved and stunted on the intellectual side, it is not surprising
+that Charles Darwin's energies were directed towards athletic amusements
+and sport, to such an extent, that even his kind and sagacious father could
+be exasperated into telling him that "he cared for nothing but shooting,
+dogs, and rat-catching." (I. p. 32.) It would be unfair to expect even the
+wisest of fathers to have foreseen that the shooting and the rat-catching,
+as training in the ways of quick observation and in physical endurance,
+would prove more valuable than the construing and verse-making to his son,
+whose attempt, at a later period of his Life, to persuade himself "that
+shooting was almost an intellectual employment: it required so much skill
+to judge where to find most game, and to hunt the dogs well" (I. p. 43),
+was by no means so sophistical as he seems to have been ready to admit.
+
+In 1825, Dr. Darwin came to the very just conclusion that his son Charles
+would do no good by remaining at Shrewsbury School, and sent him to join
+his elder brother Erasmus, who was studying medicine at Edinburgh, with the
+intention that the younger son should also become a medical practitioner.
+Both sons, however, were well aware that their inheritance would relieve
+them from the urgency of the struggle for existence which most professional
+men have to face; and they seemed to have allowed their tastes, rather than
+the medical curriculum, to have guided their studies. Erasmus Darwin was
+debarred by constant ill-health from seeking the public distinction which
+his high intelligence and extensive knowledge would, under ordinary
+circumstances, have insured. He took no great interest in biological
+subjects, but his companionship must have had its influence on his brother.
+Still more was exerted by friends like Coldstream and Grant, both
+subsequently well-known zoologists (and the latter an enthusiastic
+Lamarckian), by whom Darwin was induced to interest himself in marine
+zoology. A notice of the ciliated germs of _Flustra_, communicated to
+the Plinian Society in 1826, was the first fruits of Darwin's half century
+of scientific work. Occasional attendance at the Wernerian Society brought
+him into relation with that excellent ornithologist the elder Macgillivray,
+and enabled him to see and hear Audubon. Moreover, he got lessons in
+bird-stuffing from a negro, who had accompanied the eccentric traveller
+Waterton in his wanderings, before settling in Edinburgh.
+
+No doubt Darwin picked up a great deal of valuable knowledge during his two
+years' residence in Scotland; but it is equally clear that next to none of
+it came through the regular channels of academic education. Indeed, the
+influence of the Edinburgh professoriate appears to have been mainly
+negative, and in some cases deterrent; creating in his mind, not only a
+very low estimate of the value of lectures, but an antipathy to the
+subjects which had been the occasion of the boredom inflicted upon him by
+their instrumentality. With the exception of Hope, the Professor of
+Chemistry, Darwin found them all "intolerably dull." Forty years afterwards
+he writes of the lectures of the Professor of Materia Medica that they were
+"fearful to remember." The Professor of Anatomy made his lectures "as dull
+as he was himself," and he must have been very dull to have wrung from his
+victim the sharpest personal remark recorded as his. But the climax seems
+to have been attained by the Professor of Geology and Zoology, whose
+prælections were so "incredibly dull" that they produced in their hearer
+the somewhat rash determination never "to read a book on geology or in any
+way to study the science" so long as he lived. (I. p. 41.)
+
+There is much reason to believe that the lectures in question were
+eminently qualified to produce the impression which they made; and there
+can be little doubt, that Darwin's conclusion that his time was better
+employed in reading than in listening to such lectures was a sound one. But
+it was particularly unfortunate that the personal and professorial dulness
+of the Professor of Anatomy, combined with Darwin's sensitiveness to the
+disagreeable concomitants of anatomical work, drove him away from the
+dissecting room. In after life, he justly recognised that this was an
+"irremediable evil" in reference to the pursuits he eventually adopted;
+indeed, it is marvellous that he succeeded in making up for his lack of
+anatomical discipline, so far as his work on the Cirripedes shows he did.
+And the neglect of anatomy had the further unfortunate result that it
+excluded him from the best opportunity of bringing himself into direct
+contact with the facts of nature which the University had to offer. In
+those days, almost the only practical scientific work accessible to
+students was anatomical, and the only laboratory at their disposal the
+dissecting room.
+
+We may now console ourselves with the reflection that the partial evil was
+the general good. Darwin had already shown an aptitude for practical
+medicine (I. p. 37); and his subsequent career proved that he had the
+making of an excellent anatomist. Thus, though his horror of operations
+would probably have shut him off from surgery, there was nothing to prevent
+him (any more than the same peculiarity prevented his father) from passing
+successfully through the medical curriculum and becoming, like his father
+and grandfather, a successful physician, in which case "The Origin of
+Species" would not have been written. Darwin has jestingly alluded to the
+fact that the shape of his nose (to which Captain Fitzroy objected), nearly
+prevented his embarkation in the "Beagle"; it may be that the sensitiveness
+of that organ secured him for science.
+
+At the end of two years' residence in Edinburgh it hardly needed Dr.
+Darwin's sagacity to conclude that a young man, who found nothing but
+dulness in professorial lucubrations, could not bring himself to endure a
+dissecting room, fled from operations, and did not need a profession as a
+means of livelihood, was hardly likely to distinguish himself as a student
+of medicine. He therefore made a new suggestion, proposing that his son
+should enter an English University and qualify for the ministry of the
+Church. Charles Darwin found the proposal agreeable, none the less,
+probably, that a good deal of natural history and a little shooting were by
+no means held, at that time, to be incompatible with the conscientious
+performance of the duties of a country clergyman. But it is characteristic
+of the man, that he asked time for consideration, in order that he might
+satisfy himself that he could sign the Thirty-nine Articles with a clear
+conscience. However, the study of "Pearson on the Creeds" and a few other
+books of divinity soon assured him that his religious opinions left nothing
+to be desired on the score of orthodoxy, and he acceded to his father's
+proposition.
+
+The English University selected was Cambridge; but an unexpected obstacle
+arose from the fact that, within the two years which had elapsed, since the
+young man who had enjoyed seven years of the benefit of a strictly
+classical education had left school, he had forgotten almost everything he
+had learned there, "even to some few of the Greek letters." (I. p. 46.)
+Three months with a tutor, however, brought him back to the point of
+translating Homer and the Greek Testament "with moderate facility," and
+Charles Darwin commenced the third educational experiment of which he was
+the subject, and was entered on the books of Christ's College in October
+1827. So far as the direct results of the academic training thus received
+are concerned, the English University was not more successful than the
+Scottish. "During the three years which I spent at Cambridge my time was
+wasted, as far as the academical studies were concerned, as completely as
+at Edinburgh and as at school." (I. p. 46.) And yet, as before, there is
+ample evidence that this negative result cannot be put down to any native
+defect on the part of the scholar. Idle and dull young men, or even young
+men who being neither idle nor dull, are incapable of caring for anything
+but some hobby, do not devote themselves to the thorough study of Paley's
+"Moral Philosophy," and "Evidences of Christianity"; nor are their
+reminiscences of this particular portion of their studies expressed in
+terms such as the following: "The logic of this book [the 'Evidences'] and,
+as I may add, of his 'Natural Theology' gave me as much delight as did
+Euclid." (I. p. 47.)
+
+The collector's instinct, strong in Darwin from his childhood, as is
+usually the case in great naturalists, turned itself in the direction of
+Insects during his residence at Cambridge. In childhood it had been damped
+by the moral scruples of a sister, as to the propriety of catching and
+killing insects for the mere sake of possessing them, but now it broke out
+afresh, and Darwin became an enthusiastic beetle collector. Oddly enough he
+took no scientific interest in beetles, not even troubling himself to make
+out their names; his delight lay in the capture of a species which turned
+out to be rare or new, and still more in finding his name, as captor,
+recorded in print. Evidently, this beetle-hunting hobby had little to do
+with science, but was mainly a new phase of the old and undiminished love
+of sport. In the intervals of beetle-catching, when shooting and hunting
+were not to be had, riding across country answered the purpose. These
+tastes naturally threw the young undergraduate among a set of men who
+preferred hard riding: to hard reading, and wasted the midnight oil upon
+other pursuits than that of academic distinction. A superficial observer
+might have had some grounds to fear that Dr. Darwin's wrathful prognosis
+might yet be verified. But if the eminently social tendencies of a vigorous
+and genial nature sought an outlet among a set of jovial sporting friends,
+there were other and no less strong proclivities which brought him into
+relation with associates of a very different stamp.
+
+Though almost without ear and with a very defective memory for music,
+Darwin was so strongly and pleasurably affected by it that he became a
+member of a musical society; and an equal lack of natural capacity for
+drawing did not prevent him from studying good works of art with much care.
+
+An acquaintance with even the rudiments of physical science was no part of
+the requirements for the ordinary Cambridge degree. But there were
+professors both of Geology and of Botany whose lectures were accessible to
+those who chose to attend them. The occupants of these chairs, in Darwin's
+time, were eminent men and also admirable lecturers in their widely
+different styles. The horror of geological lectures which Darwin had
+acquired at Edinburgh, unfortunately prevented him from going within reach
+of the fervid eloquence of Sedgwick; but he attended the botanical course,
+and though he paid no serious attention to the subject, he took great
+delight in the country excursions, which Henslow so well knew how to make
+both pleasant and instructive. The Botanical Professor was, in fact, a man
+of rare character and singularly extensive acquirements in all branches of
+natural history. It was his greatest pleasure to place his stores of
+knowledge at the disposal of the young men who gathered about him, and who
+found in him, not merely an encyclopedic teacher but a wise counsellor,
+and, in case of worthiness, a warm friend. Darwin's acquaintance with him
+soon ripened into a friendship which was terminated only by Henslow's death
+in 1861, when his quondam pupil gave touching expression to his sense of
+what he owed to one whom he calls (in one of his letters) his "dear old
+master in Natural History." (II. p. 217.) It was by Henslow's advice that
+Darwin was led to break the vow he had registered against making an
+acquaintance with geology; and it was through Henslow's good offices with
+Sedgwick that he obtained the opportunity of accompanying the Geological
+Professor on one of his excursions in Wales. He then received a certain
+amount of practical instruction in Geology, the value of which he
+subsequently warmly acknowledged. (I. p. 237.) In another direction,
+Henslow did him an immense, though not altogether intentional service, by
+recommending him to buy and study the recently published first volume of
+Lyell's "Principles." As an orthodox geologist of the then dominant
+catastrophic school, Henslow accompanied his recommendation with the
+admonition on no account to adopt Lyell's general views. But the warning
+fell on deaf ears, and it is hardly too much to say that Darwin's greatest
+work is the outcome of the unflinching application to Biology of the
+leading idea and the method applied in the "Principles" to geology.
+[Footnote: "After my return to England it appeared to me that by following
+the example of Lyell in Geology, and by collecting all facts which bore in
+any way on the variation of animals and plants under domestication and
+nature, some light might perhaps be thrown on the whole subject [of the
+origin of species]." (I. p. 83.) See also the dedication of the second
+edition of the _Journal of a Naturalist_].  Finally, it was through
+Henslow, and at his suggestion, that Darwin was offered the appointment to
+the "Beagle" as naturalist.
+
+During the latter part of Darwin's residence at Cambridge the prospect of
+entering the Church, though the plan was never formally renounced, seems to
+have grown very shadowy. Humboldt's "Personal Narrative," and Herschel's
+"Introduction to the Study of Natural Philosophy," fell in his way and
+revealed to him his real vocation. The impression made by the former work
+was very strong. "My whole course of life," says Darwin in sending a
+message to Humboldt, "is due to having read and re-read, as a youth, his
+personal narrative." (I. p. 336.) The description of Teneriffe inspired
+Darwin with such a strong desire to visit the island, that he took some
+steps towards going there--inquiring about ships, and so on.
+
+But, while this project was fermenting, Henslow, who had been asked to
+recommend a naturalist for Captain Fitzroy's projected expedition, at once
+thought of his pupil. In his letter of the 24th August, 1831, he says: "I
+have stated that I consider you to be the best qualified person I know of
+who is likely to undertake such a situation. I state this--not on the
+supposition of your being a _finished_ naturalist, but as amply
+qualified for collecting, observing, and noting anything worthy to be noted
+in Natural History.... The voyage is to last two years, and if you take
+plenty of books with you, anything you please may be done." (I. p. 193.)
+The state of the case could not have been better put. Assuredly the young
+naturalist's theoretical and practical scientific training had gone no
+further than might suffice for the outfit of an intelligent collector and
+note-taker. He was fully conscious of the fact, and his ambition hardly
+rose above the hope that he should bring back materials for the scientific
+"lions" at home of sufficient excellence to prevent them from turning and
+rending him. (I. p. 248.)
+
+But a fourth educational experiment was to be tried. This time Nature took
+him in hand herself and showed him the way by which, to borrow Henslow's
+prophetic phrase, "anything he pleased might be done."
+
+The conditions of life presented by a ship-of-war of only 242 tons burthen,
+would not, _primâ facie_, appear to be so favourable to intellectual
+development as those offered by the cloistered retirement of Christ's
+College. Darwin had not even a cabin to himself; while, in addition to the
+hindrances and interruptions incidental to sea-life, which can be
+appreciated only by those who have had experience of them, sea-sickness
+came on whenever the little ship was "lively"; and, considering the
+circumstances of the cruise, that must have been her normal state.
+Nevertheless, Darwin found on board the "Beagle" that which neither the
+pedagogues of Shrewsbury, nor the professoriate of Edinburgh, nor the
+tutors of Cambridge had managed to give him. "I have always felt that I owe
+to the voyage the first real training or education of my mind (I. p. 61);"
+and in a letter written as he was leaving England, he calls the voyage on
+which he was starting, with just insight, his "second life." (I. p. 214.)
+Happily for Darwin's education, the school time of the "Beagle" lasted five
+years instead of two; and the countries which the ship visited were
+singularly well fitted to provide him with object-lessons, on the nature of
+things, of the greatest value.
+
+While at sea, he diligently collected, studied, and made copious notes upon
+the surface Fauna. But with no previous training in dissection, hardly any
+power of drawing, and next to no knowledge of comparative anatomy, his
+occupation with work of this kind--notwithstanding all his zeal and
+industry--resulted, for the most part, in a vast accumulation of useless
+manuscript. Some acquaintance with the marine _Crustacea_,
+observations on _Planariæ_ and on the ubiquitous _Sagitta_, seem
+to have been the chief results of a great amount of labour in this
+direction.
+
+It was otherwise with the terrestrial phenomena which came under the
+voyager's notice: and Geology very soon took her revenge for the scorn
+which the much-bored Edinburgh student had poured upon her. Three weeks
+after leaving England the ship touched land for the first time at St. Jago,
+in the Cape de Verd Islands, and Darwin found his attention vividly engaged
+by the volcanic phenomena and the signs of upheaval which the island
+presented. His geological studies had already indicated the direction in
+which a great deal might be done, beyond collecting; and it was while
+sitting beneath a low lava cliff on the shore of this island, that a sense
+of his real capability first dawned upon Darwin, and prompted the ambition
+to write a book on the geology of the various countries visited. (I. p.
+66.) Even at this early date, Darwin must have thought much on geological
+topics, for he was already convinced of the superiority of Lyell's views to
+those entertained by the catastrophists [Footnote: "I had brought with me
+the first volume of Lyell's _Principles of Geology_, which I studied
+attentively; and the book was of the highest service to me in many ways.
+The very first place which I examined, namely, St. Jago, in the Cape de
+Verd Islands, showed me clearly the wonderful superiority of Lyell's manner
+of treating Geology, compared with that of any other author whose works I
+had with me or ever afterwards read "-(I. p. 62.)]; and his subsequent
+study of the tertiary deposits and of the terraced gravel beds of South
+America was eminently fitted to strengthen that conviction. The letters
+from South America contain little reference to any scientific topic except
+geology; and even the theory of the formation of coral reefs was prompted
+by the evidence of extensive and gradual changes of level afforded by the
+geology of South America; "No other work of mine," he says, "was begun in
+so deductive a spirit as this; for the whole theory was thought out on the
+West Coast of South America, before I had seen a true coral reef. I had,
+therefore, only to verify and extend my views by a careful examination of
+living reefs." (I. p. 70.) In 1835, when starting from Lima for the
+Galapagos, he recommends his friend, W. D. Fox, to take up geology:--"There
+is so much larger a field for thought than in the other branches of Natural
+History. I am become a zealous disciple of Mr. Lyell's views, as made known
+in his admirable book. Geologising in South America, I am tempted to carry
+parts to a greater extent even than he does. Geology is a capital science
+to begin with, as it requires nothing but a little reading, thinking, and
+hammering." (I. p. 263.) The truth of the last statement, when it was
+written, is a curious mark of the subsequent progress of geology. Even so
+late as 1836, Darwin speaks of being "much more inclined for geology than
+the other branches of Natural History." (I. p. 275.)
+
+At the end of the letter to Mr. Fox, however, a little doubt is expressed
+whether zoological studies might not, after all, have been more profitable;
+and an interesting passage in the "Autobiography" enables us to understand
+the origin of this hesitation.
+
+"During the voyage of the 'Beagle' I had been deeply impressed by
+discovering in the Pampean formation great fossil animals covered with
+armour like that on the existing armadillos; secondly, by the manner in
+which closely-allied animals replace one another in proceeding southwards
+over the continent; and, thirdly, by the South American character of most
+of the productions of the Galapagos Archipelago, and, more especially, by
+the manner in which they differ slightly on each island of the group; some
+of the islands appearing to be very ancient in a geological sense.
+
+"It was evident that such facts as these, as well as many others, could
+only be explained on the supposition that species gradually become
+modified; and the subject haunted me. But it was equally evident that
+neither the action of the surrounding conditions, nor the will of the
+organisms (especially in the case of plants) could account for the
+innumerable cases in which organisms of every kind are beautifully adapted
+to their habits of life; for instance, a woodpecker or a tree-frog to climb
+trees, or a seed for dispersal by hooks or plumes. I had always been much
+struck by such adaptations, and until these could be explained it seemed to
+me almost useless to endeavour to prove by indirect evidence that species
+have been modified." (I. p. 82.)
+
+The facts to which reference is here made were, without doubt, eminently
+fitted to attract the attention of a philosophical thinker; but, until the
+relations of the existing with the extinct species and of the species of
+the different geographical areas with one another, were determined with
+some exactness, they afforded but an unsafe foundation for speculation. It
+was not possible that this determination should have been effected before
+the return of the "Beagle" to England; and thus the date which Darwin
+(writing in 1837) assigns to the dawn of the new light which was rising in
+his mind becomes intelligible. [Footnote: I am indebted to Mr. F. Darwin
+for the knowledge of a letter addressed by his father to Dr. Otto Zacharias
+in 1877 which contains the following paragraph, confirmatory of the view
+expressed above: "When I was on board the _Beagle_, I believed in the
+permanence of species, but, as far as I can remember, vague doubts
+occasionally flitted across my mind. On my return home in the autumn of
+1836, I immediately began to prepare my journal for publication, and then
+saw how many facts indicated the common descent of species, so that in
+July, 1837, I opened a note-book to record any facts which might bear on
+the question. But I did not become convinced that species were mutable
+until, I think, two or three years had elapsed."]
+
+"In July opened first note-book on Transmutation of Species. Had been
+greatly struck from about the month of previous March on character of South
+American fossils and species on Galapagos Archipelago. These facts
+(especially latter) origin of all my views." (I. p. 276.)
+
+From March, 1837, then, Darwin, not without many misgivings and
+fluctuations of opinion, inclined towards transmutation as a provisional
+hypothesis. Three months afterwards he is hard at work collecting facts for
+the purpose of testing the hypothesis; and an almost apologetic passage in
+a letter to Lyell shows that, already, the attractions of biology are
+beginning to predominate over those of geology.
+
+"I have lately been sadly tempted to be idle--[Footnote: Darwin generally
+uses the word "idle" in a peculiar sense. He means by it working hard at
+something he likes when he ought to be occupied with a less attractive
+subject. Though it sounds paradoxical, there is a good deal to be said in
+favour of this view of pleasant work.]that is, as far as pure Geology is
+concerned--by the delightful number of new views which have been coming in
+thickly and steadily--on the classification and affinities and instincts of
+animals--bearing on the question of species. Note-book after note-book has
+been filled with facts which begin to group themselves _clearly_ under
+sub-laws." (I. p. 298.)
+
+The problem which was to be Darwin's chief subject of occupation for the
+rest of his life thus presented itself, at first, mainly under its
+distributional aspect. Why do species present certain relations in space
+and in time? Why are the animals and plants of the Galapagos Archipelago so
+like those of South America and yet different from them? Why are those of
+the several islets more or less different from one another? Why are the
+animals of the latest geological epoch in South America similar in
+_facies_ to those which exist in the same region at the present day,
+and yet specifically or generically different?
+
+The reply to these questions, which was almost universally received fifty
+years ago, was that animals and plants were created such as they are; and
+that their present distribution, at any rate so far as terrestrial
+organisms are concerned, has been effected by the migration of their
+ancestors from the region in which the ark stranded after the subsidence of
+the deluge. It is true that the geologists had drawn attention to a good
+many tolerably serious difficulties in the way of the diluvial part of this
+hypothesis, no less than to the supposition that the work of creation had
+occupied only a brief space of time. But even those, such as Lyell, who
+most strenuously argued in favour of the sufficiency of natural causes for
+the production of the phenomena of the inorganic world, held stoutly by the
+hypothesis of creation in the case of those of the world of life.
+
+For persons who were unable to feel satisfied with the fashionable
+doctrine, there remained only two alternatives--the hypothesis of
+spontaneous generation, and that of descent with modification. The former
+was simply the creative hypothesis with the creator left out; the latter
+had already been propounded by De Maillet and Erasmus Darwin, among others;
+and, later, systematically expounded by Lamarck. But in the eyes of the
+naturalist of the "Beagle" (and, probably, in those of most sober
+thinkers), the advocates of transmutation had done the doctrine they
+expounded more harm than good.
+
+Darwin's opinion of the scientific value of the "Zoonomia" has already been
+mentioned. His verdict on Lamarck is given in the following passage of a
+letter to Lyell (March, 1863):--
+
+"Lastly, you refer repeatedly to my view as a modification of Lamarck's
+doctrine of development and progression. If this is your deliberate opinion
+there is nothing to be said, but it does not seem so to me. Plato, Buffon,
+my grandfather, before Lamarck and others, propounded the _obvious_
+view that if species were not created separately they must have descended
+from other species, and I can see nothing else in common between the
+"Origin" and Lamarck. I believe this way of putting the case is very
+injurious to its acceptance, as it implies necessary progression, and
+closely connects Wallace's and my views with what I consider, after two
+deliberate readings, as a wretched book, and one from which (I well
+remember to my surprise) I gained nothing."
+
+"But," adds Darwin with a little touch of banter, "I know you rank it
+higher, which is curious, as it did not in the least shake your belief."
+(III. p. 14; see also p. 16, "to me it was an absolutely useless book.")
+
+Unable to find any satisfactory theory of the process of descent with
+modification in the works of his predecessors, Darwin proceeded to lay the
+foundations of his own views independently; and he naturally turned, in the
+first place, to the only certainly known examples of descent with
+modification, namely, those which are presented by domestic animals and
+cultivated plants. He devoted himself to the study of these cases with a
+thoroughness to which none of his predecessors even remotely approximated;
+and he very soon had his reward in the discovery "that selection was the
+keystone of man's success in making useful races of animals and plants."
+(I. p. 83.)
+
+This was the first step in Darwin's progress, though its immediate result
+was to bring him face to face with a great difficulty. "But how selection
+could be applied to organisms living in a state of nature remained for some
+time a mystery to me." (I. p. 83.)
+
+The key to this mystery was furnished by the accidental perusal of the
+famous essay of Malthus "On Population" in the autumn of 1838. The
+necessary result of unrestricted multiplication is competition for the
+means of existence. The success of one competitor involves the failure of
+the rest, that is, their extinction; and this "selection" is dependent on
+the better adaptation of the successful competitor to the conditions of the
+competition. Variation occurs under natural, no less than under artificial,
+conditions. Unrestricted multiplication implies the competition of
+varieties and the selection of those which are relatively best adapted to
+the conditions.
+
+Neither Erasmus Darwin, nor Lamarck, had any inkling of the possibility of
+this process of "natural selection"; and though it had been foreshadowed by
+Wells in 1813, and more fully stated by Matthew in 1831, the speculations
+of the latter writer remained unknown to naturalists until after the
+publication of the "Origin of Species."
+
+Darwin found in the doctrine of the selection of favourable variations by
+natural causes, which thus presented itself to his mind, not merely a
+probable theory of the origin of the diverse species of living forms, but
+that explanation of the phenomena of adaptation, which previous
+speculations had utterly failed to give. The process of natural selection
+is, in fact, dependent on adaptation--it is all one, whether one says that
+the competitor which survives is the "fittest" or the "best adapted." And
+it was a perfectly fair deduction that even the most complicated
+adaptations might result from the summation of a long series of simple
+favourable variations.
+
+Darwin notes as a serious defect in the first sketch of his theory that he
+had omitted to consider one very important problem, the solution of which
+did not occur to him till some time afterwards. "This problem is the
+tendency in organic beings descended from the same stock to diverge in
+character as they become modified.... The solution, as I believe, is that
+the modified offspring of all dominant and increasing forms tend to become
+adapted to many and highly diversified places in the economy of nature."
+(I. p. 84.)
+
+It is curious that so much importance should be attached to this
+supplementary idea. It seems obvious that the theory of the origin of
+species by natural selection necessarily involves the divergence of the
+forms selected. An individual which varies, _ipso facto_ diverges from
+the type of its species; and its progeny, in which the variation becomes
+intensified by selection, must diverge still more, not only from the parent
+stock, but from any other race of that stock starting from, a variation of
+a different character. The selective process could not take place unless
+the selected variety was either better adapted to the conditions than the
+original stock, or adapted to other conditions than the original stock. In
+the first case, the original stock would be sooner or later extirpated; in
+the second, the type, as represented by the original stock and the variety,
+would occupy more diversified stations than it did before.
+
+The theory, essentially such as it was published fourteen years later, was
+written out in 1844, and Darwin was so fully convinced of the importance of
+his work, as it then stood, that he made special arrangements for its
+publication in case of his death. But it is a singular example of reticent
+fortitude, that, although for the next fourteen years the subject never
+left his mind, and during the latter half of that period he was constantly
+engaged in amassing facts bearing upon it from wide reading, a colossal
+correspondence, and a long series of experiments, only two or three friends
+were cognisant of his views. To the outside world he seemed to have his
+hands quite sufficiently full of other matters. In 1844, he published his
+observations on the volcanic islands visited during the voyage of the
+"Beagle." In 1845, a largely remodelled edition of his "Journal" made its
+appearance, and immediately won, as it has ever since held, the favour of
+both the scientific and the unscientific public. In 1846, the "Geological
+Observations in South America" came out, and this book was no sooner
+finished than Darwin set to work upon the Cirripedes. He was led to
+undertake this long and heavy task, partly by his desire to make out the
+relations of a very anomalous form which he had discovered on the coast of
+Chili; and partly by a sense of "presumption in accumulating facts and
+speculating on the subject of variation without having worked out my due
+share of species." (II. p. 31.) The eight or nine years of labour, which
+resulted in a monograph of first-rate importance in systematic zoology (to
+say nothing of such novel points as the discovery of complemental males),
+left Darwin no room to reproach himself on this score, and few will share
+his "doubt whether the work was worth the consumption of so much time." (I.
+p. 82.)
+
+In science no man can safely speculate about the nature and relation of
+things with which he is unacquainted at first hand, and the acquirement of
+an intimate and practical knowledge of the process of species-making and of
+all the uncertainties which underlie the boundaries between species and
+varieties, drawn by even the most careful and conscientious systematists
+[Footnote: "After describing a set of forms as distinct species, tearing up
+my MS., and making them one species, tearing that up and making them
+separate, and then making them one again (which has happened to me), I have
+gnashed my teeth, cursed species, and asked what sin I had committed to be
+so punished." (II. p. 40.) Is there any naturalist provided with a logical
+sense and a large suite of specimens, who has not undergone pangs of the
+sort described in this vigorous paragraph, which might, with advantage, be
+printed on the title-page of every systematic monograph as a warning to the
+uninitiated?] were of no less importance to the author of the "Origin of
+Species" than was the bearing of the Cirripede work upon "the principles of
+a natural classification." (I. p. 81.) No one, as Darwin justly observes,
+has a "right to examine the question of species who has not minutely
+described many." (II. p. 39.)
+
+In September, 1854, the Cirripede work was finished, "ten thousand
+barnacles" had been sent "out of the house, all over the world," and Darwin
+had the satisfaction of being free to turn again to his "old notes on
+species." In 1855, he began to breed pigeons, and to make observations on
+the effects of use and disuse, experiments on seeds, and so on, while
+resuming his industrious collection of facts, with a view "to see how far
+they favour or are opposed to the notion that wild species are mutable or
+immutable. I mean with my utmost power to give all arguments and facts on
+both sides. I have a _number_ of people helping me every way, and
+giving me most valuable assistance; but I often doubt whether the subject
+will not quite overpower me." (II. p. 49.)
+
+Early in 1856, on Lyell's advice, Darwin began to write out his views on
+the origin of species on a scale three or four times as extensive as that
+of the work published in 1859. In July of the same year he gave a brief
+sketch of his theory in a letter to Asa Gray; and, in the year 1857, his
+letters to his correspondents show him to be busily engaged on what he
+calls his "big book." (II. pp. 85, 94.) In May, 1857, Darwin writes to
+Wallace: "I am now preparing my work [on the question how and in what way
+do species and varieties differ from each other] for publication, but I
+find the subject so very large, that, though I have written many chapters,
+I do not suppose I shall go to press for two years." (II. p. 95.) In
+December, 1857, he writes, in the course of a long letter to the same
+correspondent, "I am extremely glad to hear that you are attending to
+distribution in accordance with theoretical ideas. I am a firm believer
+that without speculation there is no good and original observation." (II.
+p. 108.) [Footnote: The last remark contains a pregnant truth, but it must
+be confessed it hardly squares with the declaration in the
+_Autobiography_, (I. p. 83), that he worked on "true Baconian
+principles."] In June, 1858, he received from Mr. Wallace, then in the
+Malay Archipelago, an "Essay on the tendency of varieties to depart
+indefinitely from the original type," of which Darwin says, "If Wallace had
+my MS. sketch written out in 1842 he could not have made a better short
+abstract! Even his terms stand now as heads of my chapters. Please return
+me the MS., which he does not say he wishes me to publish, but I shall, of
+course, at once write and offer to send it to any journal. So all my
+originality, whatever it may amount to, will be smashed, though my book, if
+ever it will have any value, will not be deteriorated; as all the labour
+consists in the application of the theory." (II. p. 116.)
+
+Thus, Darwin's first impulse was to publish Wallace's essay without note or
+comment of his own. But, on consultation with Lyell and Hooker, the latter
+of whom had read the sketch of 1844, they suggested, as an undoubtedly more
+equitable course, that extracts from the MS. of 1844 and from the letter to
+Dr. Asa Gray should be communicated to the Linnean Society along with
+Wallace's essay. The joint communication was read on July 1, 1858, and
+published under the title "On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties;
+and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of
+Selection." This was followed, on Darwin's part, by the composition of a
+summary account of the conclusions to which his twenty years' work on the
+species question had led him. It occupied him for thirteen months, and
+appeared in November, 1859, under the title "On the Origin of Species by
+means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the
+Struggle of Life."
+
+It is doubtful if any single book, except the "Principia," ever worked so
+great and so rapid a revolution in science, or made so deep an impression
+on the general mind. It aroused a tempest of opposition and met with
+equally vehement support, and it must be added that no book has been more
+widely and persistently misunderstood by both friends and foes. In 1861,
+Darwin remarks to a correspondent, "You understand my book perfectly, and
+that I find a very rare event with my critics." (I. p. 313.) The immense
+popularity which the "Origin" at once acquired was no doubt largely due to
+its many points of contact with philosophical and theological questions in
+which every intelligent man feels a profound interest; but a good deal must
+be assigned to a somewhat delusive simplicity of style, which tends to
+disguise the complexity and difficulty of the subject, and much to the
+wealth of information on all sorts of curious problems of natural history,
+which is made accessible to the most unlearned reader. But long occupation
+with the work has led the present writer to believe that the "Origin of
+Species" is one of the hardest of books to master; [Footnote: He is
+comforted to find that probably the best qualified judge among all the
+readers of the _Origin_ in 1859 was of the same opinion. Sir J. Hooker
+writes, "It is the very hardest book to read, to full profit, that I ever
+tried." (II. p. 242.)] and he is justified in this conviction by observing
+that although the "Origin" has been close on thirty years before the world,
+the strangest misconceptions of the essential nature of the theory therein
+advocated are still put forth by serious writers.
+
+Although, then, the present occasion is not suitable for any detailed
+criticism of the theory, or of the objections which have been brought
+against it, it may not be out of place to endeavour to separate the
+substance of the theory from its accidents; and to show that a variety not
+only of hostile comments, but of friendly would-be improvements lose their
+_raison d'être_ to the careful student. Observation proves the
+existence among all living beings of phenomena of three kinds, denoted by
+the terms heredity, variation, and multiplication. Progeny tend to resemble
+their parents; nevertheless all their organs and functions are susceptible
+of departing more or less from the average parental character; and their
+number is in excess of that of their parents. Severe competition for the
+means of living, or the struggle for existence, is a necessary consequence
+of unlimited multiplication; while selection, or the preservation of
+favourable variations and the extinction of others, is a necessary
+consequence of severe competition. "Favourable variations" are those which
+are better adapted to surrounding conditions. It follows, therefore, that
+every variety which is selected into a species is so favoured and preserved
+in consequence of being, in some one or more respects, better adapted to
+its surroundings than its rivals. In other words, every species which
+exists, exists in virtue of adaptation, and whatever accounts for that
+adaptation accounts for the existence of the species.
+
+To say that Darwin has put forward a theory of the adaptation of species,
+but not of their origin, is therefore to misunderstand the first principles
+of the theory. For, as has been pointed out, it is a necessary consequence
+of the theory of selection that every species must have some one or more
+structural or functional peculiarities, in virtue of the advantage
+conferred by which, it has fought through the crowd of its competitors and
+achieved a certain duration. In this sense, it is true that every species
+has been "originated" by selection.
+
+There is another sense, however, in which it is equally true that selection
+originates nothing. "Unless profitable variations ... occur natural
+selection can do nothing" ("Origin," Ed. I. p. 82). "Nothing can be
+effected unless favourable variations occur" (_ibid_., p. 108). "What
+applies to one animal will apply throughout time to all animals--that is,
+if they vary--for otherwise natural selection can do nothing. So it will be
+with plants" (_ibid_., p. 113). Strictly speaking, therefore, the
+origin of species in general lies in variation; while the origin of any
+particular species lies, firstly, in the occurrence, and secondly, in the
+selection and preservation of a particular variation. Clearness on this
+head will relieve one from the necessity of attending to the fallacious
+assertion that natural selection is a _deus ex machinâ_, or occult
+agency.
+
+Those, again, who confuse the operation of the natural causes which bring
+about variation and selection with what they are pleased to call "chance"
+can hardly have read the opening paragraph of the fifth chapter of the
+"Origin" (Ed. I, p. 131): "I have sometimes spoken as if the variations ...
+had been due to chance. This is of course a wholly incorrect expression,
+but it seems to acknowledge plainly our ignorance of the cause of each
+particular variation."
+
+Another point of great importance to the right comprehension of the theory,
+is, that while every species must needs have some adaptive advantageous
+characters to which it owes its preservation by selection, it may possess
+any number of others which are neither advantageous nor disadvantageous,
+but indifferent, or even slightly disadvantageous. (_Ibid_., p. 81.)
+For variations take place, not merely in one organ or function at a time,
+but in many; and thus an advantageous variation, which gives rise to the
+selection of a new race or species, may be accompanied by others which are
+indifferent, but which are just as strongly hereditary as the advantageous
+variations. The advantageous structure is but one product of a modified
+general constitution which may manifest itself by several other products;
+and the selective process carries the general constitution along with the
+advantageous special peculiarity. A given species of plant may owe its
+existence to the selective adaptation of its flowers to insect fertilisers;
+but the character of its leaves may be the result of variations of an
+indifferent character. It is the origin of variations of this kind to which
+Darwin refers in his frequent reference to what he calls "laws of
+correlation of growth" or "correlated variation."
+
+These considerations lead us further to see the inappropriateness of the
+objections raised to Darwin's theory on the ground that natural selection
+does not account for the first commencements of useful organs. But it does
+not pretend to do so. The source of such commencements is necessarily to be
+sought in different variations, which remain unaffected by selection until
+they have taken such a form as to become utilisable in the struggle for
+existence.
+
+It is not essential to Darwin's theory that anything more should be assumed
+than the facts of heredity, variation, and unlimited multiplication; and
+the validity of the deductive reasoning as to the effect of the last (that
+is, of the struggle for existence which it involves) upon the varieties
+resulting from the operation of the former. Nor is it essential that one
+should take up any particular position in regard to the mode of variation,
+whether, for example, it takes place _per saltum_ or gradually;
+whether it is definite in character or indefinite. Still less are those who
+accept the theory bound to any particular views as to the causes of
+heredity or of variation.
+
+That Darwin held strong opinions on some or all of these points may be
+quite true; but, so far as the theory is concerned, they must be regarded
+as _obiter dicta_. With respect to the causes of variation, Darwin's
+opinions are, from first to last, put forward altogether tentatively. In
+the first edition of the "Origin," he attributes the strongest influence to
+changes in the conditions of life of parental organisms, which he appears
+to think act on the germ through the intermediation of the sexual organs.
+He points out, over and over again, that habit, use, disuse, and the direct
+influence of conditions have some effect, but he does not think it great,
+and he draws attention to the difficulty of distinguishing between effects
+of these agencies and those of selection. There is, however, one class of
+variations which he withdraws from the direct influence of selection,
+namely, the variations in the fertility of the sexual union of more or less
+closely allied forms. He regards less fertility, or more or less complete
+sterility, as "incidental to other acquired differences." (_Ibid_., p.
+245.)
+
+Considering the difficulties which surround the question of the causes of
+variation, it is not to be wondered at, that Darwin should have inclined,
+sometimes, rather more to one and, sometimes, rather more to another of the
+possible alternatives. There is little difference between the last edition
+of the "Origin" (1872) and the first on this head. In 1876, however, he
+writes to Moritz Wagner, "In my opinion, the greatest error which I have
+committed has been not allowing sufficient weight to the direct action of
+the environments, i.e., food, climate, &c., independently of natural
+selection. ...When I wrote the 'Origin,' and for some years afterwards, I
+could find little good evidence of the direct action of the environment;
+now there is a large body of evidence, and your case of the Saturnia is one
+of the most remarkable of which I have heard." (III, p. 159.) But there is
+really nothing to prevent the most tenacious adherent to the theory of
+natural selection from taking any view he pleases as to the importance of
+the direct influence of conditions and the hereditary transmissibility of
+the modifications which they produce. In fact, there is a good deal to be
+said for the view that the so-called direct influence of conditions is
+itself a case of selection. Whether the hypothesis of Pangenesis be
+accepted or rejected, it can hardly be doubted that the struggle for
+existence goes on not merely between distinct organisms, but between the
+physiological units of which each organism is composed, and that changes in
+external conditions favour some and hinder others.
+
+After a short stay in Cambridge, Darwin resided in London for the first
+five years which followed his return to England; and for three years, he
+held the post of Secretary to the Geological Society, though he shared to
+the full his friend Lyell's objection to entanglement in such engagements.
+In fact, he used to say in later life, more than half in earnest, that he
+gave up hoping for work from men who accepted official duties and,
+especially, Government appointments. Happily for him, he was exempted from
+the necessity of making any sacrifice of this kind, but an even heavier
+burden was laid upon him. During the earlier half of his voyage Darwin
+retained the vigorous health of his boyhood, and indeed proved himself to
+be exceptionally capable of enduring fatigue and privation. An anomalous
+but severe disorder, which laid him up for several weeks at Valparaiso in
+1834, however, seems to have left its mark on his constitution; and, in the
+later years of his London life, attacks of illness, usually accompanied by
+severe vomiting and great prostration of strength, became frequent. As he
+grew older, a considerable part of every day, even at his best times, was
+spent in misery; while, not unfrequently, months of suffering rendered work
+of any kind impossible. Even Darwin's remarkable tenacity of purpose and
+methodical utilisation of every particle of available energy could not have
+enabled him to achieve a fraction of the vast amount of labour he got
+through, in the course of the following forty years, had not the wisest and
+the most loving care unceasingly surrounded him from the time of his
+marriage in 1839. As early as 1842, the failure of health was so marked
+that removal from London became imperatively necessary; and Darwin
+purchased a house and grounds at Down, a solitary hamlet in Kent, which was
+his home for the rest of his life. Under the strictly regulated conditions
+of a valetudinarian existence, the intellectual activity of the invalid
+might have put to shame most healthy men; and, so long as he could hold his
+head up, there was no limit to the genial kindness of thought and action
+for all about him. Those friends who were privileged to share the intimate
+life of the household at Down have an abiding memory of the cheerful
+restfulness which pervaded and characterised it.
+
+After mentioning his settlement at Down, Darwin writes in his
+Autobiography:--
+
+"My chief enjoyment and sole employment throughout life has been scientific
+work; and the excitement from such work makes me, for the time, forget, or
+drives quite away, my daily discomfort. I have, therefore, nothing to
+record during the rest of my life, except the publication of my several
+books." (I, p. 79.)
+
+Of such works published subsequently to 1859, several are monographic
+discussions of topics briefly dealt with in the "Origin," which, it must
+always be recollected, was considered by the author to be merely an
+abstract of an _opus majus_.
+
+The earliest of the books which may be placed in this category, "On the
+Various Contrivances by which Orchids are Fertilised by Insects," was
+published in 1862, and whether we regard its theoretical significance, the
+excellence of the observations and the ingenuity of the reasonings which it
+records, or the prodigious mass of subsequent investigation of which it has
+been the parent, it has no superior in point of importance. The conviction
+that no theory of the origin of species could be satisfactory which failed
+to offer an explanation of the way in which mechanisms involving
+adaptations of structure and function to the performance of certain
+operations are brought about, was, from the first, dominant in Darwin's
+mind. As has been seen, he rejected Lamarck's views because of their
+obvious incapacity to furnish such an explanation in the case of the great
+majority of animal mechanisms, and in that of all those presented by the
+vegetable world.
+
+So far back as 1793, the wonderful work of Sprengel had established, beyond
+any reasonable doubt, the fact that, in a large number of cases, a flower
+is a piece of mechanism the object of which is to convert insect visitors
+into agents of fertilisation. Sprengel's observations had been most
+undeservedly neglected and well-nigh forgotten; but Robert Brown having
+directed Darwin's attention to them in 1841, he was attracted towards the
+subject, and verified many of Sprengel's statements. (III, p. 258.) It may
+be doubted whether there was a living botanical specialist, except perhaps
+Brown, who had done as much. If, however, adaptations of this kind were to
+be explained by natural selection, it was necessary to show that the plants
+which were provided with mechanisms for ensuring the aid of insects as
+fertilisers, were by so much the better fitted to compete with their
+rivals. This Sprengel had not done. Darwin had been attending to cross
+fertilisation in plants so far back as 1839, from having arrived, in the
+course of his speculations on the origin of species, at the conviction
+"that crossing played an important part in keeping specific forms constant"
+(I, p. 90). The further development of his views on the importance of cross
+fertilisation appears to have taken place between this time and 1857, when
+he published his first papers on the fertilisation of flowers in the
+"Gardener's Chronicle." If the conclusion at which he ultimately arrived,
+that cross fertilisation is favourable to the fertility of the parent and
+to the vigour of the offspring, is correct, then it follows that all those
+mechanisms which hinder self-fertilisation and favour crossing must be
+advantageous in the struggle for existence; and, the more perfect the
+action of the mechanism, the greater the advantage. Thus the way lay open
+for the operation of natural selection in gradually perfecting the flower
+as a fertilisation-trap. Analogous reasoning applies to the fertilising
+insect. The better its structure is adapted to that of the trap, the more
+will it be able to profit by the bait, whether of honey or of pollen, to
+the exclusion of its competitors. Thus, by a sort of action and reaction, a
+two-fold series of adaptive modifications will be brought about.
+
+In 1865, the important bearing of this subject on his theory led Darwin to
+commence a great series of laborious and difficult experiments on the
+fertilisation of plants, which occupied him for eleven years, and furnished
+him with the unexpectedly strong evidence in favour of the influence of
+crossing which he published in 1876, under the title of "The Effects of
+Cross and Self Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom." Incidentally, as it
+were, to this heavy piece of work, he made the remarkable series of
+observations on the different arrangements by which crossing is favoured
+and, in many cases, necessitated, which appeared in the work on "The
+Different Forms of Flowers in Plants of the same Species" in 1877.
+
+In the course of the twenty years during which Darwin was thus occupied in
+opening up new regions of investigation to the botanist and showing the
+profound physiological significance of the apparently meaningless
+diversities of floral structure, his attention was keenly alive to any
+other interesting phenomena of plant life which came in his way. In his
+correspondence, he not unfrequently laughs at himself for his ignorance of
+systematic botany; and his acquaintance with vegetable anatomy and
+physiology was of the slenderest. Nevertheless, if any of the less common
+features of plant life came under his notice, that imperious necessity of
+seeking for causes which nature had laid upon him, impelled, and indeed
+compelled, him to inquire the how and the why of the fact, and its bearing
+on his general views. And as, happily, the atavic tendency to frame
+hypotheses was accompanied by an equally strong need to test them by
+well-devised experiments, and to acquire all possible information before
+publishing his results, the effect was that he touched no topic without
+elucidating it.
+
+Thus the investigation of the operations of insectivorous plants, embodied
+in the work on that topic published in 1875, was started fifteen years
+before, by a passing observation made during one of Darwin's rare holidays.
+
+"In the summer of 1860, I was idling and resting near Hartfield, where two
+species of Drosera abound; and I noticed that numerous insects had been
+entrapped by the leaves. I carried home some plants, and on giving them
+some insects saw the movements of the tentacles, and this made me think it
+possible that the insects were caught for some special purpose.
+Fortunately, a crucial test occurred to me, that of placing a large number
+of leaves in various nitrogenous and non-nitrogenous fluids of equal
+density; and as soon as I found that the former alone excited energetic
+movements, it was obvious that here was a fine new field for
+investigation." (I, p. 95.)
+
+The researches thus initiated led to the proof that plants are capable of
+secreting a digestive fluid like that of animals, and of profiting by the
+result of digestion; whereby the peculiar apparatuses of the insectivorous
+plants were brought within the scope of natural selection. Moreover, these
+inquiries widely enlarged our knowledge of the manner in which stimuli are
+transmitted in plants, and opened up a prospect of drawing closer the
+analogies between the motor processes of plants and those of animals.
+
+So with respect to the books on "Climbing Plants" (1875), and on the "Power
+of Movement in Plants" (1880), Darwin says;--
+
+"I was led to take up this subject by reading a short paper by Asa Gray,
+published in 1858. He sent me some seeds, and on raising some plants I was
+so much fascinated and perplexed by the revolving movements of the tendrils
+and stems, which movements are really very simple, though appearing at
+first sight very complex, that I procured various other kinds of climbing
+plants and studied the whole subject.... Some of the adaptations displayed
+by climbing plants are as beautiful as those of orchids for ensuring
+cross-fertilisation." (I, p. 93.)
+
+In the midst of all this amount of work, remarkable alike for its variety
+and its importance, among plants, the animal kingdom was by no means
+neglected. A large moiety of "The Variation of Animals and Plants under
+Domestication" (1868), which contains the _pièces justificatives_ of
+the first chapter of the "Origin," is devoted to domestic animals, and the
+hypothesis of "pangenesis" propounded in the second volume applies to the
+whole living world. In the "Origin" Darwin throws out some suggestions as
+to the causes of variation, but he takes heredity, as it is manifested by
+individual organisms, for granted, as an ultimate fact; pangenesis is an
+attempt to account for the phenomena of heredity in the organism, on the
+assumption that the physiological units of which the organism is composed
+give off gemmules, which, in virtue of heredity, tend to reproduce the unit
+from which they are derived.
+
+That Darwin had the application of his theory to the origin of the human
+species clearly in his mind in 1859, is obvious from a passage in the first
+edition of "The Origin of Species." (Ed. I, p. 488.) "In the distant future
+I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be
+based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental
+power and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of man
+and his history." It is one of the curiosities of scientific literature,
+that, in the face of this plain declaration, its author should have been
+charged with concealing his opinions on the subject of the origin of man.
+But he reserved the full statement of his views until 1871, when the
+"Descent of Man" was published. The "Expression of the Emotions"
+(originally intended to form only a chapter in the "Descent of Man") grew
+into a separate volume, which appeared in 1872. Although always taking a
+keen interest in geology, Darwin naturally found no time disposable for
+geological work, even had his health permitted it, after he became
+seriously engaged with the great problem of species. But the last of his
+labours is, in some sense, a return to his earliest, inasmuch as it is an
+expansion of a short paper read before the Geological Society more than
+forty years before, and, as he says, "revived old geological thoughts" (I,
+p. 98). In fact, "The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of
+Worms," affords as striking an example of the great results produced by the
+long-continued operation of small causes as even the author of the
+"Principles of Geology" could have desired.
+
+In the early months of 1882 Darwin's health underwent a change for the
+worse; attacks of giddiness and fainting supervened, and on the 19th of
+April he died. On the 24th, his remains were interred in Westminster Abbey,
+in accordance with the general feeling that such a man as he should not go
+to the grave without some public recognition of the greatness of his work.
+
+Mr. Darwin became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1839; one of the Royal
+Medals was awarded to him in 1853, and he received the Copley Medal in
+1864. The "Life and Letters," edited with admirable skill and judgment by
+Mr. Francis Darwin, gives a full and singularly vivid presentment of his
+father's personal character, of his mode of work, and of the events of his
+life. In the present brief obituary notice, the writer has attempted
+nothing more than to select and put together those facts which enable us to
+trace the intellectual evolution of one of the greatest of the many great
+men of science whose names adorn the long roll of the Fellows of the Royal
+Society.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+ON OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE CAUSES OF THE PHENOMENA OF ORGANIC NATURE
+
+[_Six Lectures to Working Men_.--1863.]
+
+
+
+I. THE PRESENT CONDITION OF ORGANIC NATURE
+
+
+When it was my duty to consider what subject I would select for the six
+lectures which I shall now have the pleasure of delivering to you, it
+occurred to me that I could not do better than endeavour to put before you
+in a true light, or in what I might perhaps with more modesty call, that
+which I conceive myself to be the true light, the position of a book which
+has been more praised and more abused, perhaps, than any book which has
+appeared for some years;--I mean Mr. Darwin's work on the "Origin of
+Species." That work, I doubt not, many of you have read; for I know the
+inquiring spirit which is rife among you. At any rate, all of you will have
+heard of it,--some by one kind of report and some by another kind of
+report; the attention of all and the curiosity of all have been probably
+more or less excited on the subject of that work. All I can do, and all I
+shall attempt to do, is to put before you that kind of judgment which has
+been formed by a man, who, of course, is liable to judge erroneously; but,
+at any rate, of one whose business and profession it is to form judgments
+upon questions of this nature.
+
+And here, as it will always happen when dealing with an extensive subject,
+the greater part of my course--if, indeed, so small a number of lectures
+can be properly called a course--must be devoted to preliminary matters, or
+rather to a statement of those facts and of those principles which the work
+itself dwells upon, and brings more or less directly before us. I have no
+right to suppose that all or any of you are naturalists; and, even if you
+were, the misconceptions and misunderstandings prevalent even among
+naturalists, on these matters, would make it desirable that I should take
+the course I now propose to take,--that I should start from the
+beginning,--that I should endeavour to point out what is the existing state
+of the organic world--that I should point out its past condition,--that I
+should state what is the precise nature of the undertaking which Mr. Darwin
+has taken in hand; that I should endeavour to show you what are the only
+methods by which that undertaking can be brought to an issue, and to point
+out to you how far the author of the work in question has satisfied those
+conditions, how far he has not satisfied them, how far they are satisfiable
+by man, and how far they are not satisfiable by man.
+
+To-night, in taking up the first part of the question, I shall endeavour to
+put before you a sort of broad notion of our knowledge of the condition of
+the living world. There are many ways of doing this. I might deal with it
+pictorially and graphically. Following the example of Humboldt in his
+"Aspects of Nature," I might endeavour to point out the infinite variety of
+organic life in every mode of its existence, with reference to the
+variations of climate and the like; and such an attempt would be fraught
+with interest to us all; but considering the subject before us, such a
+course would not be that best calculated to assist us. In an argument of
+this kind we must go further and dig deeper into the matter; we must
+endeavour to look into the foundations of living Nature, if I may so say,
+and discover the principles involved in some of her most secret operations.
+I propose, therefore, in the first place, to take some ordinary animal with
+which you are all familiar, and by easily comprehensible and obvious
+examples drawn from it, to show what are the kind of problems which living
+beings in general lay before us; and I shall then show you that the same
+problems are laid open to us by all kinds of living beings. But, first, let
+me say in what sense I have used the words "organic nature." In speaking of
+the causes which lead to our present knowledge of organic nature, I have
+used it almost as an equivalent of the word "living," and for this
+reason,--that in almost all living beings you can distinguish several
+distinct portions set apart to do particular things and work in a
+particular way. These are termed "organs," and the whole together is called
+"organic." And as it is universally characteristic of them, the term
+"organic" has been very conveniently employed to denote the whole of living
+nature,--the whole of the plant world, and the whole of the animal world.
+
+Few animals can be more familiar to you than that whose skeleton is shown
+on our diagram. You need not bother yourselves with this "_Equus
+caballus_" written under it; that is only the Latin name of it, and does
+not make it any better. It simply means the common horse. Suppose we wish
+to understand all about the horse. Our first object must be to study the
+structure of the animal. The whole of his body is inclosed within a hide, a
+skin covered with hair; and if that hide or skin be taken off, we find a
+great mass of flesh, or what is technically called muscle, being the
+substance which by its power of contraction enables the animal to move.
+These muscles move the hard parts one upon the other, and so give that
+strength and power of motion which renders the horse so useful to us in the
+performance of those services in which we employ him.
+
+And then, on separating and removing the whole of this skin and flesh, you
+have a great series of bones, hard structures, bound together with
+ligaments, and forming the skeleton which is represented here.
+
+In that skeleton there are a number of parts to be recognised. The long
+series of bones, beginning from the skull and ending in the tail, is called
+the spine, and those in front are the ribs; and then there are two pairs of
+limbs, one before and one behind; and there are what we all know as the
+fore-legs and the hind-legs. If we pursue our researches into the interior
+of this animal, we find within the framework of the skeleton a great
+cavity, or rather, I should say, two great cavities,--one cavity beginning
+in the skull and running through the neck-bones, along the spine, and
+ending in the tail, containing the brain and the spinal marrow, which are
+extremely important organs. The second great cavity, commencing with the
+mouth, contains the gullet, the stomach, the long intestine, and all the
+rest of those internal apparatus which are essential for digestion; and
+then in the same great cavity, there are lodged the heart and all the great
+vessels going from it; and, besides that, the organs of respiration--the
+lungs: and then the kidneys, and the organs of reproduction, and so on. Let
+us now endeavour to reduce this notion of a horse that we now have, to some
+such kind of simple expressions as can be at once, and without difficulty,
+retained in the mind, apart from all minor details. If I make a transverse
+section, that is, if I were to saw a dead horse across, I should find that,
+if I left out the details, and supposing I took my section through the
+anterior region, and through the fore-limbs, I should have here this kind
+of section of the body (Fig. 1).
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 1]
+
+Here would be the upper part of the animal--that great mass of bones that
+we spoke of as the spine (_a_, Fig. 1). Here I should have the
+alimentary canal (_b_, Fig. 1). Here I should have the heart
+(_c_, Fig. 1); and then you see, there would be a kind of double tube,
+the whole being inclosed within the hide; the spinal marrow would be placed
+in the upper tube (_a_, Fig. 1), and in the lower tube (_d d_,
+Fig. 1), there would be the alimentary canal (_b_), and the heart
+(_e_); and here I shall have the legs proceeding from each side. For
+simplicity's sake, I represent them merely as stumps (_e e_, Fig. 1).
+Now that is a horse--as mathematicians would say--reduced to its most
+simple expression. Carry that in your minds, if you please, as a simplified
+idea of the structure of the horse. The considerations which I have now put
+before you belong to what we technically call the "Anatomy" of the horse.
+Now, suppose we go to work upon these several parts,--flesh and hair, and
+skin and bone, and lay open these various organs with our scalpels, and
+examine them by means of our magnifying-glasses, and see what we can make
+of them. We shall find that the flesh is made up of bundles of strong
+fibres The brain and nerves, too, we shall find are made up of fibres, and
+these queer-looking things that are called ganglionic corpuscles. If we
+take a slice of the bone and examine it, we shall find that it is very like
+this diagram of a section of the bone of on ostrich, though differing, of
+course, in some details; and if we take any part whatsoever of the tissue,
+and examine it, we shall find it all has a minute structure, visible only
+under the microscope. All these parts constitute microscopic anatomy or
+"Histology." These parts are constantly being changed; every part is
+constantly growing, decaying, and being replaced during the life of the
+animal. The tissue is constantly replaced by new material; and if you go
+back to the young state of the tissue in the case of muscle, or in the case
+of skin, or any of the organs I have mentioned, you will find that they all
+come under the same condition. Every one of these microscopic filaments and
+fibres (I now speak merely of the general character of the whole
+process)--every one of these parts--could be traced down to some
+modification of a tissue which can be readily divided into little particles
+of fleshy matter, of that substance which is composed of the chemical
+elements, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, having such a shape as
+this (Fig. 2). These particles, into which all primitive tissues break up,
+are called cells. If I were to make a section of a piece of the skin of my
+hand, I should find that it was made up of these cells. If I examine the
+fibres which form the various organs of all living animals, I should find
+that all of them, at one time or other, had been formed out of a substance
+consisting of similar elements; so that you see, just as we reduced the
+whole body in the gross to that sort of simple expression given in Fig. 1,
+so we may reduce the whole of the microscopic structural elements to a form
+of even greater simplicity; just as the plan of the whole body may be so
+represented in a sense (Fig. 1), so the primary structure of every tissue
+may be represented by a mass of cells (Fig. 2).
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 2.]
+
+Having thus, in this sort of general way, sketched to you what I may call,
+perhaps, the architecture of the body of the horse (what we term
+technically its Morphology), I must now turn to another aspect. A horse is
+not a mere dead structure: it is an active, living, working machine.
+Hitherto we have, as it were, been looking at a steam-engine with the fires
+out, and nothing in the boiler; but the body of the living animal is a
+beautifully-formed active machine, and every part has its different work to
+do in the working of that machine, which is what we call its life. The
+horse, if you see him after his day's work is done, is cropping the grass
+in the fields, as it may be, or munching the oats in his stable. What is he
+doing? His jaws are working as a mill--and a very complex mill
+too--grinding the corn, or crushing the grass to a pulp. As soon as that
+operation has taken place, the food is passed down to the stomach, and
+there it is mixed with the chemical fluid called the gastric juice, a
+substance which has the peculiar property of making soluble and dissolving
+out the nutritious matter in the grass, and leaving behind those parts
+which are not nutritious; so that you have, first, the mill, then a sort of
+chemical digester; and then the food, thus partially dissolved, is carried
+back by the muscular contractions of the intestines into the hinder parts
+of the body, while the soluble portions are taken up into the blood. The
+blood is contained in a vast system of pipes, spreading through the whole
+body, connected with a force-pump,--the heart,--which, by its position and
+by the contractions of its valves, keeps the blood constantly circulating
+in one direction, never allowing it to rest; and then, by means of this
+circulation of the blood, laden as it is with the products of digestion,
+the skin, the flesh, the hair, and every other part of the body, draws from
+it that which it wants, and every one of these organs derives those
+materials which are necessary to enable it to do its work.
+
+The action of each of these organs, the performance of each of these
+various duties, involve in their operation a continual absorption of the
+matters necessary for their support, from the blood and a constant
+formation of waste products, which are returned to the blood, and conveyed
+by it to the lungs and the kidneys, which are organs that have allotted to
+them the office of extracting, separating, and getting rid of these waste
+products; and thus the general nourishment, labour, and repair of the whole
+machine are kept up with order and regularity. But not only is it a machine
+which feeds and appropriates to its own support the nourishment necessary
+to its existence--it is an engine for locomotive purposes. The horse
+desires to go from one place to another; and to enable it to do this, it
+has those strong contractile bundles of muscles attached to the bones of
+its limbs, which are put in motion by means of a sort of telegraphic
+apparatus formed by the brain and the great spinal cord running through the
+spine or backbone; and to this spinal cord are attached a number of fibres
+termed nerves, which proceed to all parts of the structure. By means of
+these the eyes, nose, tongue, and skin--all the organs of
+perception--transmit impressions or sensations to the brain, which acts as
+a sort of great central telegraph-office, receiving impressions and sending
+messages to all parts of the body, and putting in motion the muscles
+necessary to accomplish any movement that maybe desired. So that you have
+here an extremely complex and beautifully-proportioned machine, with all
+its parts working harmoniously together towards one common object--the
+preservation of the life of the animal.
+
+Now, note this: the horse makes up its waste by feeding, and its food is
+grass or oats, or perhaps other vegetable products; therefore, in the long
+run, the source of all this complex machinery lies in the vegetable
+kingdom. But where does the grass, or the oat, or any other plant obtain
+this nourishing food-producing material? At first it is a little seed,
+which soon begins to draw into itself from the earth and the surrounding
+air matters which in themselves contain no vital properties whatever; it
+absorbs into its own substance water, an inorganic body; it draws into its
+substance carbonic acid, an inorganic matter; and ammonia, another
+inorganic matter, found in the air; and then, by some wonderful chemical
+process, the details of which chemists do not yet understand, though they
+are near foreshadowing them, it combines them into one substance, which is
+known to us as "Protein," a complex compound of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen,
+and nitrogen, which alone possesses the property of manifesting vitality
+and of permanently supporting animal life. So that, you see, the waste
+products of the animal economy, the effete materials which are continually
+being thrown off by all living beings, in the form of organic matters, are
+constantly replaced by supplies of the necessary repairing and rebuilding
+materials drawn from the plants, which in their turn manufacture them, so
+to speak, by a mysterious combination of those same inorganic materials.
+
+Let us trace out the history of the horse in another direction. After a
+certain time, as the result of sickness or disease, the effect of accident,
+or the consequence of old age, sooner or later, the animal dies. The
+multitudinous operations of this beautiful mechanism flag in their
+performance, the horse loses its vigour, and after passing through the
+curious series of changes comprised in its formation and preservation, it
+finally decays, and ends its life by going back into that inorganic world
+from which all but an inappreciable fraction of its substance was derived.
+Its bones become mere carbonate and phosphate of lime; the matter of its
+flesh, and of its other parts, becomes, in the long run, converted into
+carbonic acid, into water, and into ammonia. You will now, perhaps,
+understand the curious relation of the animal with the plant, of the
+organic with the inorganic world, which is shown in this diagram.
+
+[Illustration: Inorganic World Fig. 3.]
+
+The plant gathers these inorganic materials together and makes them up into
+its own substance. The animal eats the plant and appropriates the
+nutritious portions to its own sustenance, rejects and gets rid of the
+useless matters; and, finally, the animal itself dies, and its whole body
+is decomposed and returned into the inorganic world. There is thus a
+constant circulation from one to the other, a continual formation of
+organic life from inorganic matters, and as constant a return of the matter
+of living bodies to the inorganic world; so that the materials of which our
+bodies are composed are largely, in all probability, the substances which
+constituted the matter of long extinct creations, but which have in the
+interval constituted a part of the inorganic world.
+
+Thus we come to the conclusion, strange at first sight, that the MATTER
+constituting the living world is identical with that which forms the
+inorganic world. And not less true is it that, remarkable as are the powers
+or, in other words, as are the FORCES which are exerted by living beings,
+yet all these forces are either identical with those which exist in the
+inorganic world, or they are convertible into them; I mean in just the same
+sense as the researches of physical philosophers have shown that heat is
+convertible into electricity, that electricity is convertible into
+magnetism, magnetism into mechanical force or chemical force, and any one
+of them with the other, each being measurable in terms of the other,--even
+so, I say, that great law is applicable to the living world. Consider why
+is the skeleton of this horse capable of supporting the masses of flesh and
+the various organs forming the living body, unless it is because of the
+action of the same forces of cohesion which combines together the particles
+of matter composing this piece of chalk? What is there in the muscular
+contractile power of the animal but the force which is expressible, and
+which is in a certain sense convertible, into the force of gravity which it
+overcomes? Or, if you go to more hidden processes, in what does the process
+of digestion differ from those processes which are carried on in the
+laboratory of the chemist? Even if we take the most recondite and most
+complex operations of animal life--those of the nervous system, these of
+late years have been shown to be--I do not say identical in any sense with
+the electrical processes--but this has been shown, that they are in some
+way or other associated with them; that is to say, that every amount of
+nervous action is accompanied by a certain amount of electrical disturbance
+in the particles of the nerves in which that nervous action is carried on.
+In this way the nervous action is related to electricity in the same way
+that heat is related to electricity; and the same sort of argument which
+demonstrates the two latter to be related to one another shows that the
+nervous forces are correlated to electricity; for the experiments of M.
+Dubois Reymond and others have shown that whenever a nerve is in a state of
+excitement, sending a message to the muscles or conveying an impression to
+the brain, there is a disturbance of the electrical condition of that nerve
+which does not exist at other times; and there are a number of other facts
+and phenomena of that sort; so that we come to the broad conclusion that
+not only as to living matter itself, but as to the forces that matter
+exerts, there is a close relationship between the organic and the inorganic
+world--the difference between them arising from the diverse combination and
+disposition of identical forces, and not from any primary diversity, so far
+as we can see.
+
+I said just now that the horse eventually died and became converted into
+the same inorganic substances from whence all but an inappreciable fraction
+of its substance demonstrably originated, so that the actual wanderings of
+matter are as remarkable as the transmigrations of the soul fabled by
+Indian tradition. But before death has occurred, in the one sex or the
+other, and in fact in both, certain products or parts of the organism have
+been set free, certain parts of the organisms of the two sexes have come
+into contact with one another, and from that conjunction, from that union
+which then takes place, there results the formation of a new being. At
+stated times the mare, from a particular part of the interior of her body,
+called the ovary, gets rid of a minute particle of matter comparable in all
+essential respects with that which we called a cell a little while since,
+which cell contains a kind of nucleus in its centre, surrounded by a clear
+space and by a viscid mass of protein substance (Fig. 2); and though it is
+different in appearance from the eggs which we are mostly acquainted with,
+it is really an egg. After a time this minute particle of matter, which may
+only be a small fraction of a grain in weight, undergoes a series of
+changes,--wonderful, complex changes. Finally, upon its surface there is
+fashioned a little elevation, which afterwards becomes divided and marked
+by a groove. The lateral boundaries of the groove extend upwards and
+downwards, and at length give rise to a double tube. In the upper and
+smaller tube the spinal marrow and brain are fashioned; in the lower, the
+alimentary canal and heart; and at length two pairs of buds shoot out at
+the sides of the body, and they are the rudiments of the limbs. In fact a
+true drawing of a section of the embryo in this state would in all
+essential respects resemble that diagram of a horse reduced to its simplest
+expression, which I first placed before you (Fig. 1).
+
+Slowly and gradually these changes take place. The whole of the body, at
+first, can be broken up into "cells," which become in one place
+metamorphosed into muscle,--in another place into gristle and bone,--in
+another place into fibrous tissue,--and in another into hair; every part
+becoming gradually and slowly fashioned, as if there were an artificer at
+work in each of these complex structures that I have mentioned. This
+embryo, as it is called, then passes into other conditions. I should tell
+you that there is a time when the embryos of neither dog, nor horse, nor
+porpoise, nor monkey, nor man, can be distinguished by any essential
+feature one from the other; there is a time when they each and all of them
+resemble this one of the dog. But as development advances, all the parts
+acquire their speciality, till at length you have the embryo converted into
+the form of the parent from which it started. So that you see, this living
+animal, this horse, begins its existence as a minute particle of
+nitrogenous matter, which, being supplied with nutriment (derived, as I
+have shown, from the inorganic world), grows up according to the special
+type and construction of its parents, works and undergoes a constant waste,
+and that waste is made good by nutriment derived from the inorganic world;
+the waste given off in this way being directly added to the inorganic
+world. Eventually the animal itself dies, and, by the process of
+decomposition, its whole body is returned to those conditions of inorganic
+matter in which its substance originated.
+
+This, then, is that which is true of every living form, from the lowest
+plant to the highest animal--to man himself. You might define the life of
+every one in exactly the same terms as those which I have now used; the
+difference between the highest and the lowest being simply in the
+complexity of the developmental changes, the variety of the structural
+forms, and the diversity of the physiological functions which are exerted
+by each.
+
+If I were to take an oak tree, as a specimen of the plant world, I should
+find that it originated in an acorn, which, too, commenced in a cell; the
+acorn is placed in the ground, and it very speedily begins to absorb the
+inorganic matters I have named, adds enormously to its bulk, and we can see
+it, year after year, extending itself upward and downward, attracting and
+appropriating to itself inorganic materials, which it vivifies, and
+eventually, as it ripens, gives off its own proper acorns, which again run
+the same course. But I need not multiply examples,--from the highest to the
+lowest the essential features of life are the same as I have described in
+each of these cases.
+
+So much, then, for these particular features of the organic world, which
+you can understand and comprehend, so long as you confine yourself to one
+sort of living being, and study that only.
+
+But, as you know, horses are not the only living creatures in the world;
+and again, horses, like all other animals, have certain limits--are
+confined to a certain area on the surface of the earth on which we
+live,--and, as that is the simpler matter, I may take that first. In its
+wild state, and before the discovery of America, when the natural state of
+things was interfered with by the Spaniards, the horse was only to be found
+in parts of the earth which are known to geographers as the Old World; that
+is to say, you might meet with horses in Europe, Asia, or Africa; but there
+were none in Australia, and there were none whatsoever in the whole
+continent of America, from Labrador down to Cape Horn. This is an empirical
+fact, and it is what is called, stated in the way I have given it you, the
+"Geographical Distribution" of the horse.
+
+Why horses should be found in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and not in America,
+is not obvious; the explanation that the conditions of life in America are
+unfavourable to their existence, and that, therefore, they had not been
+created there, evidently does not apply; for when the invading Spaniards,
+or our own yeomen farmers, conveyed horses to these countries for their own
+use, they were found to thrive well and multiply very rapidly; and many are
+even now running wild in those countries, and in a perfectly natural
+condition. Now, suppose we were to do for every animal what we have here
+done for the horse,--that is, to mark off and distinguish the particular
+district or region to which each belonged; and supposing we tabulated all
+these results, that would be called the Geographical Distribution of
+animals, while a corresponding study of plants would yield as a result the
+Geographical Distribution of plants.
+
+I pass on from that now, as I merely wished to explain to you what I meant
+by the use of the term "Geographical Distribution." As I said, there is
+another aspect, and a much more important one, and that is, the relations
+of the various animals to one another. The horse is a very well-defined
+matter-of-fact sort of animal, and we are all pretty familiar with its
+structure. I dare say it may have struck you, that it resembles very much
+no other member of the animal kingdom, except perhaps the zebra or the ass.
+But let me ask you to look along these diagrams. Here is the skeleton of
+the horse, and here the skeleton of the dog. You will notice that we have
+in the horse a skull, a backbone and ribs, shoulder-blades and
+haunch-bones. In the fore-limb, one upper arm-bone, two fore arm-bones,
+wrist-bones (wrongly called knee), and middle hand-bones, ending in the
+three bones of a finger, the last of which is sheathed in the horny hoof of
+the fore-foot: in the hind-limb, one thigh-bone, two leg-bones,
+ankle-bones, and middle foot-bones, ending in the three bones of a toe, the
+last of which is encased in the hoof of the hind-foot. Now turn to the
+dog's skeleton. We find identically the same bones, but more of them, there
+being more toes in each foot, and hence more toe-bones.
+
+Well, that is a very curious thing! The fact is that the dog and the
+horse--when one gets a look at them without the outward impediments of the
+skin--are found to be made in very much the same sort of fashion. And if I
+were to make a transverse section of the dog, I should find the same organs
+that I have already shown you as forming parts of the horse. Well, here is
+another skeleton--that of a kind of lemur--you see he has just the same
+bones; and if I were to make a transverse section of it, it would be just
+the same again. In your mind's eye turn him round, so as to put his
+backbone in a position inclined obliquely upwards and forwards, just as in
+the next three diagrams, which represent the skeletons of an orang, a
+chimpanzee, and a gorilla, and you find you have no trouble in identifying
+the bones throughout; and lastly turn to the end of the series, the diagram
+representing a man's skeleton, and still you find no great structural
+feature essentially altered. There are the same bones in the same
+relations. From the horse we pass on and on, with gradual steps until we
+arrive at last at the highest known forms. On the other hand, take the
+other line of diagrams, and pass from the horse downwards in the scale to
+this fish; and still, though the modifications are vastly greater, the
+essential framework of the organisation remains unchanged. Here, for
+instance, is a porpoise: here is its strong backbone, with the cavity
+running through it, which contains the spinal cord; here are the ribs, here
+the shoulder-blade; here is the little short upper-arm bone, here are the
+two forearm bones, the wrist-bone, and the finger-bones.
+
+Strange, is it not, that the porpoise should have in this queer-looking
+affair--its flapper (as it is called), the same fundamental elements as the
+fore-leg of the horse or the dog, or the ape or man; and here you will
+notice a very curious thing,--the hinder limbs are absent. Now, let us make
+another jump. Let us go to the codfish: here you see is the forearm, in
+this large pectoral fin--carrying your mind's eye onward from the flapper
+of the porpoise. And here you have the hinder limbs restored in the shape
+of these ventral fins. If I were to make a transverse section of this, I
+should find just the same organs that we have before noticed. So that, you
+see, there comes out this strange conclusion as the result of our
+investigations, that the horse, when examined and compared with other
+animals, is found by no means to stand alone in Nature; but that there are
+an enormous number of other creatures which have backbones, ribs, and legs,
+and other parts arranged in the same general manner, and in all their
+formation exhibiting the same broad peculiarities.
+
+I am sure that you cannot have followed me even in this extremely
+elementary exposition of the structural relations of animals, without
+seeing what I have been driving at all through, which is, to show you that,
+step by step, naturalists have come to the idea of a unity of plan, or
+conformity of construction, among animals which appeared at first sight to
+be extremely dissimilar.
+
+And here you have evidence of such a unity of plan among all the animals
+which have backbones, and which we technically call _Vertebrata_. But
+there are multitudes of other animals, such as crabs, lobsters, spiders,
+and so on, which we term _Annulosa_. In these I could not point out to
+you the parts that correspond with those of the horse,--the backbone, for
+instance,--as they are constructed upon a very different principle, which
+is also common to all of them; that is to say, the lobster, the spider, and
+the centipede, have a common plan running through their whole arrangement,
+in just the same way that the horse, the dog, and the porpoise assimilate
+to each other.
+
+Yet other creatures--whelks, cuttlefishes, oysters, snails, and all their
+tribe (_Mollusca_)--resemble one another in the same way, but differ
+from both _Vertebrata_ and _Annulosa_; and the like is true of
+the animals called _Coelenterata_ (Polypes) and _Protozoa_
+(animalcules and sponges).
+
+Now, by pursuing this sort of comparison, naturalists have arrived at the
+conviction that there are,--some think five, and some seven,--but certainly
+not more than the latter number--and perhaps it is simpler to assume
+five--distinct plans or constructions in the whole of the animal world; and
+that the hundreds of thousands of species of creatures on the surface of
+the earth, are all reducible to those five, or, at most, seven, plans of
+organisation.
+
+But can we go no further than that? When one has got so far, one is tempted
+to go on a step and inquire whether we cannot go back yet further and bring
+down the whole to modifications of one primordial unit. The anatomist
+cannot do this; but if he call to his aid the study of development, he can
+do it. For we shall find that, distinct as those plans are, whether it be a
+porpoise or man, or lobster, or any of those other kinds I have mentioned,
+every one begins its existence with one and the same primitive form,--that
+of the egg, consisting, as we have seen, of a nitrogenous substance, having
+a small particle or nucleus in the centre of it. Furthermore, the earlier
+changes of each are substantially the same. And it is in this that lies
+that true "unity of organisation" of the animal kingdom which has been
+guessed at and fancied for many years; but which it has been left to the
+present time to be demonstrated by the careful study of development. But is
+it possible to go another step further still, and to show that in the same
+way the whole of the organic world is reducible to one primitive condition
+of form? Is there among the plants the same primitive form of organisation,
+and is that identical with that of the animal kingdom? The reply to that
+question, too, is not uncertain or doubtful. It is now proved that every
+plant begins its existence under the same form; that is to say, in that of
+a cell--a particle of nitrogenous matter having substantially the same
+conditions. So that if you trace back the oak to its first germ, or a man,
+or a horse, or lobster, or oyster, or any other animal you choose to name,
+you shall find each and all of these commencing their existence in forms
+essentially similar to each other; and, furthermore, that the first
+processes of growth, and many of the subsequent modifications, are
+essentially the same in principle in almost all.
+
+In conclusion, let me, in a few words, recapitulate the positions which I
+have laid down. And you must understand that I have not been talking mere
+theory; I have been speaking of matters which are as plainly demonstrable
+as the commonest propositions of Euclid--of facts that must form the basis
+of all speculations and beliefs in Biological science. We have gradually
+traced down all organic forms, or, in other words, we have analysed the
+present condition of animated nature, until we found that each species took
+its origin in a form similar to that under which all the others commenced
+their existence. We have found the whole of the vast array of living forms
+with which we are surrounded, constantly growing, increasing, decaying and
+disappearing; the animal constantly attracting, modifying, and applying to
+its sustenance the matter of the vegetable kingdom, which derived its
+support from the absorption and conversion of inorganic matter. And so
+constant and universal is this absorption, waste, and reproduction, that it
+may be said with perfect certainty that there is left in no one of our
+bodies at the present moment a millionth part of the matter of which they
+were originally formed! We have seen, again, that not only is the living
+matter derived from the inorganic world, but that the forces of that matter
+are all of them correlative with and convertible into those of inorganic
+nature.
+
+This, for our present purposes, is the best view of the present condition
+of organic nature which I can lay before you: it gives you the great
+outlines of a vast picture, which you must fill up by your own study.
+
+In the next lecture I shall endeavour in the same way to go back into the
+past, and to sketch in the same broad manner the history of life in epochs
+preceding our own.
+
+
+
+II. THE PAST CONDITION OF ORGANIC NATURE
+
+
+In the lecture which I delivered last Monday evening, I endeavoured to
+sketch in a very brief manner, but as well as the time at my disposal would
+permit, the present condition of organic nature, meaning by that large
+title simply an indication of the great, broad, and general principles
+which are to be discovered by those who look attentively at the phenomena
+of organic nature as at present displayed. The general result of our
+investigations might be summed up thus: we found that the multiplicity of
+the forms of animal life, great as that may be, may be reduced to a
+comparatively few primitive plans or types of construction; that a further
+study of the development of those different forms revealed to us that they
+were again reducible, until we at last brought the infinite diversity of
+animal, and even vegetable life, down to the primordial form of a single
+cell.
+
+We found that our analysis of the organic world, whether animals or plants,
+showed, in the long run, that they might both be reduced into, and were, in
+fact, composed of, the same constituents. And we saw that the plant
+obtained the materials constituting its substance by a peculiar combination
+of matters belonging entirely to the inorganic world; that, then, the
+animal was constantly appropriating the nitrogenous matters of the plant to
+its own nourishment, and returning them back to the inorganic world, in
+what we spoke of as its waste; and that finally, when the animal ceased to
+exist, the constituents of its body were dissolved and transmitted to that
+inorganic world whence they had been at first abstracted. Thus we saw in
+both the blade of grass and the horse but the same elements differently
+combined and arranged. We discovered a continual circulation going on,--the
+plant drawing in the elements of inorganic nature and combining them into
+food for the animal creation; the animal borrowing from the plant the
+matter for its own support, giving off during its life products which
+returned immediately to the inorganic world; and that, eventually, the
+constituent materials of the whole structure of both animals and plants
+were thus returned to their original source: there was a constant passage
+from one state of existence to another, and a returning back again.
+
+Lastly, when we endeavoured to form some notion of the nature of the forces
+exercised by living beings, we discovered that they--if not capable of
+being subjected to the same minute analysis as the constituents of those
+beings themselves--that they were correlative with--that they were the
+equivalents of the forces of inorganic nature--that they were, in the sense
+in which the term is now used, convertible with them. That was our general
+result.
+
+And now, leaving the Present, I must endeavour in the same manner to put
+before you the facts that are to be discovered in the Past history of the
+living world, in the past conditions of organic nature. We have, to-night,
+to deal with the facts of that history--a history involving periods of time
+before which our mere human records sink into utter insignificance--a
+history the variety and physical magnitude of whose events cannot even be
+foreshadowed by the history of human life and human phenomena--a history of
+the most varied and complex character.
+
+We must deal with the history, then, in the first place, as we should deal
+with all other histories. The historical student knows that his first
+business should be to inquire into the validity of his evidence, and the
+nature of the record in which the evidence is contained, that he may be
+able to form a proper estimate of the correctness of the conclusions which
+have been drawn from that evidence. So, here we must pass, in the first
+place, to the consideration of a matter which may seem foreign to the
+question under discussion. We must dwell upon the nature of the records,
+and the credibility of the evidence they contain; we must look to the
+completeness or incompleteness of those records themselves, before we turn
+to that which they contain and reveal. The question of the credibility of
+the history, happily for us, will not require much consideration, for, in
+this history, unlike those of human origin, there can be no cavilling, no
+differences as to the reality and truth of the facts of which it is made
+up; the facts state themselves, and are laid out clearly before us.
+
+But, although one of the greatest difficulties of the historical student is
+cleared out of our path, there are other difficulties--difficulties in
+rightly interpreting the facts as they are presented to us--which may be
+compared with the greatest difficulties of any other kinds of historical
+study.
+
+What is this record of the past history of the globe, and what are the
+questions which are involved in an inquiry into its completeness or
+incompleteness? That record is composed of mud; and the question which we
+have to investigate this evening resolves itself into a question of the
+formation of mud. You may think, perhaps, that this is a vast step--of
+almost from the sublime to the ridiculous--from the contemplation of the
+history of the past ages of the world's existence to the consideration of
+the history of the formation of mud! But, in Nature, there is nothing mean
+and unworthy of attention; there is nothing ridiculous or contemptible in
+any of her works; and this inquiry, you will soon see, I hope, takes us to
+the very root and foundations of our subject.
+
+How, then, is mud formed? Always, with some trifling exceptions, which I
+need not consider now--always, as the result of the action of water,
+wearing down and disintegrating the surface of the earth and rocks with
+which it comes in contact--pounding and grinding it down, and carrying the
+particles away to places where they cease to be disturbed by this
+mechanical action, and where they can subside and rest. For the ocean,
+urged by winds, washes, as we know, a long extent of coast, and every wave,
+loaded as it is with particles of sand and gravel as it breaks upon the
+shore, does something towards the disintegrating process. And thus, slowly
+but surely, the hardest rocks are gradually ground down to a powdery
+substance; and the mud thus formed, coarser or finer, as the case may be,
+is carried by the rush of the tides, or currents, till it reaches the
+comparatively deeper parts of the ocean, in which it can sink to the
+bottom, that is, to parts where there is a depth of about fourteen or
+fifteen fathoms, a depth at which the water is, usually, nearly motionless,
+and in which, of course, the finer particles of this detritus, or mud as we
+call it, sinks to the bottom.
+
+Or, again, if you take a river, rushing down from its mountain sources,
+brawling over the stones and rocks that intersect its path, loosening,
+removing, and carrying with it in its downward course the pebbles and
+lighter matters from its banks, it crushes and pounds down the rocks and
+earths in precisely the same way as the wearing action of the sea waves.
+The matters forming the deposit are torn from the mountain-side and whirled
+impetuously into the valley, more slowly over the plain, thence into the
+estuary, and from the estuary they are swept into the sea. The coarser and
+heavier fragments are obviously deposited first, that is, as soon as the
+current begins to lose its force by becoming amalgamated with the stiller
+depths of the ocean, but the finer and lighter particles are carried
+further on, and eventually deposited in a deeper and stiller portion of the
+ocean.
+
+It clearly follows from this that mud gives us a chronology; for it is
+evident that supposing this, which I now sketch, to be the sea bottom, and
+supposing this to be a coast-line; from the washing action of the sea upon
+the rock, wearing and grinding it down into a sediment of mud, the mud will
+be carried down, and, at length, deposited in the deeper parts of this sea
+bottom, where it will form a layer; and then, while that first layer is
+hardening, other mud which is coming from the same source will, of course,
+be carried to the same place; and, as it is quite impossible for it to get
+beneath the layer already there, it deposits itself above it, and forms
+another layer, and in that way you gradually have layers of mud constantly
+forming and hardening one above the other, and conveying a record of time.
+
+It is a necessary result of the operation of the law of gravitation that
+the uppermost layer shall be the youngest and the lowest the oldest, and
+that the different beds shall be older at any particular point or spot in
+exactly the ratio of their depth from the surface. So that if they were
+upheaved afterwards, and you had a series of these different layers of mud,
+converted into sandstone, or limestone, as the case might be, you might be
+sure that the bottom layer was deposited first, and that the upper layers
+were formed afterwards. Here, you see, is the first step in the
+history--these layers of mud give us an idea of time.
+
+The whole surface of the earth,--I speak broadly, and leave out minor
+qualifications,--is made up of such layers of mud, so hard, the majority of
+them, that we call them rock whether limestone or sandstone, or other
+varieties of rock. And, seeing that every part of the crust of the earth is
+made up in this way, you might think that the determination of the
+chronology, the fixing of the time which it has taken to form this crust is
+a comparatively simple matter. Take a broad average, ascertain how fast the
+mud is deposited upon the bottom of the sea, or in the estuary of rivers;
+take it to be an inch, or two, or three inches a year, or whatever you may
+roughly estimate it at; then take the total thickness of the whole series
+of stratified rocks, which geologists estimate at twelve or thirteen miles,
+or about seventy thousand feet, make a sum in short division, divide the
+total thickness by that of the quantity deposited in one year, and the
+result will, of course, give you the number of years which the crust has
+taken to form.
+
+Truly, that looks a very simple process! It would be so except for certain
+difficulties, the very first of which is that of finding how rapidly
+sediments are deposited; but the main difficulty--a difficulty which
+renders any certain calculations of such a matter out of the question--is
+this, the sea-bottom on which the deposit takes place is continually
+shifting.
+
+Instead of the surface of the earth being that stable, fixed thing that it
+is popularly believed to be, being, in common parlance, the very emblem of
+fixity itself, it is incessantly moving, and is, in fact, as unstable as
+the surface of the sea, except that its undulations are infinitely slower
+and enormously higher and deeper.
+
+Now, what is the effect of this oscillation? Take the case to which I have
+previously referred. The finer or coarser sediments that are carried down
+by the current of the river, will only be carried out a certain distance,
+and eventually, as we have already seen, on reaching the stiller part of
+the ocean, will be deposited at the bottom.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 4.]
+
+Let C _y_ (Fig. 4) be the sea-bottom, _y_ D the shore, _x y_
+the sea-level, then the coarser deposit will subside over the region B, the
+finer over A, while beyond A there will be no deposit at all; and,
+consequently, no record will be kept, simply because no deposit is going
+on. Now, suppose that the whole land, C, D, which we have regarded as
+stationary, goes down, as it does so, both A and B go further out from the
+shore, which will be at _y1_; _x1_, _y1_, being the new
+sea-level. The consequence will be that the layer of mud (A), being now,
+for the most part, further than the force of the current is strong enough
+to convey even the finest _débris_, will, of course, receive no more
+deposits, and having attained a certain thickness will now grow no thicker.
+
+We should be misled in taking the thickness of that layer, whenever it may
+be exposed to our view, as a record of time in the manner in which we are
+now regarding this subject, as it would give us only an imperfect and
+partial record: it would seem to represent too short a period of time.
+
+Suppose, on the other hand, that the land (C D) had gone on rising slowly
+and gradually--say an inch or two inches in the course of a century,--what
+would be the practical effect of that movement? Why, that the sediment A
+and B which has been already deposited, would eventually be brought nearer
+to the shore-level and again subjected to the wear and tear of the sea; and
+directly the sea begins to act upon it, it would of course soon cut up and
+carry it way, to a greater or less extent, to be re-deposited further out.
+
+Well, as there is, in all probability, not one single spot on the whole
+surface of the earth, which has not been up and down in this way a great
+many times, it follows that the thickness of the deposits formed at any
+particular spot cannot be taken (even supposing we had at first obtained
+correct data as to the rate at which they took place), as affording
+reliable information as to the period of time occupied in its deposit. So
+that you see it is absolutely necessary from these facts, seeing that our
+record entirely consists of accumulations of mud, superimposed one on the
+other; seeing in the next place that any particular spots on which
+accumulations have occurred, have been constantly moving up and down, and
+sometimes out of the reach of a deposit, and at other times its own deposit
+broken up and carried away, it follows that our record must be in the
+highest degree imperfect, and we have hardly a trace left of thick
+deposits, or any definite knowledge of the area that they occupied, in a
+great many cases. And mark this! That supposing even that the whole surface
+of the earth had been accessible to the geologist,--that man had had access
+to every part of the earth, and had made sections of the whole, and put
+them all together,--even then his record must of necessity be imperfect.
+
+But to how much has man really access? If you will look at this map you
+will see that it represents the proportion of the sea to the earth: this
+coloured part indicates all the dry land, and this other portion is the
+water. You will notice at once that the water covers three-fifths of the
+whole surface of the globe, and has covered it in the same manner ever
+since man has kept any record of his own observations, to say nothing of
+the minute period during which he has cultivated geological inquiry. So
+that three-fifths of the surface of the earth is shut out from us because
+it is under the sea. Let us look at the other two-fifths, and see what are
+the countries in which anything that may be termed searching geological
+inquiry has been carried out: a good deal of France, Germany, and Great
+Britain and Ireland, bits of Spain, of Italy, and of Russia, have been
+examined, but of the whole great mass of Africa, except parts of the
+southern extremity, we know next to nothing; little bits of India, but of
+the greater part of the Asiatic continent nothing; bits of the Northern
+American States and of Canada, but of the greater part of the continent of
+North America, and in still larger proportion, of South America, nothing!
+
+Under these circumstances, it follows that even with reference to that kind
+of imperfect information which we can possess, it is only of about the
+ten-thousandth part of the accessible parts of the earth that has been
+examined properly. Therefore, it is with justice that the most thoughtful
+of those who are concerned in these inquiries insist continually upon the
+imperfection of the geological record; for, I repeat, it is absolutely
+necessary, from the nature of things, that that record should be of the
+most fragmentary and imperfect character. Unfortunately this circumstance
+has been constantly forgotten. Men of science, like young colts in a fresh
+pasture, are apt to be exhilarated on being turned into a new field of
+inquiry, to go off at a hand-gallop, in total disregard of hedges and
+ditches, to lose sight of the real limitation of their inquiries, and to
+forget the extreme imperfection of what is really known. Geologists have
+imagined that they could tell us what was going on at all parts of the
+earth's surface during a given epoch; they have talked of this deposit
+being contemporaneous with that deposit, until, from our little local
+histories of the changes at limited spots of the earth's surface, they have
+constructed a universal history of the globe as full of wonders and
+portents as any other story of antiquity.
+
+But what does this attempt to construct a universal history of the globe
+imply? It implies that we shall not only have a precise knowledge of the
+events which have occurred at any particular point, but that we shall be
+able to say what events, at any one spot, took place at the same time with
+those at other spots.
+
+Let us see how far that is in the nature of things practicable. Suppose
+that here I make a section of the Lake of Killarney, and here the section
+of another lake--that of Loch Lomond in Scotland for instance. The rivers
+that flow into them are constantly carrying down deposits of mud, and beds,
+or strata, are being as constantly formed, one above the other, at the
+bottom of those lakes. Now, there is not a shadow of doubt that in these
+two lakes the lower beds are all older than the upper--there is no doubt
+about that; but what does _this_ tell us about the age of any given
+bed in Loch Lomond, as compared with that of any given bed in the Lake of
+Killarney? It is, indeed, obvious that if any two sets of deposits are
+separated and discontinuous, there is absolutely no means whatever given
+you by the nature of the deposit of saying whether one is much younger or
+older than the other; but you may say, as many have said and think, that
+the case is very much altered if the beds which we are comparing are
+continuous. Suppose two beds of mud hardened into rock,--A and B--are seen
+in section. (Fig. 5.)
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 5.]
+
+Well, you say, it is admitted that the lowermost bed is always the older.
+Very well; B, therefore, is older than A. No doubt, _as a whole_, it
+is so; or if any parts of the two beds which are in the same vertical line
+are compared, it is so. But suppose you take what seems a very natural step
+further, and say that the part _a_ of the bed A is younger than the
+part _b_ of the bed B. Is this sound reasoning? If you find any record
+of changes taking place at _b_, did they occur before any events which
+took place while _a_ was being deposited? It looks all very plain
+sailing, indeed, to say that they did; and yet there is no proof of
+anything of the kind. As the former Director of this Institution, Sir H. De
+la Beche, long ago showed, this reasoning may involve an entire fallacy. It
+is extremely possible that _a_ may have been deposited ages before
+_b_. It is very easy to understand how that can be. To return to Fig.
+4; when A and B were deposited, they were _substantially_
+contemporaneous; A being simply the finer deposit, and B the coarser of the
+same detritus or waste of land. Now suppose that that sea-bottom goes down
+(as shown in Fig. 4), so that the first deposit is carried no farther than
+_a_, forming the bed A1, and the coarse no farther than _b_,
+forming the bed B1, the result will be the formation of two continuous
+beds, one of fine sediment (A A1) over-lapping another of coarse sediment
+(B B1). Now suppose the whole sea-bottom is raised up, and a section
+exposed about the point A1; no doubt, _at this spot_, the upper bed is
+younger than the lower. But we should obviously greatly err if we concluded
+that the mass of the upper bed at A was younger than the lower bed at B;
+for we have just seen that they are contemporaneous deposits. Still more
+should we be in error if we supposed the upper bed at A to be younger than
+the continuation of the lower bed at B1; for A was deposited long before
+B1. In fine, if, instead of comparing immediately adjacent parts of two
+beds, one of which lies upon another, we compare distant parts, it is quite
+possible that the upper may be any number of years older than the under,
+and the under any number of years younger than the upper.
+
+Now you must not suppose that I put this before you for the purpose of
+raising a paradoxical difficulty; the fact is, that the great mass of
+deposits have taken place in sea-bottoms which are gradually sinking, and
+have been formed under the very conditions I am here supposing.
+
+Do not run away with the notion that this subverts the principle I laid
+down at first. The error lies in extending a principle which is perfectly
+applicable to deposits in the same vertical line to deposits which are not
+in that relation to one another.
+
+It is in consequence of circumstances of this kind, and of others that I
+might mention to you, that our conclusions on and interpretations of the
+record are really and strictly only valid so long as we confine ourselves
+to one vertical section. I do not mean to tell you that there are no
+qualifying circumstances, so that, even in very considerable areas, we may
+safely speak of conformably superimposed beds being older or younger than
+others at many different points. But we can never be quite sure in coming
+to that conclusion, and especially we cannot be sure if there is any break
+in their continuity, or any very great distance between the points to be
+compared.
+
+Well now, so much for the record itself,--so much for its
+imperfections,--so much for the conditions to be observed in interpreting
+it, and its chronological indications, the moment we pass beyond the limits
+of a vertical linear section.
+
+Now let us pass from the record to that which it contains,--from the book
+itself to the writing and the figures on its pages. This writing and these
+figures consist of remains of animals and plants which, in the great
+majority of cases, have lived and died in the very spot in which we now
+find them, or at least in the immediate vicinity. You must all of you be
+aware--and I referred to the fact in my last lecture--that there are vast
+numbers of creatures living at the bottom of the sea. These creatures, like
+all others, sooner or later die, and their shells and hard parts lie at the
+bottom; and then the fine mud which is being constantly brought down by
+rivers and the action of the wear and tear of the sea, covers them over and
+protects them from any further change or alteration; and, of course, as in
+process of time the mud becomes hardened and solidified, the shells of
+these animals are preserved and firmly imbedded in the limestone or
+sandstone which is being thus formed. You may see in the galleries of the
+Museum up stairs specimens of limestones in which such fossil remains of
+existing animals are imbedded. There are some specimens in which turtles'
+eggs have been imbedded in calcareous sand, and before the sun had hatched
+the young turtles, they became covered over with calcareous mud, and thus
+have been preserved and fossilised.
+
+Not only does this process of imbedding and fossilisation occur with marine
+and other aquatic animals and plants, but it affects those land animals and
+plants which are drifted away to sea, or become buried in bogs or morasses;
+and the animals which have been trodden down by their fellows and crushed
+in the mud at the river's bank, as the herd have come to drink. In any of
+these cases, the organisms may be crushed or be mutilated, before or after
+putrefaction, in such a manner that perhaps only a part will be left in the
+form in which it reaches us. It is, indeed, a most remarkable fact, that it
+is quite an exceptional case to find a skeleton of any one of all the
+thousands of wild land animals that we know are constantly being killed, or
+dying in the course of nature: they are preyed on and devoured by other
+animals, or die in places where their bodies are not afterwards protected
+by mud. There are other animals existing on the sea, the shells of which
+form exceedingly large deposits. You are probably aware that before the
+attempt was made to lay the Atlantic telegraphic cable, the Government
+employed vessels in making a series of very careful observations and
+soundings of the bottom of the Atlantic; and although, as we must all
+regret, that up to the present time that project has not succeeded, we have
+the satisfaction of knowing that it yielded some most remarkable results to
+science. The Atlantic Ocean had to be sounded right across, to depths of
+several miles in some places, and the nature of its bottom was carefully
+ascertained. Well, now, a space of about 1,000 miles wide from east to
+west, and I do not exactly know how many from north to south, but at any
+rate 600 or 700 miles, was carefully examined, and it was found that over
+the whole of that immense area an excessively fine chalky mud is being
+deposited; and this deposit is entirely made up of animals whose hard parts
+are deposited in this part of the ocean, and are doubtless gradually
+acquiring solidity and becoming metamorphosed into a chalky limestone.
+Thus, you see, it is quite possible in this way to preserve unmistakable
+records of animal and vegetable life. Whenever the sea-bottom, by some of
+those undulations of the earth's crust that I have referred to, becomes
+up-heaved, and sections or borings are made, or pits are dug, then we
+become able to examine the contents and constituents of these ancient
+sea-bottoms, and find out what manner of animals lived at that period.
+
+Now it is a very important consideration in its bearing on the completeness
+of the record, to inquire how far the remains contained in these
+fossiliferous limestones are able to convey anything like an accurate or
+complete account of the animals which were in existence at the time of its
+formation. Upon that point we can form a very clear judgment, and one in
+which there is no possible room for any mistake. There are of course a
+great number of animals--such as jellyfishes, and other animals--without
+any hard parts, of which we cannot reasonably expect to find any traces
+whatever: there is nothing of them to preserve. Within a very short time,
+you will have noticed, after they are removed from the water, they dry up
+to a mere nothing; certainly they are not of a nature to leave any very
+visible traces of their existence on such bodies as chalk or mud. Then
+again, look at land animals; it is, as I have said, a very uncommon thing
+to find a land animal entire after death. Insects and other carnivorous
+animals very speedily pull them to pieces, putrefaction takes place, and
+so, out of the hundreds of thousands that are known to die every year, it
+is the rarest thing in the world to see one imbedded in such a way that its
+remains would be preserved for a lengthened period. Not only is this the
+case, but even when animal remains have been safely imbedded, certain
+natural agents may wholly destroy and remove them.
+
+Almost all the hard parts of animals--the bones and so on--are composed
+chiefly of phosphate of lime and carbonate of lime. Some years ago, I had
+to make an inquiry into the nature of some very curious fossils sent to me
+from the North of Scotland. Fossils are usually hard bony structures that
+have become imbedded in the way I have described, and have gradually
+acquired the nature and solidity of the body with which they are
+associated; but in this case I had a series of _holes_ in some pieces
+of rock, and nothing else. Those holes, however, had a certain definite
+shape about them, and when I got a skilful workman to make castings of the
+interior of these holes, I found that they were the impressions of the
+joints of a backbone and of the armour of a great reptile, twelve or more
+feet long. This great beast had died and got buried in the sand; the sand
+had gradually hardened over the bones, but remained porous. Water had
+trickled through it, and that water being probably charged with a
+superfluity of carbonic acid, had dissolved all the phosphate and carbonate
+of lime, and the bones themselves had thus decayed and entirely
+disappeared; but as the sandstone happened to have consolidated by that
+time, the precise shape of the bones was retained. If that sandstone had
+remained soft a little longer, we should have known nothing whatsoever of
+the existence of the reptile whose bones it had encased.
+
+How certain it is that a vast number of animals which have existed at one
+period on this earth have entirely perished, and left no trace whatever of
+their forms, may be proved to you by other considerations. There are large
+tracts of sandstone in various parts of the world, in which nobody has yet
+found anything but footsteps. Not a bone of any description, but an
+enormous number of traces of footsteps. There is no question about them.
+There is a whole valley in Connecticut covered with these footsteps, and
+not a single fragment of the animals which made them have yet been found.
+Let me mention another case while upon that matter, which is even more
+surprising than those to which I have yet referred. There is a limestone
+formation near Oxford, at a place called Stonesfield, which has yielded the
+remains of certain very interesting mammalian animals, and up to this time,
+if I recollect rightly, there have been found seven specimens of its lower
+jaws, and not a bit of anything else, neither limb-bones nor skull, nor any
+part whatever; not a fragment of the whole system! Of course, it would be
+preposterous to imagine that the beasts had nothing else but a lower jaw!
+The probability is, as Dr. Buckland showed, as the result of his
+observations on dead dogs in the river Thames, that the lower jaw, not
+being secured by very firm ligaments to the bones of the head, and being a
+weighty affair, would easily be knocked off, or might drop away from the
+body as it floated in water in a state of decomposition. The jaw would thus
+be deposited immediately, while the rest of the body would float and drift
+away altogether, ultimately reaching the sea, and perhaps becoming
+destroyed. The jaw becomes covered up and preserved in the river silt, and
+thus it comes that we have such a curious circumstance as that of the lower
+jaws in the Stonesfield slates. So that, you see, faulty as these layers of
+stone in the earth's crust are, defective as they necessarily are as a
+record, the account of contemporaneous vital phenomena presented by them
+is, by the necessity of the case, infinitely more defective and
+fragmentary.
+
+It was necessary that I should put all this very strongly before you,
+because, otherwise, you might have been led to think differently of the
+completeness of our knowledge by the next facts I shall state to you.
+
+The researches of the last three-quarters of a century have, in truth,
+revealed a wonderful richness of organic life in those rocks. Certainly not
+fewer than thirty or forty thousand different species of fossils have been
+discovered. You have no more ground for doubting that these creatures
+really lived and died at or near the places in which we find them than you
+have for like scepticism about a shell on the sea-shore. The evidence is as
+good in the one case as in the other.
+
+Our next business is to look at the general character of these fossil
+remains, and it is a subject which will be requisite to consider carefully;
+and the first point for us is to examine how much the extinct _Flora_
+and _Fauna_ as a _whole_--disregarding altogether the
+_succession_ of their constituents, of which I shall speak
+afterwards--differ from the _Flora_ and _Fauna_ of the present
+day;--how far they differ in what we _do_ know about them, leaving
+altogether out of consideration speculations based upon what we _do
+not_ know.
+
+I strongly imagine that if it were not for the peculiar appearance that
+fossilised animals have, any of you might readily walk through a museum
+which contains fossil remains mixed up with those of the present forms of
+life, and I doubt very much whether your uninstructed eyes would lead you
+to see any vast or wonderful difference between the two. If you looked
+closely, you would notice, in the first place, a great many things very
+like animals with which you are acquainted now: you would see differences
+of shape and proportion, but on the whole a close similarity.
+
+I explained what I meant by ORDERS the other day, when I described the
+animal kingdom as being divided into sub-kingdoms, classes and orders. If
+you divide the animal kingdom into orders you will find that there are
+above one hundred and twenty. The number may vary on one side or the other,
+but this is a fair estimate. That is the sum total of the orders of all the
+animals which we know now, and which have been known in past times, and
+left remains behind.
+
+Now, how many of those are absolutely extinct? That is to say, how many of
+these orders of animals have lived at a former period of the world's
+history but have at present no representatives? That is the sense in which
+I meant to use the word "extinct." I mean that those animals did live on
+this earth at one time, but have left no one of their kind with us at the
+present moment. So that estimating the number of extinct animals is a sort
+of way of comparing the past creation as a whole with the present as a
+whole. Among the mammalia and birds there are none extinct; but when we
+come to the reptiles there is a most wonderful thing: out of the eight
+orders, or thereabouts, which you can make among reptiles, one-half are
+extinct. These diagrams of the plesiosaurus, the ichthyosaurus, the
+pterodactyle, give you a notion of some of these extinct reptiles. And here
+is a cast of the pterodactyle and bones of the ichthyosaurus and the
+plesiosaurus, just as fresh-looking as if it had been recently dug up in a
+churchyard. Thus, in the reptile class, there are no less than half of the
+orders which are absolutely extinct. If we turn to the _Amphibia_,
+there was one extinct order, the Labyrinthodonts, typified by the large
+salamander-like beast shown in this diagram.
+
+No order of fishes is known to be extinct. Every fish that we find in the
+strata--to which I have been referring--can be identified and placed in one
+of the orders which exist at the present day. There is not known to be a
+single ordinal form of insect extinct. There are only two orders extinct
+among the _Crustacea_. There is not known to be an extinct order of
+these creatures, the parasitic and other worms; but there are two, not to
+say three, absolutely extinct orders of this class, the
+_Echinodermata_; out of all the orders of the _Coelenterata_ and
+_Protozoa_ only one, the Rugose Corals.
+
+So that, you see, out of somewhere about 120 orders of animals, taking them
+altogether, you will not, at the outside estimate, find above ten or a
+dozen extinct. Summing up all the order of animals which have left remains
+behind them, you will not find above ten or a dozen which cannot be
+arranged with those of the present day; that is to say, that the difference
+does not amount to much more than ten per cent.: and the proportion of
+extinct orders of plants is still smaller. I think that that is a very
+astounding a most astonishing fact: seeing the enormous epochs of time
+which have elapsed during the constitution of the surface of the earth as
+it at present exists, it is, indeed, a most astounding thing that the
+proportion of extinct ordinal types should be so exceedingly small.
+
+But now, there is another point of view in which we must look at this past
+creation. Suppose that we were to sink a vertical pit through the floor
+beneath us, and that I could succeed in making a section right through in
+the direction of New Zealand, I should find in each of the different beds
+through which I passed the remains of animals which I should find in that
+stratum and not in the others. First, I should come upon beds of gravel or
+drift containing the bones of large animals, such as the elephant,
+rhinoceros, and cave tiger. Rather curious things to fall across in
+Piccadilly! If I should dig lower still, I should come upon a bed of what
+we call the London clay, and in this, as you will see in our galleries up
+stairs, are found remains of strange cattle, remains of turtles, palms, and
+large tropical fruits; with shell-fish such as you see the like of now only
+in tropical regions. If I went below that, I should come upon the chalk,
+and there I should find something altogether different, the remains of
+ichthyosauria and pterodactyles, and ammonites, and so forth.
+
+I do not know what Mr. Godwin Austin would say comes next, but probably
+rocks containing more ammonites, and more ichthyosauria and plesiosauria,
+with a vast number of other things; and under that I should meet with yet
+older rocks containing numbers of strange shells and fishes; and in thus
+passing from the surface to the lowest depths of the earth's crust, the
+forms of animal life and vegetable life which I should meet with in the
+successive beds would, looking at them broadly, be the more different the
+further that I went down. Or, in other words, inasmuch as we started with
+the clear principle, that in a series of naturally-disposed mud beds the
+lowest are the oldest, we should come to this result, that the further we
+go back in time the more difference exists between the animal and vegetable
+life of an epoch and that which now exists. That was the conclusion to
+which I wished to bring you at the end of this lecture.
+
+
+
+III. THE METHOD BY WHICH THE CAUSES OF THE PRESENT AND PAST CONDITIONS OF
+ORGANIC NATURE ARE TO BE DISCOVERED;--THE ORIGINATION OF LIVING BEINGS
+
+
+In the two preceding lectures I have endeavoured to indicate to you the
+extent of the subject-matter of the inquiry upon which we are engaged; and
+having thus acquired some conception of the past and present phenomena of
+organic nature, I must now turn to that which constitutes the great problem
+which we have set before ourselves;--I mean, the question of what knowledge
+we have of the causes of these phenomena of organic nature, and how such
+knowledge is obtainable.
+
+Here, on the threshold of the inquiry, an objection meets us. There are in
+the world a number of extremely worthy, well-meaning persons, whose
+judgments and opinions are entitled to the utmost respect on account of
+their sincerity, who are of opinion that vital phenomena, and especially
+all questions relating to the origin of vital phenomena, are questions
+quite apart from the ordinary run of inquiry, and are, by their very
+nature, placed out of our reach. They say that all these phenomena
+originated miraculously, or in some way totally different from the ordinary
+course of nature, and that therefore they conceive it to be futile, not to
+say presumptuous, to attempt to inquire into them.
+
+To such sincere and earnest persons, I would only say, that a question of
+this kind is not to be shelved upon theoretical or speculative grounds. You
+may remember the story of the Sophist who demonstrated to Diogenes in the
+most complete and satisfactory manner that he could not walk; that, in
+fact, all motion was an impossibility; and that Diogenes refuted him by
+simply getting up and walking round his tub. So, in the same way, the man
+of science replies to objections of this kind, by simply getting up and
+walking onward, and showing what science has done and is doing---by
+pointing to that immense mass of facts which have been ascertained as
+systematised under the forms of the great doctrines of morphology, of
+development, of distribution, and the like. He sees an enormous mass of
+facts and laws relating to organic beings, which stand on the same good
+sound foundation as every other natural law. With this mass of facts and
+laws before us, therefore, seeing that, as far as organic matters have
+hitherto been accessible and studied, they have shown themselves capable of
+yielding to scientific investigation, we may accept this as proof that
+order and law reign there as well as in the rest of Nature. The man of
+science says nothing to objectors of this sort, but supposes that we can
+and shall walk to a knowledge of the origin of organic nature, in the same
+way that we have walked to a knowledge of the laws and principles of the
+inorganic world.
+
+But there are objectors who say the same from ignorance and ill-will. To
+such I would reply that the objection comes ill from them, and that the
+real presumption, I may almost say the real blasphemy, in this matter, is
+in the attempt to limit that inquiry into the causes of phenomena, which is
+the source of all human blessings, and from which has sprung all human
+prosperity and progress; for, after all, we can accomplish comparatively
+little; the limited range of our own faculties bounds us on every
+side,--the field of our powers of observation is small enough, and he who
+endeavours to narrow the sphere of our inquiries is only pursuing a course
+that is likely to produce the greatest harm to his fellow-men.
+
+But now, assuming, as we all do, I hope, that these phenomena are properly
+accessible to inquiry, and setting out upon our search into the causes of
+the phenomena of organic nature, or at any rate, setting out to discover
+how much we at present know upon these abstruse matters, the question
+arises as to what is to be our course of proceeding, and what method we
+must lay down for our guidance. I reply to that question, that our method
+must be exactly the same as that which is pursued in any other scientific
+inquiry, the method of scientific investigation being the same for all
+orders of facts and phenomena whatsoever.
+
+I must dwell a little on this point, for I wish you to leave this room with
+a very clear conviction that scientific investigation is not, as many
+people seem to suppose, some kind of modern black art. I say that you might
+easily gather this impression from the manner in which many persons speak
+of scientific inquiry, or talk about inductive and deductive philosophy, or
+the principles of the "Baconian philosophy." I do protest that, of the vast
+number of cants in this world, there are none, to my mind, so contemptible
+as the pseudo-scientific cant which is talked about the "Baconian
+philosophy."
+
+To hear people talk about the great Chancellor--and a very great man he
+certainly was,--you would think that it was he who had invented science,
+and that there was no such thing as sound reasoning before the time of
+Queen Elizabeth! Of course you say, that cannot possibly be true; you
+perceive, on a moment's reflection, that such an idea is absurdly wrong,
+and yet, so firmly rooted is this sort of impression,--I cannot call it an
+idea, or conception,--the thing is too absurd to be entertained,--but so
+completely does it exist at the bottom of most men's minds, that this has
+been a matter of observation with me for many years past. There are many
+men who, though knowing absolutely nothing of the subject with which they
+may be dealing, wish, nevertheless, to damage the author of some view with
+which they think fit to disagree. What they do, then, is not to go and
+learn something about the subject, which one would naturally think the best
+way of fairly dealing with it; but they abuse the originator of the view
+they question, in a general manner, and wind up by saying that, "After all,
+you know, the principles and method of this author are totally opposed to
+the canons of the Baconian philosophy." Then everybody applauds, as a
+matter of course, and agrees that it must be so. But if you were to stop
+them all in the middle of their applause, you would probably find that
+neither the speaker nor his applauders could tell you how or in what way it
+was so; neither the one nor the other having the slightest idea of what
+they mean when they speak of the "Baconian philosophy."
+
+You will understand, I hope, that I have not the slightest desire to join
+in the outcry against either the morals, the intellect, or the great genius
+of Lord Chancellor Bacon. He was undoubtedly a very great man, let people
+say what they will of him; but notwithstanding all that he did for
+philosophy, it would be entirely wrong to suppose that the methods of
+modern scientific inquiry originated with him, or with his age; they
+originated with the first man, whoever he was; and indeed existed long
+before him, for many of the essential processes of reasoning are exerted by
+the higher order of brutes as completely and effectively as by ourselves.
+We see in many of the brute creation the exercise of one, at least, of the
+same powers of reasoning as that which we ourselves employ.
+
+The method of scientific investigation is nothing but the expression of the
+necessary mode of working of the human mind. It is simply the mode at which
+all phenomena are reasoned about, rendered precise and exact. There is no
+more difference, but there is just the same kind of difference, between the
+mental operations of a man of science and those of an ordinary person, as
+there is between the operations and methods of a baker or of a butcher
+weighing out his goods in common scales, and the operations of a chemist in
+performing a difficult and complex analysis by means of his balance and
+finely-graduated weights. It is not that the action of the scales in the
+one case, and the balance in the other, differ in the principles of their
+construction or manner of working; but the beam of one is set on an
+infinitely finer axis than the other, and of course turns by the addition
+of a much smaller weight.
+
+You will understand this better, perhaps, if I give you some familiar
+example. You have all heard it repeated, I dare say, that men of science
+work by means of induction and deduction, and that by the help of these
+operations, they, in a sort of sense, wring from Nature certain other
+things, which are called natural laws, and causes, and that out of these,
+by some cunning skill of their own, they build up hypotheses and theories.
+And it is imagined by many, that the operations of the common mind can be
+by no means compared with these processes, and that they have to be
+acquired by a sort of special apprenticeship to the craft. To hear all
+these large words, you would think that the mind of a man of science must
+be constituted differently from that of his fellow men; but if you will not
+be frightened by terms, you will discover that you are quite wrong, and
+that all these terrible apparatus are being used by yourselves every day
+and every hour of your lives.
+
+There is a well-known incident in one of Molière's plays, where the author
+makes the hero express unbounded delight on being told that he had been
+talking prose during the whole of his life. In the same way, I trust, that
+you will take comfort, and be delighted with yourselves, on the discovery
+that you have been acting on the principles of inductive and deductive
+philosophy during the same period. Probably there is not one here who has
+not in the course of the day had occasion to set in motion a complex train
+of reasoning, of the very same kind, though differing of course in degree,
+as that which a scientific man goes through in tracing the causes of
+natural phenomena.
+
+A very trivial circumstance will serve to exemplify this. Suppose you go
+into a fruiterer's shop, wanting an apple,--you take up one, and, on biting
+it, you find it is sour; you look at it, and see that it is hard and green.
+You take up another one, and that too is hard, green, and sour. The shopman
+offers you a third; but, before biting it, you examine it, and find that it
+is hard and green, and you immediately say that you will not have it, as it
+must be sour, like those that you have already tried.
+
+Nothing can be more simple than that, you think; but if you will take the
+trouble to analyse and trace out into its logical elements what has been
+done by the mind, you will be greatly surprised. In the first place, you
+have performed the operation of induction. You found that, in two
+experiences, hardness and greenness in apples went together with sourness.
+It was so in the first case, and it was confirmed by the second. True, it
+is a very small basis, but still it is enough to make an induction from;
+you generalise the facts, and you expect to find sourness in apples where
+you get hardness and greenness. You found upon that a general law, that all
+hard and green apples are sour; and that, so far as it goes, is a perfect
+induction. Well, having got your natural law in this way, when you are
+offered another apple which you find is hard and green, you say, "All hard
+and green apples are sour; this apple is hard and green, therefore this
+apple is sour." That train of reasoning is what logicians call a syllogism,
+and has all its various parts and terms,--its major premiss, its minor
+premiss, and its conclusion. And, by the help of further reasoning, which,
+if drawn out, would have to be exhibited in two or three other syllogisms,
+you arrive at your final determination, "I will not have that apple." So
+that, you see, you have, in the first place, established a law by
+induction, and upon that you have founded a deduction, and reasoned out the
+special conclusion of the particular case. Well now, suppose, having got
+your law, that at some time afterwards, you are discussing the qualities of
+apples with a friend: you will say to him, "It is a very curious
+thing,--but I find that all hard and green apples are sour!" Your friend
+says to you, "But how do you know that?" You at once reply, "Oh, because I
+have tried them over and over again, and have always found them to be so."
+Well, if we were talking science instead of common sense, we should call
+that an experimental verification. And, if still opposed, you go further,
+and say, "I have heard from the people in Somersetshire and Devonshire,
+where a large number of apples are grown, that they have observed the same
+thing. It is also found to be the case in Normandy, and in North America.
+In short, I find it to be the universal experience of mankind wherever
+attention has been directed to the subject." Whereupon, your friend, unless
+he is a very unreasonable man, agrees with you, and is convinced that you
+are quite right in the conclusion you have drawn. He believes, although
+perhaps he does not know he believes it, that the more extensive
+verifications are,--that the more frequently experiments have been made,
+and results of the same kind arrived at,--that the more varied the
+conditions under which the same results are attained, the more certain is
+the ultimate conclusion, and he disputes the question no further. He sees
+that the experiment has been tried under all sorts of conditions, as to
+time, place, and people, with the same result; and he says with you,
+therefore, that the law you have laid down must be a good one, and he must
+believe it.
+
+In science we do the same thing;--the philosopher exercises precisely the
+same faculties, though in a much more delicate manner. In scientific
+inquiry it becomes a matter of duty to expose a supposed law to every
+possible kind of verification, and to take care, moreover, that this is
+done intentionally, and not left to a mere accident, as in the case of the
+apples. And in science, as in common life, our confidence in a law is in
+exact proportion to the absence, of variation in the result of our
+experimental verifications. For instance, if you let go your grasp of an
+article you may have in your hand, it will immediately fall to the ground.
+That is a very common verification of one of the best established laws of
+nature--that of gravitation. The method by which men of science establish
+the existence of that law is exactly the same as that by which we have
+established the trivial proposition about the sourness of hard and green
+apples. But we believe it in such an extensive, thorough, and unhesitating
+manner because the universal experience of mankind verifies it, and we can
+verify it ourselves at any time; and that is the strongest possible
+foundation on which any natural law can rest.
+
+So much, then, by way of proof that the method of establishing laws in
+science is exactly the same as that pursued in common life. Let us now turn
+to another matter (though really it is but another phase of the same
+question), and that is, the method by which, from the relations of certain
+phenomena, we prove that some stand in the position of causes towards the
+others.
+
+I want to put the case clearly before you, and I will therefore show you
+what I mean by another familiar example. I will suppose that one of you, on
+coming down in the morning to the parlour of your house, finds that a
+tea-pot and some spoons which had been left in the room on the previous
+evening are gone,--the window is open, and you observe the mark of a dirty
+hand on the window-frame, and perhaps, in addition to that, you notice the
+impress of a hob-nailed shoe on the gravel outside. All these phenomena
+have struck your attention instantly, and before two seconds have passed
+you say, "Oh, somebody has broken open the window, entered the room, and
+run off with the spoons and the tea-pot!" That speech is out of your mouth
+in a moment. And you will probably add, "I know there has; I am quite sure
+of it!" You mean to say exactly what you know; but in reality you are
+giving expression to what is, in all essential particulars, an hypothesis.
+You do not _know_ it at all; it is nothing but an hypothesis rapidly
+framed in your own mind. And it is an hypothesis founded on a long train of
+inductions and deductions.
+
+What are those inductions and deductions, and how have you got at this
+hypothesis? You have observed, in the first place, that the window is open;
+but by a train of reasoning involving many inductions and deductions, you
+have probably arrived long before at the general law--and a very good one
+it is--that windows do not open of themselves; and you therefore conclude
+that something has opened the window. A second general law that you have
+arrived at in the same way is, that tea-pots and spoons do not go out of a
+window spontaneously, and you are satisfied that, as they are not now where
+you left them, they have been removed. In the third place, you look at the
+marks on the window-sill, and the shoe-marks outside, and you say that in
+all previous experience the former kind of mark has never been produced by
+anything else but the hand of a human being; and the same experience shows
+that no other animal but man at present wears shoes with hob-nails in them
+such as would produce the marks in the gravel. I do not know, even if we
+could discover any of those "missing links" that are talked about, that
+they would help us to any other conclusion! At any rate the law which
+states our present experience is strong enough for my present purpose. You
+next reach the conclusion, that as these kinds of marks have not been left
+by any other animals than men, or are liable to be formed in any other way
+than by a man's hand and shoe, the marks in question have been formed by a
+man in that way. You have, further, a general law, founded on observation
+and experience, and that, too, is, I am sorry to say, a very universal and
+unimpeachable one,--that some men are thieves; and you assume at once from
+all these premisses--and that is what constitutes your hypothesis--that the
+man who made the marks outside and on the window-sill, opened the window,
+got into the room, and stole your tea-pot and spoons. You have now arrived
+at a _vera causa_;--you have assumed a cause which, it is plain, is
+competent to produce all the phenomena you have observed. You can explain
+all these phenomena only by the hypothesis of a thief. But that is a
+hypothetical conclusion, of the justice of which you have no absolute proof
+at all; it is only rendered highly probable by a series of inductive and
+deductive reasonings.
+
+I suppose your first action, assuming that you are a man of ordinary common
+sense, and that you have established this hypothesis to your own
+satisfaction, will very likely be to go off for the police, and set them on
+the track of the burglar, with the view to the recovery of your property.
+But just as you are starting with this object, some person comes in, and on
+learning what you are about, says, "My good friend, you are going on a
+great deal too fast. How do you know that the man who really made the marks
+took the spoons? It might have been a monkey that took them, and the man
+may have merely looked in afterwards." You would probably reply, "Well,
+that is all very well, but you see it is contrary to all experience of the
+way tea-pots and spoons are abstracted; so that, at any rate, your
+hypothesis is less probable than mine." While you are talking the thing
+over in this way, another friend arrives, one of that good kind of people
+that I was talking of a little while ago. And he might say, "Oh, my dear
+sir, you are certainly going on a great deal too fast. You are most
+presumptuous. You admit that all these occurrences took place when you were
+fast asleep, at a time when you could not possibly have known anything
+about what was taking place. How do you know that the laws of Nature are
+not suspended during the night? It may be that there has been some kind of
+supernatural interference in this case." In point of fact, he declares that
+your hypothesis is one of which you cannot at all demonstrate the truth,
+and that you are by no means sure that the laws of Nature are the same when
+you are asleep as when you are awake.
+
+Well, now, you cannot at the moment answer that kind of reasoning. You feel
+that your worthy friend has you somewhat at a disadvantage. You will feel
+perfectly convinced in your own mind, however, that you are quite right,
+and you say to him, "My good friend, I can only be guided by the natural
+probabilities of the case, and if you will be kind enough to stand aside
+and permit me to pass, I will go and fetch the police." Well, we will
+suppose that your journey is successful, and that by good luck you meet
+with a policeman; that eventually the burglar is found with your property
+on his person, and the marks correspond to his hand and to his boots.
+Probably any jury would consider those facts a very good experimental
+verification of your hypothesis, touching the cause of the abnormal
+phenomena observed in your parlour, and would act accordingly.
+
+Now, in this suppositious case, I have taken phenomena of a very common
+kind, in order that you might see what are the different steps in an
+ordinary process of reasoning, if you will only take the trouble to analyse
+it carefully. All the operations I have described, you will see, are
+involved in the mind of any man of sense in leading him to a conclusion as
+to the course he should take in order to make good a robbery and punish the
+offender. I say that you are led, in that case, to your conclusion by
+exactly the same train of reasoning as that which a man of science pursues
+when he is endeavouring to discover the origin and laws of the most occult
+phenomena. The process is, and always must be, the same; and precisely the
+same mode of reasoning was employed by Newton and Laplace in their
+endeavours to discover and define the causes of the movements of the
+heavenly bodies, as you, with your own common sense, would employ to detect
+a burglar. The only difference is, that the nature of the inquiry being
+more abstruse, every step has to be most carefully watched, so that there
+may not be a single crack or flaw in your hypothesis. A flaw or crack in
+many of the hypotheses of daily life may be of little or no moment as
+affecting the general correctness of the conclusions at which we may
+arrive; but, in a scientific inquiry, a fallacy, great or small, is always
+of importance, and is sure to be in the long run constantly productive of
+mischievous, if not fatal results.
+
+Do not allow yourselves to be misled by the common notion that an
+hypothesis is untrustworthy simply because it is an hypothesis. It is often
+urged, in respect to some scientific conclusion, that, after all, it is
+only an hypothesis. But what more have we to guide us in nine-tenths of the
+most important affairs of daily life than hypotheses, and often very
+ill-based ones? So that in science, where the evidence of an hypothesis is
+subjected to the most rigid examination, we may rightly pursue the same
+course. You may have hypotheses and hypotheses. A man may say, if he likes,
+that the moon is made of green cheese: that is an hypothesis. But another
+man, who has devoted a great deal of time and attention to the subject, and
+availed himself of the most powerful telescopes and the results of the
+observations of others, declares that in his opinion it is probably
+composed of materials very similar to those of which our own earth is made
+up: and that is also only an hypothesis. But I need not tell you that there
+is an enormous difference in the value of the two hypotheses. That one
+which is based on sound scientific knowledge is sure to have a
+corresponding value; and that which is a mere hasty random guess is likely
+to have but little value. Every great step in our progress in discovering
+causes has been made in exactly the same way as that which I have detailed
+to you. A person observing the occurrence of certain facts and phenomena
+asks, naturally enough, what process, what kind of operation known to occur
+in Nature applied to the particular case, will unravel and explain the
+mystery? Hence you have the scientific hypothesis; and its value will be
+proportionate to the care and completeness with which its basis had been
+tested and verified. It is in these matters as in the commonest affairs of
+practical life: the guess of the fool will be folly, while the guess of the
+wise man will contain wisdom. In all cases, you see that the value of the
+result depends on the patience and faithfulness with which the investigator
+applies to his hypothesis every possible kind of verification.
+
+I dare say I may have to return to this point by and by; but having dealt
+thus far with our logical methods, I must now turn to something which,
+perhaps, you may consider more interesting, or, at any rate, more tangible.
+But in reality there are but few things that can be more important for you
+to understand than the mental processes and the means by which we obtain
+scientific conclusions and theories. [Footnote: Those who wish to study
+fully the doctrines of which I have endeavoured to give some
+rough-and-ready illustrations, must read Mr. John Stuart Mill's _System
+of Logic_.] Having granted that the inquiry is a proper one, and having
+determined on the nature of the methods we are to pursue and which only can
+lead to success, I must now turn to the consideration of our knowledge of
+the nature of the processes which have resulted in the present condition of
+organic nature.
+
+Here, let me say at once, lest some of you misunderstand me, that I have
+extremely little to report. The question of how the present condition of
+organic nature came about, resolves itself into two questions. The first
+is: How has organic or living matter commenced its existence? And the
+second is: How has it been perpetuated? On the second question I shall have
+more to say hereafter. But on the first one, what I now have to say will be
+for the most part of a negative character.
+
+If you consider what kind of evidence we can have upon this matter, it will
+resolve itself into two kinds. We may have historical evidence and we may
+have experimental evidence. It is, for example, conceivable, that inasmuch
+as the hardened mud which forms a considerable portion of the thickness of
+the earth's crust contains faithful records of the past forms of life, and
+inasmuch as these differ more and more as we go further down,--it is
+possible and conceivable that we might come to some particular bed or
+stratum which should contain the remains of those creatures with which
+organic life began upon the earth. And if we did so, and if such forms of
+organic life were preservable, we should have what I would call historical
+evidence of the mode in which organic life began upon this planet. Many
+persons will tell you, and indeed you will find it stated in many works on
+geology, that this has been done, and that we really possess such a record;
+there are some who imagine that the earliest forms of life of which we have
+as yet discovered any record, are in truth the forms in which animal life
+began upon the globe. The grounds on which they base that supposition are
+these:--That if you go through the enormous thickness of the earth's crust
+and get down to the older rocks, the higher vertebrate animals--the
+quadrupeds, birds, and fishes--cease to be found; beneath them you find
+only the invertebrate animals; and in the deepest and lowest rocks those
+remains become scantier and scantier, not in any very gradual progression,
+however, until, at length, in what are supposed to be the oldest rocks, the
+animal remains which are found are almost always confined to four
+forms--_Oldhamia_, whose precise nature is not known, whether plant or
+animal; _Lingula_, a kind of mollusc; _Trilobites_, a crustacean
+animal, having the same essential plan of construction, though differing in
+many details from a lobster or crab; and _Hymenocaris_, which is also
+a crustacean. So that you have all the _Fauna_ reduced, at this
+period, to four forms: one a kind of animal or plant that we know nothing
+about, and three undoubted animals--two crustaceans and one mollusc.
+
+I think, considering the organisation of these mollusca and crustacea, and
+looking at their very complex nature, that it does indeed require a very
+strong imagination to conceive that these were the first created of all
+living things. And you must take into consideration the fact that we have
+not the slightest proof that these which we call the oldest beds are really
+so: I repeat, we have not the slightest proof of it. When you find in some
+places that in an enormous thickness of rocks there are but very scanty
+traces of life, or absolutely none at all; and that in other parts of the
+world rocks of the very same formation are crowded with the records of
+living forms, I think it is impossible to place any reliance on the
+supposition, or to feel one's self justified in supposing that these are
+the forms in which life first commenced. I have not time here to enter upon
+the technical grounds upon which I am led to this conclusion,--that could
+hardly be done properly in half a dozen lectures on that part alone:--I
+must content myself with saying that I do not at all believe that these are
+the oldest forms of life.
+
+I turn to the experimental side to see what evidence we have there. To
+enable us to say that we know anything about the experimental origination
+of organisation and life, the investigator ought to be able to take
+inorganic matters, such as carbonic acid, ammonia, water, and salines, in
+any sort of inorganic combination, and be able to build them up into
+protein matter, and then that protein matter ought to begin to live in an
+organic form. That, nobody has done as yet, and I suspect it will be a long
+while before anybody does do it. But the thing is by no means so impossible
+as it looks; for the researches of modern chemistry have shown us--I won't
+say the road towards it, but, if I may so say, they have shown the
+finger-post pointing to the road that may lead to it.
+
+It is not many years ago--and you must recollect that Organic Chemistry is
+a young science, not above a couple of generations old, you must not expect
+too much of it,--it is not many years ago since it was said to be perfectly
+impossible to fabricate any organic compound; that is to say, any
+non-mineral compound which is to be found in an organised being. It
+remained so for a very long period; but it is now a considerable number of
+years since a distinguished foreign chemist contrived to fabricate urea, a
+substance of a very complex character, which forms one of the waste
+products of animal structures. And of late years a number of other
+compounds, such as butyric acid, and others, have been added to the list. I
+need not tell you that chemistry is an enormous distance from the goal I
+indicate; all I wish to point out to you is, that it is by no means safe to
+say that that goal may not be reached one day. It may be that it is
+impossible for us to produce the conditions requisite to the origination of
+life; but we must speak modestly about the matter, and recollect that
+Science has put her foot upon the bottom round of the ladder. Truly he
+would be a bold man who would venture to predict where she will be fifty
+years hence.
+
+There is another inquiry which bears indirectly upon this question, and
+upon which I must say a few words. You are all of you aware of the
+phenomena of what is called spontaneous generation. Our forefathers, down
+to the seventeenth century, or thereabouts, all imagined, in perfectly good
+faith, that certain vegetable and animal forms gave birth, in the process
+of their decomposition, to insect life. Thus, if you put a piece of meat in
+the sun, and allowed it to putrefy, they conceived that the grubs which
+soon began to appear were the result of the action of a power of
+spontaneous generation which the meat contained. And they could give you
+receipts for making various animal and vegetable preparations which would
+produce particular kinds of animals. A very distinguished Italian
+naturalist, named Redi, took up the question, at a time when everybody
+believed in it; among others our own great Harvey, the discoverer of the
+circulation of the blood. You will constantly find his name quoted,
+however, as an opponent of the doctrine of spontaneous generation; but the
+fact is, and you will see it if you will take the trouble to look into his
+works, Harvey believed it as profoundly as any man of his time; but he
+happened to enunciate a very curious proposition--that every living thing
+came from an _egg_; he did not mean to use the word in the sense in
+which we now employ it, he only meant to say that every living thing
+originated in a little rounded particle of organised substance; and it is
+from this circumstance, probably, that the notion of Harvey having opposed
+the doctrine originated. Then came Redi, and he proceeded to upset the
+doctrine in a very simple manner. He merely covered the piece of meat with
+some very fine gauze, and then he exposed it to the same conditions. The
+result of this was that no grubs or insects were produced; he proved that
+the grubs originated from the insects who came and deposited their eggs in
+the meat, and that they were hatched by the heat of the sun. By this kind
+of inquiry he thoroughly upset the doctrine of spontaneous generation, for
+his time at least.
+
+Then came the discovery and application of the microscope to scientific
+inquiries, which showed to naturalists that besides the organisms which
+they already knew as living beings and plants, there were an immense number
+of minute things which could be obtained apparently almost at will from
+decaying vegetable and animal forms. Thus, if you took some ordinary black
+pepper or some hay, and steeped it in water, you would find in the course
+of a few days that the water had become impregnated with an immense number
+of animalcules swimming about in all directions. From facts of this kind
+naturalists were led to revive the theory of spontaneous generation. They
+were headed here by an English naturalist,--Needham,--and afterwards in
+France by the learned Buffon. They said that these things were absolutely
+begotten in the water of the decaying substances out of which the infusion
+was made. It did not matter whether you took animal or vegetable matter,
+you had only to steep it in water and expose it, and you would soon have
+plenty of animalcules. They made an hypothesis about this which was a very
+fair one. They said, this matter of the animal world, or of the higher
+plants, appears to be dead, but in reality it has a sort of dim life about
+it, which, if it is placed under fair conditions, will cause it to break up
+into the forms of these little animalcules, and they will go through their
+lives in the same way as the animal or plant of which they once formed a
+part.
+
+The question now became very hotly debated. Spallanzani, an Italian
+naturalist, took up opposite views to those of Needham and Buffon, and by
+means of certain experiments he showed that it was quite possible to stop
+the process by boiling the water, and closing the vessel in which it was
+contained. "Oh!" said his opponents; "but what do you know you may be doing
+when you heat the air over the water in this way? You may be destroying
+some property of the air requisite for the spontaneous generation of the
+animalcules."
+
+However, Spallanzani's views were supposed to be upon the right side, and
+those of the others fell into discredit; although the fact was that
+Spallanzani had not made good his views. Well, then, the subject continued
+to be revived from time to time, and experiments were made by several
+persons; but these experiments were not altogether satisfactory. It was
+found that if you put an infusion in which animalcules would appear if it
+were exposed to the air into a vessel and boiled it, and then sealed up the
+mouth of the vessel, so that no air, save such as had been heated to 212°,
+could reach its contents, that then no animalcules would be found; but if
+you took the same vessel and exposed the infusion to the air, then you
+would get animalcules. Furthermore, it was found that if you connected the
+mouth of the vessel with a red-hot tube in such a way that the air would
+have to pass through the tube before reaching the infusion, that then you
+would get no animalcules. Yet another thing was noticed: if you took two
+flasks containing the same kind of infusion, and left one entirely exposed
+to the air, and in the mouth of the other placed a ball of cotton wool, so
+that the air would have to filter itself through it before reaching the
+infusion, that then, although you might have plenty of animalcules in the
+first flask, you would certainly obtain none from the second.
+
+These experiments, you see, all tended towards one conclusion--that the
+infusoria were developed from little minute spores or eggs which were
+constantly floating in the atmosphere, and which lose their power of
+germination if subjected to heat. But one observer now made another
+experiment, which seemed to go entirely the other way, and puzzled him
+altogether. He took some of this boiled infusion that I have been speaking
+of, and by the use of a mercurial bath--a kind of trough used in
+laboratories--he deftly inverted a vessel containing the infusion into the
+mercury, so that the latter reached a little beyond the level of the mouth
+of the _inverted_ vessel. You see that he thus had a quantity of the
+infusion shut off from any possible communication with the outer air by
+being inverted upon a bed of mercury.
+
+He then prepared some pure oxygen and nitrogen gases, and passed them by
+means of a tube going from the outside of the vessel, up through the
+mercury into the infusion; so that he thus had it exposed to a perfectly
+pure atmosphere of the same constituents as the external air. Of course, he
+expected he would get no infusorial animalcules at all in that infusion;
+but, to his great dismay and discomfiture, he found he almost always did
+get them.
+
+Furthermore, it has been found that experiments made in the manner
+described above answer well with most infusions; but that if you fill the
+vessel with boiled milk, and then stop the neck with cotton-wool, you
+_will_ have infusoria. So that you see there were two experiments that
+brought you to one kind of conclusion, and three to another; which was a
+most unsatisfactory state of things to arrive at in a scientific inquiry.
+
+Some few years after this, the question began to be very hotly discussed in
+France. There was M. Pouchet, a professor at Rouen, a very learned man, but
+certainly not a very rigid experimentalist. He published a number of
+experiments of his own, some of which were very ingenious, to show that if
+you went to work in a proper way, there was a truth in the doctrine of
+spontaneous generation. Well, it was one of the most fortunate things in
+the world that M. Pouchet took up this question, because it induced a
+distinguished French chemist, M. Pasteur, to take up the question on the
+other side; and he has certainly worked it out in the most perfect manner.
+I am glad to say, too, that he has published his researches in time to
+enable me to give you an account of them. He verified all the experiments
+which I have just mentioned to you--and then finding those extraordinary
+anomalies, as in the case of the mercury bath and the milk, he set himself
+to work to discover their nature. In the case of milk he found it to be a
+question of temperature. Milk in a fresh state is slightly alkaline; and it
+is a very curious circumstance, but this very slight degree of alkalinity
+seems to have the effect of preserving the organisms which fall into it
+from the air from being destroyed at a temperature of 212°, which is the
+boiling point. But if you raise the temperature 10° when you boil it, the
+milk behaves like everything else; and if the air with which it comes in
+contact, after being boiled at this temperature, is passed through a
+red-hot tube, you will not get a trace of organisms.
+
+He then turned his attention to the mercury bath, and found on examination
+that the surface of the mercury was almost always covered with a very fine
+dust. He found that even the mercury itself was positively full of organic
+matters; that from being constantly exposed to the air, it had collected an
+immense number of these infusorial organisms from the air. Well, under
+these circumstances he felt that the case was quite clear, and that the
+mercury was not what it had appeared to M. Schwann to be,--a bar to the
+admission of these organisms; but that, in reality, it acted as a reservoir
+from which the infusion was immediately supplied with the large quantity
+that had so puzzled him.
+
+But not content with explaining the experiments of others, M. Pasteur went
+to work to satisfy himself completely. He said to himself: "If my view is
+right, and if, in point of fact, all these appearances of spontaneous
+generation are altogether due to the falling of minute germs suspended in
+the atmosphere,--why, I ought not only to be able to show the germs, but I
+ought to be able to catch and sow them, and produce the resulting
+organisms." He, accordingly, constructed a very ingenious apparatus to
+enable him to accomplish the trapping of the "_germ dust_" in the air.
+He fixed in the window of his room a glass tube, in the centre of which he
+had placed a ball of gun-cotton, which, as you all know, is ordinary
+cotton-wool, which, from having been steeped in strong acid, is converted
+into a substance of great explosive power. It is also soluble in alcohol
+and ether. One end of the glass tube was, of course, open to the external
+air; and at the other end of it he placed an aspirator, a contrivance for
+causing a current of the external air to pass through the tube. He kept
+this apparatus going for four-and-twenty hours, and then removed the
+_dusted_ gun-cotton, and dissolved it in alcohol and ether. He then
+allowed this to stand for a few hours, and the result was, that a very fine
+dust was gradually deposited at the bottom of it. That dust, on being
+transferred to the stage of a microscope, was found to contain an enormous
+number of starch grains. You know that the materials of our food and the
+greater portion of plants are composed of starch, and we are constantly
+making use of it in a variety of ways, so that there is always a quantity
+of it suspended in the air. It is these starch grains which form many of
+those bright specks that we see dancing in a ray of light sometimes. But
+besides these, M. Pasteur found also an immense number of other organic
+substances such as spores of fungi, which had been floating about in the
+air and had got caged in this way.
+
+He went farther, and said to himself, "If these really are the things that
+give rise to the appearance of spontaneous generation, I ought to be able
+to take a ball of this dusted gun-cotton and put it into one of my vessels,
+containing that boiled infusion which has been kept away from the air, and
+in which no infusoria are at present developed, and then, if I am right,
+the introduction of this gun-cotton will give rise to organisms."
+
+Accordingly, he took one of these vessels of infusion, which had been kept
+eighteen months, without the least appearance of life in it, and by a most
+ingenious contrivance, he managed to break it open and introduce such a
+ball of gun-cotton, without allowing the infusion or the cotton ball to
+come into contact with any air but that which had been subjected to a red
+heat, and in twenty-four hours he had the satisfaction of finding all the
+indications of what had been hitherto called spontaneous generation. He had
+succeeded in catching the germs and developing organisms in the way ho had
+anticipated.
+
+It now struck him that the truth of his conclusions might be demonstrated
+without all the apparatus he had employed. To do this, he took some
+decaying animal or vegetable substance, such as urine, which is an
+extremely decomposable substance, or the juice of yeast, or perhaps some
+other artificial preparation, and filled a vessel having a long tubular
+neck with it. He then boiled the liquid and bent that long neck into an S
+shape or zig-zag, leaving it open at the end. The infusion then gave no
+trace of any appearance of spontaneous generation, however long it might be
+left, as all the germs in the air were deposited in the beginning of the
+bent neck. He then cut the tube close to the vessel, and allowed the
+ordinary air to have free and direct access; and the result of that was the
+appearance of organisms in it, as soon as the infusion had been allowed to
+stand long enough to allow of the growth of those it received from the air,
+which was about forty-eight hours. The result of M. Pasteur's experiments
+proved, therefore, in the most conclusive manner, that all the appearances
+of spontaneous generation arose from nothing more than the deposition of
+the germs of organisms which were constantly floating in the air.
+
+To this conclusion, however, the objection was made, that if that were the
+cause, then the air would contain such an enormous number of these germs,
+that it would be a continual fog. But M. Pasteur replied that they are not
+there in anything like the number we might suppose, and that an exaggerated
+view has been held on that subject; he showed that the chances of animal or
+vegetable life appearing in infusions, depend entirely on the conditions
+under which they are exposed. If they are exposed to the ordinary
+atmosphere around us, why, of course, you may have organisms appearing
+early. But, on the other hand, if they are exposed to air at a great
+height, or in some very quiet cellar, you will often not find a single
+trace of life.
+
+So that M. Pasteur arrived at last at the clear and definite result, that
+all these appearances are like the case of the worms in the piece of meat,
+which was refuted by Redi, simply germs carried by the air and deposited in
+the liquids in which they afterwards appear. For my own part, I conceive
+that, with the particulars of M. Pasteur's experiments before us, we cannot
+fail to arrive at his conclusions; and that the doctrine of spontaneous
+generation has received a final _coup de grâce_.
+
+You, of course, understand that all this in no way interferes with the
+_possibility_ of the fabrication of organic matters by the direct
+method to which I have referred, remote as that possibility may be.
+
+
+
+IV. THE PERPETUATION OF LIVING BEINGS, HEREDITARY TRANSMISSION AND
+VARIATION
+
+
+The inquiry which we undertook, at our last meeting, into the state of our
+knowledge of the causes of the phenomena of organic nature,--of the past
+and of the present,--resolved itself into two subsidiary inquiries: the
+first was, whether we know anything, either historically or experimentally,
+of the mode of origin of living beings; the second subsidiary inquiry was,
+whether, granting the origin, we know anything about the perpetuation and
+modifications of the forms of organic beings. The reply which I had to give
+to the first question was altogether negative, and the chief result of my
+last lecture was, that, neither historically nor experimentally, do we at
+present know anything whatsoever about the origin of living forms. We saw
+that, historically, we are not likely to know anything about it, although
+we may perhaps learn something experimentally; but that at present we are
+an enormous distance from the goal I indicated.
+
+I now, then, take up the next question, What do we know of the
+reproduction, the perpetuation, and the modifications of the forms of
+living beings, supposing that we have put the question as to their
+origination on one side, and have assumed that at present the causes of
+their origination are beyond us, and that we know nothing about them? Upon
+this question the state of our knowledge is extremely different; it is
+exceedingly large: and, if not complete, our experience is certainly most
+extensive. It would be impossible to lay it all before you, and the most I
+can do, or need do to-night, is to take up the principal points and put
+them before you with such prominence as may subserve the purposes of our
+present argument.
+
+The method of the perpetuation of organic beings is of two kinds,--the
+non-sexual and the sexual. In the first the perpetuation takes place from
+and by a particular act of an individual organism, which sometimes may not
+be classed as belonging to any sex at all. In the second case, it is in
+consequence of the mutual action and interaction of certain portions of the
+organisms of usually two distinct individuals,--the male and the female.
+The cases of non-sexual perpetuation are by no means so common as the cases
+of sexual perpetuation; and they are by no means so common in the animal as
+in the vegetable world. You are all probably familiar with the fact, as a
+matter of experience, that you can propagate plants by means of what are
+called "cuttings"; for example, that by taking a cutting from a geranium
+plant, and rearing it properly, by supplying it with light and warmth and
+nourishment from the earth, it grows up and takes the form of its parent,
+having all the properties and peculiarities of the original plant.
+
+Sometimes this process, which the gardener performs artificially, takes
+place naturally; that is to say, a little bulb, or portion of the plant,
+detaches itself, drops off, and becomes capable of growing as a separate
+thing. That is the case with many bulbous plants, which throw off in this
+way secondary bulbs, which are lodged in the ground and become developed
+into plants. This is a non-sexual process, and from it results the
+repetition or reproduction of the form of the original being from which the
+bulb proceeds.
+
+Among animals the same thing takes place. Among the lower forms of animal
+life, the infusorial animalculæ we have already spoken of throw off certain
+portions, or break themselves up in various directions, sometimes
+transversely or sometimes longitudinally; or they may give off buds, which
+detach themselves and develop into their proper forms. There is the common
+fresh-water polype, for instance, which multiplies itself in this way. Just
+in the same way as the gardener is able to multiply and reproduce the
+peculiarities and characters of particular plants by means of cuttings, so
+can the physiological experimentalist--as was shown by the Abbé Trembley
+many years ago--so can he do the same thing with many of the lower forms of
+animal life. M. de Trembley showed that you could take a polype and cut it
+into two, or four, or many pieces, mutilating it in all directions, and the
+pieces would still grow up and reproduce completely the original form of
+the animal. These are all cases of non-sexual multiplication, and there are
+other instances, and still more extraordinary ones, in which this process
+takes place naturally, in a more hidden, a more recondite kind of way. You
+are all of you familiar with that little green insect, the _Aphis_ or
+blight, as it is called. These little animals, during a very considerable
+part of their existence, multiply themselves by means of a kind of internal
+budding, the buds being developed into essentially non-sexual animals,
+which are neither male nor female; they become converted into young
+_Aphides_, which repeat the process, and their offspring after them,
+and so on again; you may go on for nine or ten, or even twenty or more
+successions; and there is no very good reason to say how soon it might
+terminate, or how long it might not go on if the proper conditions of
+warmth and nourishment were kept up.
+
+Sexual reproduction is quite a distinct matter. Here, in all these cases,
+what is required is the detachment of two portions of the parental
+organisms, which portions we know as the egg or the spermatozoon. In plants
+it is the ovule and the pollen-grain, as in the flowering plants, or the
+ovule and the antherozooid, as in the flowerless. Among all forms of animal
+life, the spermatozoa proceed from the male sex, and the egg is the product
+of the female. Now, what is remarkable about this mode of reproduction is
+this, that the egg by itself, or the spermatozoa by themselves, are unable
+to assume the parental form; but if they be brought into contact with one
+another, the effect of the mixture of organic substances proceeding from
+two sources appears to confer an altogether new vigour to the mixed
+product. This process is brought about, as we all know, by the sexual
+intercourse of the two sexes, and is called the act of impregnation. The
+result of this act on the part of the male and female is, that the
+formation of a new being is set up in the ovule or egg; this ovule or egg
+soon begins to be divided and subdivided, and to be fashioned into various
+complex organs, and eventually to develop into the form of one of its
+parents, as I explained in the first lecture. These are the processes by
+which the perpetuation of organic beings is secured. Why there should be
+the two modes--why this re-invigoration should be required on the part of
+the female element we do not know; but it is most assuredly the fact, and
+it is presumable, that, however long the process of non-sexual
+multiplication could be continued--I say there is good reason to believe
+that it would come to an end if a new commencement were not obtained by a
+conjunction of the two sexual elements.
+
+That character which is common to these two distinct processes is this,
+that, whether we consider the reproduction, or perpetuation, or
+modification of organic beings as they take place non-sexually, or as they
+may take place sexually--in either case, I say, the offspring has a
+constant tendency to assume, speaking generally, the character of the
+parent. As I said just now, if you take a slip of a plant, and tend it with
+care, it will eventually grow up and develop into a plant like that from
+which it had sprung; and this tendency is so strong that, as gardeners
+know, this mode of multiplying by means of cuttings is the only secure mode
+of propagating very many varieties of plants; the peculiarity of the
+primitive stock seems to be better preserved if you propagate it by means
+of a slip than if you resort to the sexual mode.
+
+Again, in experiments upon the lower animals, such as the polype, to which
+I have referred, it is most extraordinary that, although cut up into
+various pieces, each particular piece will grow up into the form of the
+primitive stock; the head, if separated, will reproduce the body and the
+tail; and if you cut off the tail, you will find that that will reproduce
+the body and all the rest of the members, without in any way deviating from
+the plan of the organism from which these portions have been detached. And
+so far does this go, that some experimentalists have carefully examined the
+lower orders of animals,--among them the Abbé Spallanzani, who made a
+number of experiments upon snails and salamanders,--and have found that
+they might mutilate them to an incredible extent; that you might cut off
+the jaw or the greater part of the head, or the leg or the tail, and repeat
+the experiment several times, perhaps cutting off the same member again and
+again; and yet each of those types would be reproduced according to the
+primitive type: Nature making no mistake, never putting on a fresh kind of
+leg, or head, or tail, but always tending to repeat and to return to the
+primitive type.
+
+It is the same in sexual reproduction: it is a matter of perfectly common
+experience, that the tendency on the part of the offspring always is,
+speaking broadly, to reproduce the form of the parents. The proverb has it
+that the thistle does not bring forth grapes; so, among ourselves, there is
+always a likeness, more or less marked and distinct, between children and
+their parents. That is a matter of familiar and ordinary observation. We
+notice the same thing occurring in the cases of the domestic animals--dogs,
+for instance, and their offspring. In all these cases of propagation and
+perpetuation, there seems to be a tendency in the offspring to take the
+characters of the parental organisms. To that tendency a special name is
+given--and as I may very often use it, I will write it up here on this
+black-board that you may remember it--it is called _Atavism_; it
+expresses this tendency to revert to the ancestral type, and comes from the
+Latin word _atavus_, ancestor.
+
+Well, this _Atavism_ which I shall speak of, is, as I said before, one
+of the most marked and striking tendencies of organic beings; but, side by
+side with this hereditary tendency there is an equally distinct and
+remarkable tendency to variation. The tendency to reproduce the original
+stock has, as it were, its limits, and side by side with it there is a
+tendency to vary in certain directions, as if there were two opposing
+powers working upon the organic being, one tending to take it in a straight
+line, and the other tending to make it diverge from that straight line,
+first to one side and then to the other.
+
+So that you see these two tendencies need not precisely contradict one
+another, as the ultimate result may not always be very remote from what
+would have been the case if the line had been quite straight.
+
+This tendency to variation is less marked in that mode of propagation which
+takes place non-sexually; it is in that mode that the minor characters of
+animal and vegetable structures are most completely preserved. Still, it
+will happen sometimes, that the gardener, when he has planted a cutting of
+some favourite plant, will find, contrary to his expectation, that the slip
+grows up a little different from the primitive stock--that it produces
+flowers of a different colour or make, or some deviation in one way or
+another. This is what is called the "sporting" of plants.
+
+In animals the phenomena of non-sexual propagation are so obscure, that at
+present we cannot be said to know much about them; but if we turn to that
+mode of perpetuation which results from the sexual process, then we find
+variation a perfectly constant occurrence, to a certain extent; and,
+indeed, I think that a certain amount of variation from the primitive stock
+is the necessary result of the method of sexual propagation itself; for,
+inasmuch as the thing propagated proceeds from two organisms of different
+sexes and different makes and temperaments, and as the offspring is to be
+either of one sex or the other, it is quite clear that it cannot be an
+exact diagonal of the two, or it would be of no sex at all; it cannot be an
+exact intermediate form between that of each of its parents--it must
+deviate to one side or the other. You do not find that the male follows the
+precise type of the male parent, nor does the female always inherit the
+precise characteristics of the mother,--there is always a proportion of the
+female character in the male offspring, and of the male character in the
+female offspring. That must be quite plain to all of you who have looked at
+all attentively on your own children or those of your neighbours; you will
+have noticed how very often it may happen that the son shall exhibit the
+maternal type of character, or the daughter possess the characteristics of
+the father's family. There are all sorts of intermixtures and intermediate
+conditions between the two, where complexion, or beauty, or fifty other
+different peculiarities belonging to either side of the house, are
+reproduced in other members of the same family. Indeed, it is sometimes to
+be remarked in this kind of variation, that the variety belongs, strictly
+speaking, to neither of the immediate parents; you will see a child in a
+family who is not like either its father or its mother; but some old person
+who knew its grandfather or grandmother, or, it may be, an uncle, or,
+perhaps, even a more distant relative will see a great similarity between
+the child and one of these. In this way it constantly happens that the
+characteristic of some previous member of the family comes out and is
+reproduced and recognised in the most unexpected manner.
+
+But apart from that matter of general experience, there are some cases
+which put that curious mixture in a very clear light. You are aware that
+the offspring of the ass and the horse, or rather of the he-ass and the
+mare, is what is called a mule; and, on the other hand, the offspring of
+the stallion and the she-ass is what is called a hinny. It is a very rare
+thing in this country to see a hinny. I never saw one myself; but they have
+been very carefully studied. Now, the curious thing is this, that although
+you have the same elements in the experiment in each case, the offspring is
+entirely different in character, according as the male influence comes from
+the ass or the horse. Where the ass is the male, as in the case of the
+mule, you find that the head is like that of the ass, that the ears are
+long, the tail is tufted at the end, the feet are small, and the voice is
+an unmistakable bray; these are all points of similarity to the ass; but,
+on the other hand, the barrel of the body and the cut of the neck are much
+more like those of the mare. Then, if you look at the hinny,--the result of
+the union of the stallion and the she-ass, then you find it is the horse
+that has the predominance; that the head is more like that of the horse,
+the ears are shorter, the legs coarser, and the type is altogether altered;
+while the voice, instead of being a bray, is the ordinary neigh of the
+horse. Here, you see, is a most curious thing: you take exactly the same
+elements, ass and horse, but you combine the sexes in a different manner,
+and the result is modified accordingly. You have in this case, however, a
+result which is not general and universal--there is usually an important
+preponderance, but not always on the same side.
+
+Here, then, is one intelligible, and, perhaps, necessary cause of
+variation: the fact, that there are two sexes sharing in the production of
+the offspring, and that the share taken by each is different and variable,
+not only for each combination, but also for different members of the same
+family.
+
+Secondly, there is a variation, to a certain extent--though, in all
+probability, the influence of this cause has been very much
+exaggerated--but there is no doubt that variation is produced, to a certain
+extent, by what are commonly known as external conditions,--such as
+temperature, food, warmth, and moisture. In the long run, every variation
+depends, in some sense, upon external conditions, seeing that everything
+has a cause of its own. I use the term "external conditions" now in the
+sense in which it is ordinarily employed: certain it is, that external
+conditions have a definite effect. You may take a plant which has single
+flowers, and by dealing with the soil, and nourishment, and so on, you may
+by and by convert single flowers into double flowers, and make thorns shoot
+out into branches. You may thicken or make various modifications in the
+shape of the fruit. In animals, too, you may produce analogous changes in
+this way, as in the case of that deep bronze colour which persons rarely
+lose after having passed any length of time in tropical countries. You may
+also alter the development of the muscles very much, by dint of training;
+all the world knows that exercise has a great effect in this way; we always
+expect to find the arm of a blacksmith hard and wiry, and possessing a
+large development of the brachial muscles. No doubt training, which is one
+of the forms of external conditions, converts what are originally only
+instructions, teachings, into habits, or, in other words, into
+organisations, to a great extent; but this second cause of variation cannot
+be considered to be by any means a large one. The third cause that I have
+to mention, however, is a very extensive one. It is one that, for want of a
+better name, has been called "spontaneous variation"; which means that when
+we do not know anything about the cause of phenomena, we call it
+spontaneous. In the orderly chain of causes and effects in this world,
+there are very few things of which it can be said with truth that they are
+spontaneous. Certainly not in these physical matters--in these there is
+nothing of the kind--everything depends on previous conditions. But when we
+cannot trace the cause of phenomena, we call them spontaneous.
+
+Of these variations, multitudinous as they are, but little is known with
+perfect accuracy. I will mention to you some two or three cases, because
+they are very remarkable in themselves, and also because I shall want to
+use them afterwards. Réaumur, a famous French naturalist, a great many
+years ago, in an essay which he wrote upon the art of hatching
+chickens--which was indeed a very curious essay--had occasion to speak of
+variations and monstrosities. One very remarkable case had come under his
+notice of a variation in the form of a human member, in the person of a
+Maltese, of the name of Gratio Kelleia, who was born with six fingers upon
+each hand, and the like number of toes to each of his feet. That was a case
+of spontaneous variation. Nobody knows why he was born with that number of
+fingers and toes, and as we don't know, we call it a case of "spontaneous"
+variation. There is another remarkable case also. I select these, because
+they happen to have been observed and noted very carefully at the time. It
+frequently happens that a variation occurs, but the persons who notice it
+do not take any care in noting down the particulars, until at length, when
+inquiries come to be made, the exact circumstances are forgotten; and
+hence, multitudinous as may be such "spontaneous" variations, it is
+exceedingly difficult to get at the origin of them.
+
+The second case is one of which you may find the whole details in the
+"Philosophical Transactions" for the year 1813, in a paper communicated by
+Colonel Humphrey to the President of the Royal Society--"On a new Variety
+in the Breed of Sheep," giving an account of a very remarkable breed of
+sheep, which at one time was well known in the northern states of America,
+and which went by the name of the Ancon or the Otter breed of sheep. In the
+year 1791, there was a farmer of the name of Seth Wright in Massachusetts,
+who had a flock of sheep, consisting of a ram and, I think, of some twelve
+or thirteen ewes. Of this flock of ewes, one at the breeding-time bore a
+lamb which was very singularly formed; it had a very long body, very short
+legs, and those legs were bowed. I will tell you by and by how this
+singular variation in the breed of sheep came to be noted, and to have the
+prominence that it now has. For the present, I mention only these two
+cases; but the extent of variation in the breed of animals is perfectly
+obvious to any one who has studied natural history with ordinary attention,
+or to any person who compares animals with others of the same kind. It is
+strictly true that there are never any two specimens which are exactly
+alike; however similar, they will always differ in some certain particular.
+
+Now let us go back to Atavism--to the hereditary tendency I spoke of. What
+will come of a variation when you breed from it, when Atavism comes, if I
+may say so, to intersect variation? The two cases of which I have mentioned
+the history give a most excellent illustration of what occurs. Gratio
+Kelleia, the Maltese, married when he was twenty-two years of age, and, as
+I suppose there were no six-fingered ladies in Malta, he married an
+ordinary five-fingered person. The result of that marriage was four
+children; the first, who was christened Salvator, had six fingers and six
+toes, like his father; the second was George, who had five fingers and
+toes, but one of them was deformed, showing a tendency to variation; the
+third was Andrè; he had five fingers and five toes, quite perfect; the
+fourth was a girl, Marie; she had five fingers and five toes, but her
+thumbs were deformed, showing a tendency toward the sixth.
+
+These children grew up, and when they came to adult years, they all
+married, and of course it happened that they all married five-fingered and
+five-toed persons. Now let us see what were the results. Salvator had four
+children; they were two boys, a girl, and another boy; the first two boys
+and the girl were six-fingered and six-toed like their grandfather; the
+fourth boy had only five fingers and five toes. George had only four
+children; there were two girls with six fingers and six toes; there was one
+girl with six fingers and five toes on the right side, and five fingers and
+five toes on the left side, so that she was half and half. The last, a boy,
+had five fingers and five toes. The third, Andrè, you will recollect, was
+perfectly well-formed, and he had many children whose hands and feet were
+all regularly developed. Marie, the last, who, of course, married a man who
+had only five fingers, had four children; the first, a boy, was born with
+six toes, but the other three were normal.
+
+Now observe what very extraordinary phenomena are presented here. You have
+an accidental variation giving rise to what you may call a monstrosity; you
+have that monstrosity or variation diluted in the first instance by an
+admixture with a female of normal construction, and you would naturally
+expect that, in the results of such an union, the monstrosity, if repeated,
+would be in equal proportion with the normal type; that is to say, that the
+children would be half and half, some taking the peculiarity of the father,
+and the others being of the purely normal type of the mother; but you see
+we have a great preponderance of the abnormal type. Well, this comes to be
+mixed once more with the pure, the normal type, and the abnormal is again
+produced in large proportion, notwithstanding the second dilution. Now what
+would have happened if these abnormal types had intermarried with each
+other; that is to say, suppose the two boys of Salvator had taken it into
+their heads to marry their first cousins, the two first girls of George,
+their uncle? You will remember that these are all of the abnormal type of
+their grandfather. The result would probably have been, that their
+offspring would have been in every case a further development of that
+abnormal type. You see it is only in the fourth, in the person of Marie,
+that the tendency, when it appears but slightly in the second generation,
+is washed out in the third, while the progeny of Andrè, who escaped in the
+first instance, escape altogether.
+
+We have in this case a good example of nature's tendency to the
+perpetuation of a variation. Here it is certainly a variation which earned
+with it no use or benefit; and yet you see the tendency to perpetuation may
+be so strong, that, notwithstanding a great admixture of pure blood, the
+variety continues itself up to the third generation, which is largely
+marked with it. In this case, as I have said, there was no means of the
+second generation intermarrying with any but five-fingered persons, and the
+question naturally suggests itself, What would have been the result of such
+marriage? Réaumur narrates this case only as far as the third generation.
+Certainly it would have been an exceedingly curious thing if we could have
+traced this matter any further; had the cousins intermarried, a
+six-fingered variety of the human race might have been set up.
+
+To show you that this supposition is by no means an unreasonable one, let
+me now point out what took place in the case of Seth Wright's sheep, where
+it happened to be a matter of moment to him to obtain a breed or raise a
+flock of sheep like that accidental variety that I have described--and I
+will tell you why. In that part of Massachusetts where Seth Wright was
+living, the fields were separated by fences, and the sheep, which were very
+active and robust, would roam abroad, and without much difficulty jump over
+these fences into other people's farms. As a matter of course, this
+exuberant activity on the part of the sheep constantly gave rise to all
+sorts of quarrels, bickerings, and contentions among the farmers of the
+neighbourhood; so it occurred to Seth Wright, who was, like his successors,
+more or less 'cute, that if he could get a stock of sheep like those with
+the bandy legs, they would not be able to jump over the fences so readily;
+and he acted upon that idea. He killed his old ram, and as soon as the
+young one arrived at maturity, he bred altogether from it. The result was
+even more striking than in the human experiment which I mentioned just now.
+Colonel Humphreys testifies that it always happened that the offspring were
+either pure Ancons or pure ordinary sheep; that in no case was there any
+mixing of the Ancons with the others. In consequence of this, in the course
+of a very few years, the farmer was able to get a very considerable flock
+of this variety, and a large number of them were spread throughout
+Massachusetts. Most unfortunately, however--I suppose it was because they
+were so common--nobody took enough notice of them to preserve their
+skeletons; and although Colonel Humphreys states that he sent a skeleton to
+the President of the Royal Society at the same time that he forwarded his
+paper, I am afraid that the variety has entirely disappeared; for a short
+time after these sheep had become prevalent in that district, the Merino
+sheep were introduced; and as their wool was much more valuable, and as
+they were a quiet race of sheep, and showed no tendency to trespasser jump
+over fences, the Otter breed of sheep, the wool of which was inferior to
+that of the Merino, was gradually allowed to die out.
+
+You see that these facts illustrate perfectly well what may be done if you
+take care to breed from stocks that are similar to each other. After having
+got a variation, if, by crossing a variation with the original stock, you
+multiply that variation, and then take care to keep that variation distinct
+from the original stock, and make them breed together,--then you may almost
+certainly produce a race whose tendency to continue the variation is
+exceedingly strong.
+
+This is what is called "selection"; and it is by exactly the same process
+as that by which Seth Wright bred his Ancon sheep, that our breeds of
+cattle, dogs, and fowls are obtained. There are some possibilities of
+exception, but still, speaking broadly, I may say that this is the way in
+which all our varied races of domestic animals have arisen; and you must
+understand that it is not one peculiarity or one characteristic alone in
+which animals may vary. There is not a single peculiarity or characteristic
+of any kind, bodily or mental, in which offspring may not vary to a certain
+extent from the parent and other animals.
+
+Among ourselves this is well known. The simplest physical peculiarity is
+mostly reproduced. I know a case of a woman who has the lobe of one of her
+ears a little flattened. An ordinary observer might scarcely notice it, and
+yet every one of her children has an approximation to the same peculiarity
+to some extent. If you look at the other extreme, too, the gravest
+diseases, such as gout, scrofula, and consumption, may be handed down with
+just the same certainty and persistence as we noticed in the perpetuation
+of the bandy legs of the Ancon sheep.
+
+However, these facts are best illustrated in animals, and the extent of the
+variation, as is well known, is very remarkable in dogs. For example, there
+are some dogs very much smaller than others; indeed, the variation is so
+enormous that probably the smallest dog would be about the size of the head
+of the largest; there are very great variations in the structural forms not
+only of the skeleton but also in the shape of the skull, and in the
+proportions of the face and the disposition of the teeth.
+
+The Pointer, the Retriever, Bulldog, and the Terrier differ very greatly,
+and yet there is every reason to believe that every one of these races has
+arisen from the same source,--that all the most important races have arisen
+by this selective breeding from accidental variation.
+
+A still more striking case of what may be done by selective breeding, and
+it is a better case, because there is no chance of that partial infusion of
+error to which I alluded, has been studied very carefully by Mr.
+Darwin,--the case of the domestic pigeons. I dare say there may be some
+among you who may be pigeon _fanciers_, and I wish you to understand
+that in approaching the subject, I would speak with all humility and
+hesitation, as I regret to say that I am not a pigeon fancier. I know it is
+a great art and mystery, and a thing upon which a man must not speak
+lightly; but I shall endeavour, as far as my understanding goes, to give
+you a summary of the published and unpublished information which I have
+gained from Mr. Darwin.
+
+Among the enormous variety,--I believe there are somewhere about a hundred
+and fifty kinds of pigeons,--there are four kinds which may be selected as
+representing the extremest divergences of one kind from another. Their
+names are the Carrier, the Pouter, the Fantail, and the Tumbler. In these
+large diagrams that I have here they are each represented in their relative
+sizes to each other. This first one is the Carrier; you will notice this
+large excrescence on its beak; it has a comparatively small head; there is
+a bare space round the eyes; it has a long neck, a very long beak, very
+strong legs, large feet, long wings, and so on. The second one is the
+Pouter, a very large bird, with very long legs and beak. It is called the
+Pouter because it is in the habit of causing its gullet to swell up by
+inflating it with air. I should tell you that all pigeons have a tendency
+to do this at times, but in the Pouter it is carried to an enormous extent.
+The birds appear to be quite proud of their power of swelling and puffing
+themselves out in this way; and I think it is about as droll a sight as you
+can well see to look at a cage full of these pigeons puffing and blowing
+themselves out in this ridiculous manner.
+
+This diagram is a representation of the third kind I mentioned--the
+Fantail. It is, you see, a small bird, with exceedingly small legs and a
+very small beak. It is most curiously distinguished by the size and extent
+of its tail, which, instead of containing twelve feathers, may have many
+more,--say thirty, or even more--I believe there are some with as many as
+forty-two. This bird has a curious habit of spreading out the feathers of
+its tail in such a way that they reach forward and touch its head; and if
+this can be accomplished, I believe it is looked upon as a point of great
+beauty.
+
+But here is the last great variety,--the Tumbler; and of that great
+variety, one of the principal kinds, and one most prized, is the specimen
+represented here--the short-faced Tumbler. Its beak, you see, is reduced to
+a mere nothing. Just compare the beak of this one and that of the first
+one, the Carrier--I believe the orthodox comparison of the head and beak of
+a thoroughly well-bred Tumbler is to stick an oat into a cherry, and that
+will give you the proper relative proportions of the beak and head. The
+feet and legs are exceedingly small, and the bird appears to be quite a
+dwarf when placed side by side with this great Carrier.
+
+These are differences enough in regard to their external appearance; but
+these differences are by no means the whole or even the most important of
+the differences which obtain between these birds. There is hardly a single
+point of their structure which has not become more or less altered; and to
+give you an idea of how extensive these alterations are, I have here some
+very good skeletons, for which I am indebted to my friend, Mr. Tegetmeier,
+a great authority in these matters; by means of which, if you examine them
+by and by, you will be able to see the enormous difference in their bony
+structures.
+
+I had the privilege, some time ago, of access to some important MSS. of Mr.
+Darwin, who, I may tell you, has taken very great pains and spent much
+valuable time and attention on the investigation of these variations, and
+getting together all the facts that bear upon them. I obtained from these
+MSS. the following summary of the differences between the domestic breeds
+of pigeons; that is to say, a notification of the various points in which
+their organisation differs. In the first place, the back of the skull may
+differ a good deal, and the development of the bones of the face may vary a
+great deal; the back varies a good deal; the shape of the lower jaw varies;
+the tongue varies very greatly, not only in correlation to the length and
+size of the beak, but it seems also to have a kind of independent variation
+of its own. Then the amount of naked skin round the eyes, and at the base
+of the beak, may vary enormously; so may the length of the eyelids, the
+shape of the nostrils, and the length of the neck. I have already noticed
+the habit of blowing out the gullet, so remarkable in the Pouter, and
+comparatively so in the others. There are great differences, too, in the
+size of the female and the male, the shape of the body, the number and
+width of the processes of the ribs, the development of the ribs, and the
+size, shape, and development of the breastbone. We may notice, too--and I
+mention the fact because it has been disputed by what is assumed to be high
+authority,--the variation in the number of the sacral vertebrae. The number
+of these varies from eleven to fourteen, and that without any diminution in
+the number of the vertebrae of the back or of the tail. Then the number and
+position of the tail-feathers may vary enormously, and so may the number of
+the primary and secondary feathers of the wings. Again, the length of the
+feet and of the beak,--although they have no relation to each other, yet
+appear to go together,--that is, you have a long beak wherever you have
+long feet. There are differences also in the periods of the acquirement of
+the perfect plumage--the size and shape of the eggs--the nature of flight,
+and the powers of flight--so-called _"homing"_ birds having enormous
+flying powers; [Footnote: The _"Carrier,"_ I learn from Mr.
+Tegetmeier, does not _carry_; a high-bred bird of this breed being but
+a poor flier. The birds which fly long distances, and come home--"homing"
+birds-and are consequently used as carriers, are not "carriers" in the
+fancy sense.] while, on the other hand, the little Tumbler is so called
+because of its extraordinary faculty of turning head over heels in the air,
+instead of pursuing a direct course. And, lastly, the dispositions and
+voices of the birds may vary. Thus the case of the pigeons shows you that
+there is hardly a single particular--whether of instinct, or habit, or bony
+structure, or of plumage--of either the internal economy or the external
+shape, in which some variation or change may not take place, which, by
+selective breeding, may become perpetuated, and form the foundation of, and
+give rise to, a new race.
+
+If you carry in your mind's eye these four varieties of pigeons, you will
+bear with you as good a notion as you can have, perhaps, of the enormous
+extent to which a deviation from a primitive type may be carried by means
+of this process of selective breeding.
+
+
+
+V. THE CONDITIONS OF EXISTENCE AS AFFECTING THE PERPETUATION OF LIVING
+BEINGS
+
+
+In the last Lecture I endeavoured to prove to you that, while, as a general
+rule, organic beings tend to reproduce their kind, there is in them, also,
+a constantly recurring tendency to vary--to vary to a greater or to a less
+extent. Such a variety, I pointed out to you, might arise from causes which
+we do not understand; we therefore called it spontaneous; and it might come
+into existence as a definite and marked thing, without any gradations
+between itself and the form which preceded it. I further pointed out, that
+such a variety having once arisen, might be perpetuated to some extent, and
+indeed to a very marked extent, without any direct interference, or without
+any exercise of that process which we called selection. And then I stated
+further, that by such selection, when exercised artificially--if you took
+care to breed only from those forms which presented the same peculiarities
+of any variety which had arisen in this manner--the variation might be
+perpetuated, as far as we can see, indefinitely.
+
+The next question, and it is an important one for us, is this: Is there any
+limit to the amount of variation from the primitive stock which can be
+produced by this process of selective breeding? In considering this
+question, it will be useful to class the characteristics, in respect of
+which organic beings vary, under two heads: we may consider structural
+characteristics, and we may consider physiological characteristics.
+
+In the first place, as regards structural characteristics, I endeavoured to
+show you, by the skeletons which I had upon the table, and by reference to
+a great many well-ascertained facts, that the different breeds of Pigeons,
+the Carriers, Pouters, and Tumblers, might vary in any of their internal
+and important structural characters to a very great degree; not only might
+there be changes in the proportions of the skull, and the characters of the
+feet and beaks, and so on; but that there might be an absolute difference
+in the number of the vertebrae of the back, as in the sacral vertebras of
+the Pouter; and so great is the extent of the variation in these and
+similar characters that I pointed out to you, by reference to the skeletons
+and the diagrams, that these extreme varieties may absolutely differ more
+from one another in their structural characters than do what naturalists
+call distinct SPECIES of pigeons; that is to say, that they differ so much
+in structure that there is a greater difference between the Pouter and the
+Tumbler than there is between such wild and distinct forms as the Rock
+Pigeon or the Ring Pigeon, or the Ring Pigeon and the Stock Dove; and
+indeed the differences are of greater value than this, for the structural
+differences between these domesticated pigeons are such as would be
+admitted by a naturalist, supposing he knew nothing at all about their
+origin, to entitle them to constitute even distinct genera.
+
+As I have used this term SPECIES, and shall probably use it a good deal, I
+had better perhaps devote a word or two to explaining what I mean by it.
+
+Animals and plants are divided into groups, which become gradually smaller,
+beginning with a KINGDOM, which is divided into SUB-KINGDOMS; then come the
+smaller divisions called PROVINCES; and so on from a PROVINCE to a CLASS,
+from a CLASS to an ORDER, from ORDERS to FAMILIES, and from these to
+GENERA, until we come at length to the smallest groups of animals which can
+be defined one from the other by constant characters, which are not sexual;
+and these are what naturalists call SPECIES in practice, whatever they may
+do in theory.
+
+If, in a state of nature, you find any two groups of living beings, which
+are separated one from the other by some constantly-recurring
+characteristic, I don't care how slight and trivial, so long as it is
+defined and constant, and does not depend on sexual peculiarities, then all
+naturalists agree in calling them two species; that is what is meant by the
+use of the word species--that is to say, it is, for the practical
+naturalist, a mere question of structural differences. [Footnote: I lay
+stress here on the _practical_ signification of "Species." Whether a
+physiological test between species exist or not, it is hardly ever
+applicable by the practical naturalist.] We have seen now--to repeat this
+point once more, and it is very essential that we should rightly understand
+it--we have seen that breeds, known to have been derived from a common
+stock by selection, may be as different in their structure from the
+original stock as species may be distinct from each other.
+
+But is the like true of the physiological characteristics of animals? Do
+the physiological differences of varieties amount in degree to those
+observed between forms which naturalists call distinct species? This is a
+most important point for us to consider.
+
+As regards the great majority of physiological characteristics, there is no
+doubt that they are capable of being developed, increased, and modified by
+selection.
+
+There is no doubt that breeds may be made as different as species in many
+physiological characters. I have already pointed out to you very briefly
+the different habits of the breeds of Pigeons, all of which depend upon
+their physiological peculiarities--as the peculiar habit of tumbling, in
+the Tumbler--the peculiarities of flight, in the "homing" birds--the
+strange habit of spreading out the tail, and walking in a peculiar fashion,
+in the Fantail--and, lastly, the habit of blowing out the gullet, so
+characteristic of the Pouter. These are all due to physiological
+modifications, and in all these respects these birds differ as much from
+each other as any two ordinary species do.
+
+So with Dogs in their habits and instincts. It is a physiological
+peculiarity which leads the Greyhound to chase its prey by sight--that
+enables the Beagle to track it by the scent--that impels the Terrier to its
+rat-hunting propensity--and that leads the Retriever to its habit of
+retrieving. These habits and instincts are all the results of physiological
+differences and peculiarities, which have been developed from a common
+stock, at least there is every reason to believe so. But it is a most
+singular circumstance, that while you may run through almost the whole
+series of physiological processes, without finding a check to your
+argument, you come at last to a point where you do find a check, and that
+is in the reproductive processes. For there is a most singular circumstance
+in respect to natural species--at least about some of them--and it would be
+sufficient for the purposes of this argument if it were true of only one of
+them, but there is, in fact, a great number of such cases--and that is,
+that, similar as they may appear to be to mere races or breeds, they
+present a marked peculiarity in the reproductive process. If you breed from
+the male and female of the same race, you of course have offspring of the
+like kind, and if you make the offspring breed together, you obtain the
+same result, and if you breed from these again, you will still have the
+same kind of offspring; there is no check. But if you take members of two
+distinct species, however similar they may be to each other, and make them
+breed together, you will find a check, with some modifications and
+exceptions, however, which I shall speak of presently. If you cross two
+such species with each other, then--although you may get offspring in the
+case of the first cross, yet, if you attempt to breed from the products of
+that crossing, which are what are called HYBRIDS--that is, if you couple a
+male and a female hybrid--then the result is that in ninety-nine cases out
+of a hundred you will get no offspring at all; there will be no result
+whatsoever.
+
+The reason of this is quite obvious in some cases; the male hybrids,
+although possessing all the external appearances and characteristics of
+perfect animals, are physiologically imperfect and deficient in the
+structural parts of the reproductive elements necessary to generation. It
+is said to be invariably the case with the male mule, the cross between the
+Ass and the Mare; and hence it is, that, although crossing the Horse with
+the Ass is easy enough, and is constantly done, as far as I am aware, if
+you take two mules, a male and a female, and endeavour to breed from them,
+you get no offspring whatever; no generation will take place. This is what
+is called the sterility of the hybrids between two distinct species.
+
+You see that this is a very extraordinary circumstance; one does not see
+why it should be. The common teleological explanation is, that it is to
+prevent the impurity of the blood resulting from the crossing of one
+species with another, but you see it does not in reality do anything of the
+kind. There is nothing in this fact that hybrids cannot breed with each
+other, to establish such a theory; there is nothing to prevent the Horse
+breeding with the Ass, or the Ass with the Horse. So that this explanation
+breaks down, as a great many explanations of this kind do, that are only
+founded on mere assumptions.
+
+Thus you see that there is a great difference between "mongrels," which are
+crosses between distinct races, and "hybrids," which are crosses between
+distinct species. The mongrels are, so far as we know, fertile with one
+another. But between species, in many cases, you cannot succeed in
+obtaining even the first cross; at any rate it is quite certain that the
+hybrids are often absolutely infertile one with another.
+
+Here is a feature, then, great or small as it may be, which distinguishes
+natural species of animals. Can we find any approximation to this in the
+different races known to be produced by selective breeding from a common
+stock? Up to the present time the answer to that question is absolutely a
+negative one. As far as we know at present, there is nothing approximating
+to this check. In crossing the breeds between the Fantail and the Pouter,
+the Carrier and the Tumbler, or any other variety or race you may name--so
+far as we know at present--there is no difficulty in breeding together the
+mongrels. Take the Carrier and the Fantail, for instance, and let them
+represent the Horse and the Ass in the case of distinct species; then you
+have, as the result of their breeding, the Carrier-Fantail mongrel,--we
+will say the male and female mongrel,--and, as far as we know, these two
+when crossed would not be less fertile than the original cross, or than
+Carrier with Carrier. Here, you see, is a physiological contrast between
+the races produced by selective modification and natural species. I shall
+inquire into the value of this fact, and of some modifying circumstances by
+and by; for the present I merely put it broadly before you.
+
+But while considering this question of the limitations of species, a word
+must be said about what is called RECURRENCE--the tendency of races which
+have been developed by selective breeding from varieties to return to their
+primitive type. This is supposed by many to put an absolute limit to the
+extent of selective and all other variations. People say, "It is all very
+well to talk about producing these different races, but you know very well
+that if you turned all these birds wild, these Pouters, and Carriers, and
+so on, they would all return to their primitive stock." This is very
+commonly assumed to be a fact, and it is an argument that is commonly
+brought forward as conclusive; but if you will take the trouble to inquire
+into it rather closely, I think you will find that it is not worth very
+much. The first question of course is, Do they thus return to the primitive
+stock? And commonly as the thing is assumed and accepted, it is extremely
+difficult to get anything like good evidence of it. It is constantly said,
+for example, that if domesticated Horses are turned wild, as they have been
+in some parts of Asia Minor and South America, that they return at once to
+the primitive stock from which they were bred. But the first answer that
+you make to this assumption is, to ask who knows what the primitive stock
+was; and the second answer is, that in that case the wild Horses of Asia
+Minor ought to be exactly like the wild Horses of South America. If they
+are both like the same thing, they ought manifestly to be like each other!
+The best authorities, however, tell you that it is quite different. The
+wild Horse of Asia is said to be of a dun colour, with a largish head, and
+a great many other peculiarities; while the best authorities on the wild
+Horses of South America tell you that there is no similarity between their
+wild Horses and those of Asia Minor; the cut of their heads is very
+different, and they are commonly chestnut or bay-coloured. It is quite
+clear, therefore, that as by these facts there ought to have been two
+primitive stocks, they go for nothing in support of the assumption that
+races recur to one primitive stock, and so far as this evidence is
+concerned, it falls to the ground.
+
+Suppose for a moment that it were so, and that domesticated races, when
+turned wild, did return to some common condition, I cannot see that this
+would prove much more than that similar conditions are likely to produce
+similar results; and that when you take back domesticated animals into what
+we call natural conditions, you do exactly the same thing as if you
+carefully undid all the work you had gone through, for the purpose of
+bringing the animal from its wild to its domesticated state. I do not see
+anything very wonderful in the fact, if it took all that trouble to get it
+from a wild state, that it should go back into its original state as soon
+as you removed the conditions which produced the variation to the
+domesticated form. There is an important fact, however, forcibly brought
+forward by Mr. Darwin, which has been noticed in connection with the
+breeding of domesticated pigeons; and it is, that however different these
+breeds of pigeons may be from each other, and we have already noticed the
+great differences in these breeds, that if, among any of those variations,
+you chance to have a blue pigeon turn up, it will be sure to have the black
+bars across the wings, which are characteristic of the original wild stock,
+the Rock Pigeon.
+
+Now, this is certainly a very remarkable circumstance; but I do not see
+myself how it tells very strongly either one way or the other. I think, in
+fact, that this argument in favour of recurrence to the primitive type
+might prove a great deal too much for those who so constantly bring it
+forward. For example, Mr. Darwin has very forcibly urged, that nothing is
+commoner than if you examine a dun horse--and I had an opportunity of
+verifying this illustration lately while in the islands of the West
+Highlands, where there are a great many dun horses--to find that horse
+exhibit a long black stripe down his back, very often stripes on his
+shoulder, and very often stripes on his legs. I, myself, saw a pony of this
+description a short time ago, in a baker's cart, near Rothesay, in Bute: it
+had the long stripe down the back, and stripes on the shoulders and legs,
+just like those of the Ass, the Quagga, and the Zebra. Now, if we interpret
+the theory of recurrence as applied to this case, might it not be said that
+here was a case of a variation exhibiting the characters and conditions of
+an animal occupying something like an intermediate position between the
+Horse, the Ass, the Quagga, and the Zebra, and from which these had been
+developed? In the same way with regard even to Man. Every anatomist will
+tell you that there is nothing commoner, in dissecting the human body, than
+to meet with what are called muscular variations--that is, if you dissect
+two bodies very carefully, you will probably find that the modes of
+attachment and insertion of the muscles are not exactly the same in both,
+there being great peculiarities in the mode in which the muscles are
+arranged; and it is very singular, that in some dissections of the human
+body you will come upon arrangements of the muscles very similar indeed to
+the same parts in the Apes. Is the conclusion in that case to be, that this
+is like the black bars in the case of the Pigeon, and that it indicates a
+recurrence to the primitive type from which the animals have been probably
+developed? Truly, I think that the opponents of modification and variation
+had better leave the argument of recurrence alone, or it may prove
+altogether too strong for them.
+
+To sum up,--the evidence as far as we have gone is against the argument as
+to any limit to divergences, so far as structure is concerned; and in
+favour of a physiological limitation. By selective breeding we can produce
+structural divergences as great as those of species, but we cannot produce
+equal physiological divergences. For the present I leave the question
+there.
+
+Now, the next problem that lies before us--and it is an extremely important
+one--is this: Does this selective breeding occur in nature? Because, if
+there is no proof of it, all that I have been telling you goes for nothing
+in accounting for the origin of species. Are natural causes competent to
+play the part of selection in perpetuating varieties? Here we labour under
+very great difficulties. In the last lecture I had occasion to point out to
+you the extreme difficulty of obtaining evidence even of the first origin
+of those varieties which we know to have occurred in domesticated animals.
+I told you, that almost always the origin of these varieties is overlooked,
+so that I could only produce two or three cases, as that of Gratio Kelleia
+and of the Ancon sheep. People forget, or do not take notice of them until
+they come to have a prominence; and if that is true of artificial cases,
+under our own eyes, and in animals in our own care, how much more difficult
+it must be to have at first hand good evidence of the origin of varieties
+in nature! Indeed, I do not know that it is possible by direct evidence to
+prove the origin of a variety in nature, or to prove selective breeding;
+but I will tell you what we can prove--and this comes to the same
+thing--that varieties exist in nature within the limits of species, and,
+what is more, that when a variety has come into existence in nature, there
+are natural causes and conditions, which are amply competent to play the
+part of a selective breeder; and although that is not quite the evidence
+that one would like to have--though it is not direct testimony--yet it is
+exceeding good and exceedingly powerful evidence in its way.
+
+As to the first point, of varieties existing among natural species, I might
+appeal to the universal experience of every naturalist, and of any person
+who has ever turned any attention at all to the characteristics of plants
+and animals in a state of nature; but I may as well take a few definite
+cases, and I will begin with Man himself.
+
+I am one of those who believe that, at present, there is no evidence
+whatever for saying, that mankind sprang originally from any more than a
+single pair; I must say, that I cannot see any good ground whatever, or
+even any tenable sort of evidence, for believing that there is more than
+one species of Man. Nevertheless, as you know, just as there are numbers of
+varieties in animals, so there are remarkable varieties of men. I speak not
+merely of those broad and distinct variations which you see at a glance.
+Everybody, of course, knows the difference between a Negro and a white man,
+and can tell a Chinaman from an Englishman. They each have peculiar
+characteristics of colour and physiognomy; but you must recollect that the
+characters of these races go very far deeper--they extend to the bony
+structure, and to the characters of that most important of all organs to
+us--the brain; so that, among men belonging to different races, or even
+within the same race, one man shall have a brain a third, or half, or even
+seventy per cent, bigger than another; and if you take the whole range of
+human brains, you will find a variation in some cases of a hundred per
+cent. Apart from these variations in the size of the brain, the characters
+of the skull vary. Thus if I draw the figures of a Mongol and of a Negro
+head on the blackboard, in the case of the last the breadth would be about
+seven-tenths, and in the other it would be nine-tenths of the total length.
+So that you see there is abundant evidence of variation among men in their
+natural condition. And if you turn to other animals there is just the same
+thing. The fox, for example, which has a very large geographical
+distribution all over Europe, and parts of Asia, and on the American
+Continent, varies greatly. There are mostly large foxes in the North, and
+smaller ones in the South. In Germany alone the foresters reckon some eight
+different sorts.
+
+Of the tiger, no one supposes that there is more than one species; they
+extend from the hottest parts of Bengal, into the dry, cold, bitter steppes
+of Siberia, into a latitude of 50°,--so that they may even prey upon the
+reindeer. These tigers have exceedingly different characteristics, but
+still they all keep their general features, so that there is no doubt as to
+their being tigers. The Siberian tiger has a thick fur, a small mane, and a
+longitudinal stripe down the back, while the tigers of Java and Sumatra
+differ in many important respects from the tigers of Northern Asia. So
+lions vary; so birds vary; and so, if you go further back and lower down in
+creation, you find that fishes vary. In different streams, in the same
+country even, you will find the trout to be quite different to each other
+and easily recognisable by those who fish in the particular streams. There
+is the same differences in leeches; leech collectors can easily point out
+to you the differences and the peculiarities which you yourself would
+probably pass by; so with fresh-water mussels; so, in fact, with every
+animal you can mention.
+
+In plants there is the same kind of variation. Take such a case even as the
+common bramble. The botanists are all at war about it; some of them wanting
+to make out that there are many species of it, and others maintaining that
+they are but many varieties of one species; and they cannot settle to this
+day which is a species and which is a variety!
+
+So that there can be no doubt whatsoever that any plant and any animal may
+vary in nature; that varieties may arise in the way I have described--as
+spontaneous varieties--and that those varieties may be perpetuated in the
+same way that I have shown you spontaneous varieties are perpetuated; I
+say, therefore, that there can be no doubt as to the origin and
+perpetuation of varieties in nature.
+
+But the question now is:--Does selection take place in nature? Is there
+anything like the operation of man in exercising selective breeding, taking
+place in nature? You will observe that, at present, I say nothing about
+species; I wish to confine myself to the consideration of the production of
+those natural races which everybody admits to exist. The question is,
+whether in nature there are causes competent to produce races, just in the
+same way as man is able to produce by selection, such races of animals as
+we have already noticed.
+
+When a variety has arisen, the CONDITIONS OF EXISTENCE are such as to
+exercise an influence which is exactly comparable to that of artificial
+selection. By Conditions of Existence I mean two things--there are
+conditions which are furnished by the physical, the inorganic world, and
+there are conditions of existence which are furnished by the organic world.
+There is, in the first place, CLIMATE; under that head I include only
+temperature and the varied amount of moisture of particular places. In the
+next place there is what is technically called STATION, which means--given
+the climate, the particular kind of place in which an animal or a plant
+lives or grows; for example, the station of a fish is in the water, of a
+fresh-water fish in fresh water; the station of a marine fish is in the
+sea, and a marine animal may have a station higher or deeper. So again with
+land animals: the differences in their stations are those of different
+soils and neighbourhoods; some being best adapted to a calcareous, and
+others to an arenaceous soil. The third condition of existence is FOOD, by
+which I mean food in the broadest sense, the supply of the materials
+necessary to the existence of an organic being; in the case of a plant the
+inorganic matters, such as carbonic acid, water, ammonia, and the earthy
+salts or salines; in the case of the animal the inorganic and organic
+matters, which we have seen they require; then these are all, at least the
+first two, what we may call the inorganic or physical conditions of
+existence. Food takes a mid-place, and then come the organic conditions; by
+which I mean the conditions which depend upon the state of the rest of the
+organic creation, upon the number and kind of living beings, with which an
+animal is surrounded. You may class these under two heads: there are
+organic beings, which operate as _opponents_, and there are organic
+beings which operate as _helpers_ to any given organic creature. The
+opponents may be of two kinds: there are the _indirect opponents_,
+which are what we may call _rivals_; and there are the _direct
+opponents_, those which strive to destroy the creature; and these we
+call _enemies_. By rivals I mean, of course, in the case of plants,
+those which require for their support the same kind of soil and station,
+and, among animals, those which require the same kind of station, or food,
+or climate; those are the indirect opponents; the direct opponents are, of
+course, those which prey upon an animal or vegetable. The _helpers_
+may also be regarded as direct and indirect: in the case of a carnivorous
+animal, for example, a particular herbaceous plant may, in multiplying, be
+an indirect helper, by enabling the herbivora on which the carnivore preys
+to get more food, and thus to nourish the carnivore more abundantly; the
+direct helper may be best illustrated by reference to some parasitic
+creature, such as the tape-worm. The tape-worm exists in the human
+intestines, so that the fewer there are of men the fewer there will be of
+tape-worms, other things being alike. It is a humiliating reflection,
+perhaps, that we may be classed as direct helpers to the tape-worm, but the
+fact is so: we can all see that if there were no men there would be no
+tape-worms.
+
+It is extremely difficult to estimate, in a proper way, the importance and
+the working of the Conditions of Existence. I do not think there were any
+of us who had the remotest notion of properly estimating them until the
+publication of Mr. Darwin's work, which has placed them before us with
+remarkable clearness; and I must endeavour, as far as I can in my own
+fashion, to give you some notion of how they work. We shall find it easiest
+to take a simple case, and one as free as possible from every kind of
+complication.
+
+I will suppose, therefore, that all the habitable part of this globe--the
+dry land, amounting to about 51,000,000 square miles--I will suppose that
+the whole of that dry land has the same climate, and that it is composed of
+the same kind of rock or soil, so that there will be the same station
+everywhere; we thus get rid of the peculiar influence of different climates
+and stations. I will then imagine that there shall be but one organic being
+in the world, and that shall be a plant. In this we start fair. Its food is
+to be carbonic acid, water and ammonia, and the saline matters in the soil,
+which are, by the supposition, everywhere alike. We take one single plant,
+with no opponents, no helpers, and no rivals; it is to be a "fair field,
+and no favour." Now, I will ask you to imagine further that it shall be a
+plant which shall produce every year fifty seeds, which is a very moderate
+number for a plant to produce; and that, by the action of the winds and
+currents, these seeds shall be equally and gradually distributed over the
+whole surface of the land. I want you now to trace out what will occur, and
+you will observe that I am not talking fallaciously any more than a
+mathematician does when he expounds his problem. If you show that the
+conditions of your problem are such as may actually occur in Nature and do
+not transgress any of the known laws of Nature in working out your
+proposition, then you are as safe in the conclusion you arrive at as is the
+mathematician in arriving at the solution of his problem. In science, the
+only way of getting rid of the complications with which a subject of this
+kind is environed, is to work in this deductive method. What will be the
+result, then? I will suppose that every plant requires one square foot of
+ground to live upon; and the result will be that, in the course of nine
+years, the plant will have occupied every single available spot in the
+whole globe! I have chalked upon the blackboard the figures by which I
+arrive at the result:--
+
+              Plants.                                       Plants.
+
+
+                    1 x 50 in 1st year  =                       50
+                   50 x 50 "  2nd   "   =                    2,500
+                2,500 x 50 "  3rd   "   =                  125,000
+              125,000 x 50 "  4th   "   =                6,250,000
+            6,250,000 x 50 "  5th   "   =              312,500,000
+          312,500,000 x 50 "  6th   "   =           15,625,000,000
+       15,625,000,000 x 50 "  7th   "   =          781,250,000,000
+      781,250,000,000 x 50 "  8th   "   =       39,062,500,000,000
+   39,062,500,000,000 x 50 "  9th   "   =    1,953,125,000,000,000
+
+   51,000,000 square miles--the  )
+     dry surface of the earth x  )
+     27,878,400--the number of   ) = sq. ft. 1,421,798,400,000,000
+     sq. ft. in 1 sq. mile       )           ---------------------
+                                         being 531,326,600,000,000
+   square feet less than would be required at the end of the ninth
+   year.
+
+You will see from this that, at the end of the first year the single plant
+will have produced fifty more of its kind; by the end of the second year
+these will have increased to 2,500; and so on, in succeeding years, you get
+beyond even trillions; and I am not at all sure that I could tell you what
+the proper arithmetical denomination of the total number really is; but, at
+any rate, you will understand the meaning of all those noughts. Then you
+see that, at the bottom, I have taken the 51,000,000 of square miles,
+constituting the surface of the dry land; and as the number of square feet
+are placed under and subtracted from the number of seeds that would be
+produced in the ninth year, you can see at once that there would be an
+immense number more of plants than there would be square feet of ground for
+their accommodation. This is certainly quite enough to prove my point; that
+between the eighth and ninth year after being planted the single plant
+would have stocked the whole available surface of the earth.
+
+This is a thing which is hardly conceivable--it seems hardly
+imaginable--yet it is so. It is indeed simply the law of Malthus
+exemplified. Mr. Malthus was a clergyman, who worked out this subject most
+minutely and truthfully some years ago; he showed quite clearly--and
+although he was much abused for his conclusions at the time, they have
+never yet been disproved and never will be--he showed that in consequence
+of the increase in the number of organic beings in a geometrical ratio,
+while the means of existence cannot be made to increase in the same ratio,
+that there must come a time when the number of organic beings will be in
+excess of the power of production of nutriment, and that thus some check
+must arise to the further increase of those organic beings. At the end of
+the ninth year we have seen that each plant would not be able to get its
+full square foot of ground, and at the end of another year it would have to
+share that space with fifty others the produce of the seeds which it would
+give off.
+
+What, then, takes place? Every plant grows up, flourishes, occupies its
+square foot of ground, and gives off its fifty seeds; but notice this, that
+out of this number only one can come to anything; there is thus, as it
+were, forty-nine chances to one against its growing up; it depends upon the
+most fortuitous circumstances whether any one of these fifty seeds shall
+grow up and flourish, or whether it shall die and perish. This is what Mr.
+Darwin has drawn attention to, and called the "STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE"; and
+I have taken this simple case of a plant because some people imagine that
+the phrase seems to imply a sort of fight.
+
+I have taken this plant and shown you that this is the result of the ratio
+of the increase, the necessary result of the arrival of a time coming for
+every species when exactly as many members must be destroyed as are born;
+that is the inevitable ultimate result of the rate of production. Now, what
+is the result of all this? I have said that there are forty-nine struggling
+against every one; and it amounts to this, that the smallest possible start
+given to any one seed may give it an advantage which will enable it to get
+ahead of all the others; anything that will enable any one of these seeds
+to germinate six hours before any of the others will, other things being
+alike, enable it to choke them out altogether. I have shown you that there
+is no particular in which plants will not vary from each other; it is quite
+possible that one of our imaginary plants may vary in such a character as
+the thickness of the integument of its seeds; it might happen that one of
+the plants might produce seeds having a thinner integument, and that would
+enable the seeds of that plant to germinate a little quicker than those of
+any of the others, and those seeds would most inevitably extinguish the
+forty-nine times as many that were struggling with them.
+
+I have put it in this way, but you see the practical result of the process
+is the same as if some person had nurtured the one and destroyed the other
+seeds. It does not matter how the variation is produced, so long as it is
+once allowed to occur. The variation in the plant once fairly started tends
+to become hereditary and reproduce itself; the seeds would spread
+themselves in the same way and take part in the struggle with the
+forty-nine hundred, or forty-nine thousand, with which they might be
+exposed. Thus, by degrees, this variety with some slight organic change or
+modification, must spread itself over the whole surface of the habitable
+globe, and extirpate or replace the other kinds. That is what is meant by
+NATURAL SELECTION; that is the kind of argument by which it is perfectly
+demonstrable that the conditions of existence may play exactly the same
+part for natural varieties as man does for domesticated varieties. No one
+doubts at all that particular circumstances may be more favourable for one
+plant and less so for another, and the moment you admit that, you admit the
+selective power of nature. Now, although I have been putting a hypothetical
+case, you must not suppose that I have been reasoning hypothetically. There
+are plenty of direct experiments which bear out what we may call the theory
+of natural selection; there is extremely good authority for the statement
+that if you take the seed of mixed varieties of wheat and sow it,
+collecting the seed next year and sowing it again, at length you will find
+that out of all your varieties only two or three have lived, or perhaps
+even only one. There were one or two varieties which were best fitted to
+get on, and they have killed out the other kinds in just the same way and
+with just the same certainty as if you had taken the trouble to remove
+them. As I have already said, the operation of nature is exactly the same
+as the artificial operation of man.
+
+But if this be true of that simple case, which I put before you, where
+there is nothing but the rivalry of one member of a species with others,
+what must be the operation of selective conditions, when you recollect as a
+matter of fact, that for every species of animal or plant there are fifty
+or a hundred species which might all, more or less, be comprehended in the
+same climate, food, and station;--that every plant has multitudinous
+animals which prey upon it, and which are its direct opponents; and that
+these have other animals preying upon them,--that every plant has its
+indirect helpers in the birds that scatter abroad its seed, and the animals
+that manure it with their dung;--I say, when these things are considered,
+it seems impossible that any variation which may arise in a species in
+nature should not tend in some way or other either to be a little better or
+worse than the previous stock; if it is a little better it will have an
+advantage over and tend to extirpate the latter in this crush and struggle;
+and if it is a little worse it will itself be extirpated.
+
+I know nothing that more appropriately expresses this, than the phrase,
+"the struggle for existence "; because it brings before your minds, in a
+vivid sort of way, some of the simplest possible circumstances connected
+with it. When a struggle is intense there must be some who are sure to be
+trodden down, crushed, and overpowered by others; and there will be some
+who just manage to get through only by the help of the slightest accident.
+I recollect reading an account of the famous retreat of the French troops,
+under Napoleon, from Moscow. Worn out, tired, and dejected, they at length
+came to a great river over which there was but one bridge for the passage
+of the vast army. Disorganised and demoralised as that army was, the
+struggle must certainly have been a terrible one--every one heeding only
+himself, and crushing through the ranks and treading down his fellows. The
+writer of the narrative, who was himself one of those who were fortunate
+enough to succeed in getting over, and not among the thousands who were
+left behind or forced into the river, ascribed his escape to the fact that
+he saw striding onward through the mass a great strong fellow,--one of the
+French Cuirassiers, who had on a large blue cloak-and he had enough
+presence of mind to catch and retain a hold of this strong man's cloak. He
+says, "I caught hold of his cloak, and although he swore at me and cut at
+and struck me by turns, and at last, when he found he could not shake me
+off, fell to entreating me to leave go or I should prevent him from
+escaping, besides not assisting myself, I still kept tight hold of him, and
+would not quit my grasp until he had at last dragged me through." Here you
+see was a case of selective saving--if we may so term it--depending for its
+success on the strength of the cloth of the Cuirassier's cloak. It is the
+same in nature; every species has its bridge of Beresina; it has to fight
+its way through and struggle with other species; and when well-nigh
+overpowered, it may be that the smallest chance, something in its colour,
+perhaps--the minutest circumstance--will turn the scale one way or the
+other.
+
+Suppose that by a variation of the black race it had produced the white man
+at any time--you know that the Negroes are said to believe this to have
+been the case, and to imagine that Cain was the first white man, and that
+we are his descendants--suppose that this had ever happened, and that the
+first residence of this human being was on the West Coast of Africa. There
+is no great structural difference between the white man and the Negro, and
+yet there is something so singularly different in the constitution of the
+two, that the malarias of that country, which do not hurt the black at all,
+cut off and destroy the white. Then you see there would have been a
+selective operation performed; if the white man had risen in that way, he
+would have been selected out and removed by means of the malaria. Now there
+really is a very curious case of selection of this sort among pigs, and it
+is a case of selection of colour too. In the woods of Florida there are a
+great many pigs, and it is a very curious thing that they are all black,
+every one of them. Professor Wyman was there some years ago, and on
+noticing no pigs but these black ones, he asked some of the people how it
+was that they had no white pigs, and the reply was that in the woods of
+Florida there was a root which they called the Paint Root, and that if the
+white pigs were to eat any of it, it had the effect of making their hoofs
+crack, and they died, but if the black pigs ate any of it, it did not hurt
+them at all. Here was a very simple case of natural selection. A skilful
+breeder could not more carefully develop the black breed of pigs, and weed
+out all the white pigs, than the Paint Root does.
+
+To show you how remarkably indirect may be such natural selective agencies
+as I have referred to, I will conclude by noticing a case mentioned by Mr.
+Darwin, and which is certainly one of the most curious of its kind. It is
+that of the Humble Bee. It has been noticed that there are a great many
+more humble bees in the neighbourhood of towns, than out in the open
+country; and the explanation of the matter is this: the humble bees build
+nests, in which they store their honey and deposit the larvæ and eggs. The
+field mice are amazingly fond of the honey and larvæ; therefore, wherever
+there are plenty of field mice, as in the country, the humble bees are kept
+down; but in the neighbourhood of towns, the number of cats which prowl
+about the fields eat up the field mice, and of course the more mice they
+eat up the less there are to prey upon the larvæ of the bees--the cats are
+therefore the INDIRECT HELPERS of the bees. [Footnote: The humble bees, on
+the other hand, are direct helpers of some plants, such as the heartsease
+and red clover, which are fertilised by the visits of the bees; and they
+are indirect helpers of the numerous insects which are more or less
+completely supported by the heartsease and red clover.] Coming back a step
+farther we may say that the old maids are also indirect friends of the
+humble bees, and indirect enemies of the field mice, as they keep the cats
+which eat up the latter! This is an illustration somewhat beneath the
+dignity of the subject, perhaps, but it occurs to me in passing, and with
+it I will conclude this lecture.
+
+
+
+VI. A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE POSITION OF MR. DARWIN'S WORK, "ON THE
+ORIGIN OF SPECIES," IN RELATION TO THE COMPLETE THEORY OF THE CAUSES OF THE
+PHENOMENA OF ORGANIC NATURE
+
+
+In the preceding five lectures I have endeavoured to give you an account of
+those facts, and of those reasonings from facts, which form the data upon
+which all theories regarding the causes of the phenomena of organic nature
+must be based. And, although I have had frequent occasion to quote Mr.
+Darwin--as all persons hereafter, in speaking upon these subjects, will
+have occasion to quote his famous book on the "Origin of Species,"--you
+must yet remember that, wherever I have quoted him, it has not been upon
+theoretical points, or for statements in any way connected with his
+particular speculations, but on matters of fact, brought forward by
+himself, or collected by himself, and which appear incidentally in his
+book. If a man _will_ make a book, professing to discuss a single
+question, an encyclopædia, I cannot help it.
+
+Now, having had an opportunity of considering in this sort of way the
+different statements bearing upon all theories whatsoever, I have to lay
+before you, as fairly as I can, what is Mr. Darwin's view of the matter and
+what position his theories hold, when judged by the principles which I have
+previously laid down, as deciding our judgments upon all theories and
+hypotheses.
+
+I have already stated to you that the inquiry respecting the causes of the
+phenomena of organic nature resolves itself into two problems--the first
+being the question of the origination of living or organic beings; and the
+second being the totally distinct problem of the modification and
+perpetuation of organic beings when they have already come into existence.
+The first question Mr. Darwin does not touch; he does not deal with it at
+all; but he says:--"Given the origin of organic matter--supposing its
+creation to have already taken place, my object is to show in consequence
+of what laws and what demonstrable properties of organic matter, and of its
+environments, such states of organic nature as those with which we are
+acquainted must have come about." This, you will observe, is a perfectly
+legitimate proposition; every person has a right to define the limits of
+the inquiry which he sets before himself; and yet it is a most singular
+thing that in all the multifarious, and, not unfrequently, ignorant attacks
+which have been made upon the "Origin of Species," there is nothing which
+has been more speciously criticised than this particular limitation. If
+people have nothing else to urge against the book, they say--"Well, after
+all, you see Mr. Darwin's explanation of the 'Origin of Species' is not
+good for much, because, in the long run, he admits that he does not know
+how organic matter began to exist. But if you admit any special creation
+for the first particle of organic matter you may just as well admit it for
+all the rest; five hundred or five thousand distinct creations are just as
+intelligible, and just as little difficult to understand, as one." The
+answer to these cavils is two-fold. In the first place, all human inquiry
+must stop somewhere; all our knowledge and all our investigation cannot
+take us beyond the limits set by the finite and restricted character of our
+faculties, or destroy the endless unknown, which accompanies, like its
+shadow, the endless procession of phenomena. So far as I can venture to
+offer an opinion on such a matter, the purpose of our being in existence,
+the highest object that human beings can set before themselves, is not the
+pursuit of any such chimera as the annihilation of the unknown; but it is
+simply the unwearied endeavour to remove its boundaries a little further
+from our little sphere of action.
+
+I wonder if any historian would for a moment admit the objection, that it
+is preposterous to trouble ourselves about the history of the Roman Empire,
+because we do not know anything positive about the origin and first
+building of the city of Rome! Would it be a fair objection to urge,
+respecting the sublime discoveries of a Newton, or a Kepler, those great
+philosophers, whose discoveries have been of the profoundest benefit and
+service to all men--to say to them--"After all that you have told us as to
+how the planets revolve, and how they are maintained in their orbits, you
+cannot tell us what is the cause of the origin of the sun, moon, and stars.
+So what is the use of what you have done?" Yet these objections would not
+be one whit more preposterous than the objections which have been made to
+the "Origin of Species." Mr. Darwin, then, had a perfect right to limit his
+inquiry as he pleased, and the only question for us--the inquiry being so
+limited--is to ascertain whether the method of his inquiry is sound or
+unsound; whether he has obeyed the canons which must guide and govern all
+investigation, or whether he has broken them; and it was because our
+inquiry this evening is essentially limited to that question, that I spent
+a good deal of time in a former lecture (which, perhaps some of you thought
+might have been better employed), in endeavouring to illustrate the method
+and nature of scientific inquiry in general. We shall now have to put in
+practice the principles that I then laid down.
+
+I stated to you in substance, if not in words, that wherever there are
+complex masses of phenomena to be inquired into, whether they be phenomena
+of the affairs of daily life, or whether they belong to the more abstruse
+and difficult problems laid before the philosopher, our course of
+proceeding in unravelling that complex chain of phenomena with a view to
+get at its cause, is always the same; in all cases we must invent an
+hypothesis; we must place before ourselves some more or less likely
+supposition respecting that cause; and then, having assumed an hypothesis,
+having supposed a cause for the phenomena in question, we must endeavour,
+on the one hand, to demonstrate our hypothesis, or, on the other, to upset
+and reject it altogether, by testing it in three ways. We must, in the
+first place, be prepared to prove that the supposed causes of the phenomena
+exist in nature; that they are what the logicians call _vera
+causæ_--true causes;--in the next place, we should be prepared to show
+that the assumed causes of the phenomena are competent to produce such
+phenomena as those which we wish to explain by them; and in the last place,
+we ought to be able to show that no other known causes are competent to
+produce these phenomena. If we can succeed in satisfying these three
+conditions we shall have demonstrated our hypothesis; or rather I ought to
+say we shall have proved it as far as certainty is possible for us; for,
+after all, there is no one of our surest convictions which may not be
+upset, or at any rate modified by a further accession of knowledge. It was
+because it satisfied these conditions that we accepted the hypothesis as to
+the disappearance of the tea-pot and spoons in the case I supposed in a
+previous lecture; we found that our hypothesis on that subject was tenable
+and valid, because the supposed cause existed in nature, because it was
+competent to account for the phenomena, and because no other known cause
+was competent to account for them; and it is upon similar grounds that any
+hypothesis you choose to name is accepted in science as tenable and valid.
+
+What is Mr. Darwin's hypothesis? As I apprehend it--for I have put it into
+a shape more convenient for common purposes than I could find
+_verbatim_ in his book--as I apprehend it, I say, it is, that all the
+phenomena of organic nature, past and present, result from, or are caused
+by, the inter-action of those properties of organic matter, which we have
+called ATAVISM and VARIABILITY, with the CONDITIONS OF EXISTENCE, or, in
+other words,--given the existence of organic matter, its tendency to
+transmit its properties, and its tendency occasionally to vary; and,
+lastly, given the conditions of existence by which organic matter is
+surrounded--that these put together are the causes of the Present and of
+the Past conditions of ORGANIC NATURE.
+
+Such is the hypothesis as I understand it. Now let us see how it will stand
+the various tests which I laid down just now. In the first place, do these
+supposed causes of the phenomena exist in nature? Is it the fact that, in
+nature, these properties of organic matter--atavism and variability--and
+those phenomena which we have called the conditions of existence,--is it
+true that they exist? Well, of course, if they do not exist, all that I
+have told you in the last three or four lectures must be incorrect, because
+I have been attempting to prove that they do exist, and I take it that
+there is abundant evidence that they do exist; so far, therefore, the
+hypothesis does not break down.
+
+But in the next place comes a much more difficult inquiry:--Are the causes
+indicated competent to give rise to the phenomena of organic nature? I
+suspect that this is indubitable to a certain extent. It is demonstrable, I
+think, as I have endeavoured to show you, that they are perfectly competent
+to give rise to all the phenomena which are exhibited by RACES in nature.
+Furthermore, I believe that they are quite competent to account for all
+that we may call purely structural phenomena which are exhibited by SPECIES
+in nature. On that point also I have already enlarged somewhat. Again, I
+think that the causes assumed are competent to account for most of the
+physiological characteristics of species, and I not only think that they
+are competent to account for them, but I think that they account for many
+things which otherwise remain wholly unaccountable and inexplicable, and I
+may say incomprehensible. For a full exposition of the grounds on which
+this conviction is based, I must refer you to Mr. Darwin's work; all that I
+can do now is to illustrate what I have said by two or three cases taken
+almost at random.
+
+I drew your attention, on a previous evening, to the facts which are
+embodied in our systems of Classification, which are the results of the
+examination and comparison of the different members of the animal kingdom
+one with another. I mentioned that the whole of the animal kingdom is
+divisible into five sub-kingdoms; that each of these sub-kingdoms is again
+divisible into provinces; that each province may be divided into classes,
+and the classes into the successively smaller groups, orders, families,
+genera, and species.
+
+Now, in each of these groups the resemblance in structure among the members
+of the group is closer in proportion as the group is smaller. Thus, a man
+and a worm are members of the animal kingdom in virtue of certain
+apparently slight though really fundamental resemblances which they
+present. But a man and a fish are members of the same sub-kingdom
+_Vertebrata_, because they are much more like one another than either
+of them is to a worm, or a snail, or any member of the other sub-kingdoms.
+For similar reasons men and horses are arranged as members of the same
+Class, _Mammalia_; men and apes as members of the same Order,
+_Primates_; and if there were any animals more like men than they were
+like any of the apes, and yet different from men in important and constant
+particulars of their organisation, we should rank them as members of the
+same Family, or of the same Genus, but as of distinct Species.
+
+That it is possible to arrange all the varied forms of animals into groups,
+having this sort of singular subordination one to the other, is a very
+remarkable circumstance; but, as Mr. Darwin remarks, this is a result which
+is quite to be expected, if the principles which he lays down be correct.
+Take the case of the races which are known to be produced by the operation
+of atavism and variability, and the conditions of existence which check and
+modify these tendencies. Take the case of the pigeons that I brought before
+you: there it was shown that they might be all classed as belonging to some
+one of five principal divisions, and that within these divisions other
+subordinate groups might be formed. The members of these groups are related
+to one another in just the same way as the genera of a family, and the
+groups themselves as the families of an order, or the orders of a class;
+while all have the same sort of structural relations with the wild
+rock-pigeon, as the members of any great natural group have with a real or
+imaginary typical form. Now, we know that all varieties of pigeons of every
+kind have arisen by a process of selective breeding from a common stock,
+the rock-pigeon; hence, you see, that if all species of animals have
+proceeded from some common stock, the general character of their structural
+relations, and of our systems of classification, which express those
+relations, would be just what we find them to be. In other words, the
+hypothetical cause is, so far, competent to produce effects similar to
+those of the real cause.
+
+Take, again, another set of very remarkable facts,--the existence of what
+are called rudimentary organs, organs for which we can find no obvious use,
+in the particular animal economy in which they are found, and yet which are
+there.
+
+Such are the splint-like bones in the leg of the horse, which I here show
+you, and which correspond with bones which belong to certain toes and
+fingers in the human hand and foot. In the horse you see they are quite
+rudimentary, and bear neither toes nor fingers; so that the horse has only
+one "finger" in his fore-foot and one "toe" in his hind-foot. But it is a
+very curious thing that the animals closely allied to the horse show more
+toes than he; as the rhinoceros, for instance: he has these extra toes well
+formed, and anatomical facts show very clearly that he is very closely
+related to the horse indeed. So we may say that animals, in an anatomical
+sense nearly related to the horse, have those parts which are rudimentary
+in him fully developed.
+
+Again, the sheep and the cow have no cutting-teeth, but only a hard pad in
+the upper jaw. That is the common characteristic of ruminants in general.
+But the calf has in its upper jaw some rudiments of teeth which never are
+developed, and never play the part of teeth at all. Well, if you go back in
+time, you find some of the older, now extinct, allies of the ruminants have
+well-developed teeth in their upper jaws; and at the present day the pig
+(which is in structure closely connected with ruminants) has well-developed
+teeth in its upper jaw; so that here is another instance of organs
+well-developed and very useful, in one animal, represented by rudimentary
+organs, for which we can discover no purpose whatsoever in another closely
+allied animal. The whalebone whale, again, has horny "whalebone" plates in
+its mouth, and no teeth; but the young foetal whale before it is born has
+teeth in its jaws; they, however, are never used, and they never come to
+anything. But other members of the group to which the whale belongs have
+well-developed teeth in both jaws.
+
+Upon any hypothesis of special creation, facts of this kind appear to me to
+be entirely unaccountable and inexplicable, but they cease to be so if you
+accept Mr. Darwin's hypothesis, and see reason for believing that the
+whalebone whale and the whale with teeth in its mouth both sprang from a
+whale that had teeth, and that the teeth of the foetal whale are merely
+remnants--recollections, if we may so say--of the extinct whale. So in the
+case of the horse and the rhinoceros: suppose that both have descended by
+modification from some earlier form which had the normal number of toes,
+and the persistence of the rudimentary bones which no longer support toes
+in the horse becomes comprehensible.
+
+In the language that we speak in England, and in the language of the
+Greeks, there are identical verbal roots, or elements entering into the
+composition of words. That fact remains unintelligible so long as we
+suppose English and Greek to be independently created tongues; but when it
+is shown that both languages are descended from one original, we give an
+explanation of that resemblance. In the same way the existence of identical
+structural roots, if I may so term them, entering into the composition of
+widely different animals, is striking evidence in favour of the descent of
+those animals from a common original.
+
+To turn to another kind of illustration:--If you regard the whole series of
+stratified rocks--that enormous thickness of sixty or seventy thousand feet
+that I have mentioned before, constituting the only record we have of a
+most prodigious lapse of time, that time being, in all probability, but a
+fraction of that of which we have no record;--if you observe in these
+successive strata of rocks successive groups of animals arising and dying
+out, a constant succession, giving you the same kind of impression, as you
+travel from one group of strata to another, as you would have in travelling
+from one country to another;--when you find this constant succession of
+forms, their traces obliterated except to the man of science--when you look
+at this wonderful history, and ask what it means, it is only a paltering
+with words if you are offered the reply--"They were so created."
+
+But if, on the other hand, you look on all forms of organised beings as the
+results of the gradual modification of a primitive type, the facts receive
+a meaning, and you see that these older conditions are the necessary
+predecessors of the present. Viewed in this light the facts of
+palaeontology receive a meaning--upon any other hypothesis I am unable to
+see, in the slightest degree, what knowledge or signification we are to
+draw out of them. Again, note as bearing upon the same point, the singular
+likeness which obtains between the successive Faunæ and Floræ, whose
+remains are preserved on the rocks: you never find any great and enormous
+difference between the immediately successive Faunæ and Floræ, unless you
+have reason to believe there has also been a great lapse of time or a great
+change of conditions. The animals, for instance, of the newest tertiary
+rocks, in any part of the world, are always, and without exception, found
+to be closely allied with those which now live in that part of the world.
+For example, in Europe, Asia, and Africa, the large mammals are at present
+rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, elephants, lions, tigers, oxen, horses, &c.;
+and if you examine the newest tertiary deposits, which contain the animals
+and plants which immediately preceded those which now exist in the same
+country, you do not find gigantic specimens of ant-eaters and kangaroos,
+but you find rhinoceroses, elephants, lions, tigers, &c.,--of different
+species to those now living--but still their close allies. If you turn to
+South America, where, at the present day, we have great sloths and
+armadilloes and creatures of that kind, what do you find in the newest
+tertiaries? You find the great sloth-like creature, the _Megatherium_,
+and the great armadillo, the _Glyptodon_, and so on. And if you go to
+Australia you find the same law holds good, namely, that that condition of
+organic nature which has preceded the one which now exists, presents
+differences perhaps of species, and of genera, but that the great types of
+organic structure are the same as those which now flourish.
+
+What meaning has this fact upon any other hypothesis or supposition than
+one of successive modification? But if the population of the world, in any
+age, is the result of the gradual modification of the forms which peopled
+it in the preceding age--if that has been the case, it is intelligible
+enough; because we may expect that the creature that results from the
+modification of an elephantine mammal shall be something like an elephant,
+and the creature which is produced by the modification of an armadillo-like
+mammal shall be like an armadillo. Upon that supposition, I say, the facts
+are intelligible; upon any other, that I am aware of, they are not.
+
+So far, the facts of palæontology are consistent with almost any form of
+the doctrine of progressive modification; they would not be absolutely
+inconsistent with the wild speculations of De Maillet, or with the less
+objectionable hypothesis of Lamarck. But Mr. Darwin's views have one
+peculiar merit; and that is, that they are perfectly consistent with an
+array of facts which are utterly inconsistent with, and fatal to, any other
+hypothesis of progressive modification which has yet been advanced. It is
+one remarkable peculiarity of Mr. Darwin's hypothesis that it involves no
+necessary progression or incessant modification, and that it is perfectly
+consistent with the persistence for any length of time of a given primitive
+stock, contemporaneously with its modifications. To return to the case of
+the domestic breeds of pigeons, for example; you have the dove-cot pigeon,
+which closely resembles the rock pigeon, from which they all started,
+existing at the same time with the others. And if species are developed in
+the same way in nature, a primitive stock and its modifications may,
+occasionally, all find the conditions fitted for their existence; and
+though they come into competition, to a certain extent, with one another,
+the derivative species may not necessarily extirpate the primitive one, or
+_vice versa_.
+
+Now palæontology shows us many facts which are perfectly harmonious with
+these observed effects of the process by which Mr. Darwin supposes species
+to have originated, but which appear to me to be totally inconsistent with
+any other hypothesis which has been proposed. There are some groups of
+animals and plants, in the fossil world, which have been said to belong to
+"persistent types," because they have persisted, with very little change
+indeed, through a very great range of time, while everything about them has
+changed largely. There are families of fishes whose type of construction
+has persisted all the way from the carboniferous strata right up to the
+cretaceous; and others which have lasted through almost the whole range of
+the secondary rocks, and from the lias to the older tertiaries. It is
+something stupendous this--to consider a genus lasting without essential
+modifications through all this enormous lapse of time while almost
+everything else was changed and modified.
+
+Thus I have no doubt that Mr. Darwin's hypothesis will be found competent
+to explain the majority of the phenomena exhibited by species in nature;
+but in an earlier lecture I spoke cautiously with respect to its power of
+explaining all the physiological peculiarities of species.
+
+There is, in fact, one set of these peculiarities which the theory of
+selective modification, as it stands at present, is not wholly competent to
+explain, and that is the group of phenomena which I mentioned to you under
+the name of Hybridism, and which I explained to consist in the sterility of
+the offspring of certain species when crossed one with another. It matters
+not one whit whether this sterility is universal, or whether it exists only
+in a single case. Every hypothesis is bound to explain, or, at any rate,
+not be inconsistent with, the whole of the facts which it professes to
+account for; and if there is a single one of these facts which can be shown
+to be inconsistent with (I do not merely mean inexplicable by, but contrary
+to) the hypothesis, the hypothesis falls to the ground,--it is worth
+nothing. One fact with which it is positively inconsistent is worth as
+much, and as powerful in negativing the hypothesis, as five hundred. If I
+am right in thus defining the obligations of an hypothesis, Mr. Darwin, in
+order to place his views beyond the reach of all possible assault, ought to
+be able to demonstrate the possibility of developing from a particular
+stock by selective breeding, two forms, which should either be unable to
+cross one with another, or whose cross-bred offspring should be infertile
+with one another.
+
+For, you see, if you have not done that you have not strictly fulfilled all
+the conditions of the problem; you have not shown that you can produce, by
+the cause assumed, all the phenomena which you have in nature. Here are the
+phenomena of Hybridism staring you in the face, and you cannot say, "I can,
+by selective modification, produce these same results." Now, it is admitted
+on all hands that, at present, so far as experiments have gone, it has not
+been found possible to produce this complete physiological divergence by
+selective breeding. I stated this very clearly before, and I now refer to
+the point, because, if it could be proved, not only that this _has_
+not been done, but that it _cannot_ be done; if it could be
+demonstrated that it is impossible to breed selectively, from any stock, a
+form which shall not breed with another, produced from the same stock; and
+if we were shown that this must be the necessary and inevitable results of
+all experiments, I hold that Mr. Darwin's hypothesis would be utterly
+shattered.
+
+But has this been done? or what is really the state of the case? It is
+simply that, so far as we have gone yet with our breeding, we have not
+produced from a common stock two breeds which are not more or less fertile
+with one another.
+
+I do not know that there is a single fact which would justify any one in
+saying that any degree of sterility has been observed between breeds
+absolutely known to have been produced by selective breeding from a common
+stock. On the other hand, I do not know that there is a single fact which
+can justify any one in asserting that such sterility cannot be produced by
+proper experimentation. For my own part, I see every reason to believe that
+it may, and will be so produced. For, as Mr. Darwin has very properly
+urged, when we consider the phenomena of sterility, we find they are most
+capricious; we do not know what it is that the sterility depends on. There
+are some animals which will not breed in captivity; whether it arises from
+the simple fact of their being shut up and deprived of their liberty, or
+not, we do not know, but they certainly will not breed. What an astounding
+thing this is, to find one of the most important of all functions
+annihilated by mere imprisonment!
+
+So, again, there are cases known of animals which have been thought by
+naturalists to be undoubted species, which have yielded perfectly fertile
+hybrids; while there are other species which present what everybody
+believes to be varieties [Footnote: And as I conceive with very good
+reason; but if any objector urges that we cannot prove that they have been
+produced by artificial or natural selection, the objection must be
+admitted--ultra-sceptical as it is. But in science, scepticism is a duty.]
+which are more or less infertile with one another. There are other cases
+which are truly extraordinary; there is one, for example, which has been
+carefully examined,--of two kinds of sea-weed, of which the male element of
+the one, which we may call A, fertilises the female element of the other,
+B; while the male element of B will not fertilise the female element of A;
+so that, while the former experiment seems to show us that they are
+_varieties_, the latter leads to the conviction that they are
+_species_.
+
+When we see how capricious and uncertain this sterility is, how unknown the
+conditions on which it depends, I say that we have no right to affirm that
+those conditions will not be better understood by and by, and we have no
+ground for supposing that we may not be able to experiment so as to obtain
+that crucial result which I mentioned just now. So that though Mr. Darwin's
+hypothesis does not completely extricate us from this difficulty at
+present, we have not the least right to say it will not do so.
+
+There is a wide gulf between the thing you cannot explain and the thing
+that upsets you altogether. There is hardly any hypothesis in this world
+which has not some fact in connection with it which has not been explained,
+but that is a very different affair to a fact that entirely opposes your
+hypothesis; in this case all you can say is, that your hypothesis is in the
+same position as a good many others.
+
+Now, as to the third test, that there are no other causes competent to
+explain the phenomena, I explained to you that one should be able to say of
+an hypothesis, that no other known causes than those supposed by it are
+competent to give rise to the phenomena. Here, I think, Mr. Darwin's view
+is pretty strong. I really believe that the alternative is either Darwinism
+or nothing, for I do not know of any rational conception or theory of the
+organic universe which has any scientific position at all beside Mr.
+Darwin's. I do not know of any proposition that has been put before us with
+the intention of explaining the phenomena of organic nature, which has in
+its favour a thousandth part of the evidence which may be adduced in favour
+of Mr. Darwin's views. Whatever may be the objections to his views,
+certainly all other theories are absolutely out of court.
+
+Take the Lamarckian hypothesis, for example. Lamarck was a great
+naturalist, and to a certain extent went the right way to work; he argued
+from what was undoubtedly a true cause of some of the phenomena of organic
+nature. He said it is a matter of experience that an animal may be modified
+more or less in consequence of its desires and consequent actions. Thus, if
+a man exercise himself as a blacksmith, his arms will become strong and
+muscular; such organic modification is a result of this particular action
+and exercise. Lamarck thought that by a very simple supposition based on
+this truth he could explain the origin of the various animal species: he
+said, for example, that the short-legged birds which live on fish had been
+converted into the long-legged waders by desiring to get the fish without
+wetting their feathers, and so stretching their legs more and more through
+successive generations. If Lamarck could have shown experimentally that
+even races of animals could be produced in this way, there might have been
+some ground for his speculations. But he could show nothing of the kind,
+and his hypothesis has pretty well dropped into oblivion, as it deserved to
+do. I said in an earlier lecture that there are hypotheses and hypotheses,
+and when people tell you that Mr. Darwin's strongly-based hypothesis is
+nothing but a mere modification of Lamarck's, you will know what to think
+of their capacity for forming a judgment on this subject.
+
+But you must recollect that when I say I think it is either Mr. Darwin's
+hypothesis or nothing; that either we must take his view, or look upon the
+whole of organic nature as an enigma, the meaning of which is wholly hidden
+from us; you must understand that I mean that I accept it provisionally, in
+exactly the same way as I accept any other hypothesis. Men of science do
+not pledge themselves to creeds; they are bound by articles of no sort;
+there is not a single belief that it is not a bounden duty with them to
+hold with a light hand and to part with cheerfully, the moment it is really
+proved to be contrary to any fact, great or small. And if, in course of
+time I see good reasons for such a proceeding, I shall have no hesitation
+in coming before you, and pointing out any change in my opinion without
+finding the slightest occasion to blush for so doing. So I say that we
+accept this view as we accept any other, so long as it will help us, and we
+feel bound to retain it only so long as it will serve our great
+purpose--the improvement of Man's estate and the widening of his knowledge.
+The moment this, or any other conception, ceases to be useful for these
+purposes, away with it to the four winds; we care not what becomes of it!
+
+But to say truth, although it has been my business to attend closely to the
+controversies roused by the publication of Mr. Darwin's book, I think that
+not one of the enormous mass of objections and obstacles which have been
+raised is of any very great value, except that sterility case which I
+brought before you just now. All the rest are misunderstandings of some
+sort, arising either from prejudice, or want of knowledge, or still more
+from want of patience and care in reading the work.
+
+For you must recollect that it is not a book to be read with as much ease
+as its pleasant style may lead you to imagine. You spin through it as if it
+were a novel the first time you read it, and think you know all about it;
+the second time you read it you think you know rather less about it; and
+the third time, you are amazed to find how little you have really
+apprehended its vast scope and objects. I can positively say that I never
+take it up without finding in it some new view, or light, or suggestion
+that I have not noticed before. That is the best characteristic of a
+thorough and profound book; and I believe this feature of the "Origin of
+Species" explains why so many persons have ventured to pass judgment and
+criticisms upon it which are by no means worth the paper they are written
+on.
+
+Before concluding these lectures there is one point to which I must
+advert--though, as Mr. Darwin has said nothing about man in his book, it
+concerns myself rather than him;--for I have strongly maintained on sundry
+occasions that if Mr. Darwin's views are sound, they apply as much to man
+as to the lower mammals, seeing that it is perfectly demonstrable that the
+structural differences which separate man from the apes are not greater
+than those which separate some apes from others. There cannot be the
+slightest doubt in the world that the argument which applies to the
+improvement of the horse from an earlier stock, or of ape from ape, applies
+to the improvement of man from some simpler and lower stock than man. There
+is not a single faculty--functional or structural, moral, intellectual, or
+instinctive, there--is no faculty whatever that is not capable of
+improvement; there is no faculty whatsoever which does not depend upon
+structure, and as structure tends to vary, it is capable of being improved.
+
+Well, I have taken a good deal of pains at various times to prove this, and
+I have endeavoured to meet the objections of those who maintain, that the
+structural differences between man and the lower animals are of so vast a
+character and enormous extent, that even if Mr. Darwin's views are correct,
+you cannot imagine this particular modification to take place. It is, in
+fact, an easy matter to prove that, so far as structure is concerned, man
+differs to no greater extent from the animals which are immediately below
+him than these do from other members of the same order. Upon the other
+hand, there is no one who estimates more highly than I do the dignity of
+human nature, and the width of the gulf in intellectual and moral matters
+which lies between man and the whole of the lower creation.
+
+But I find this very argument brought forward vehemently by some. "You say
+that man has proceeded from a modification of some lower animal, and you
+take pains to prove that the structural differences which are said to exist
+in his brain do not exist at all, and you teach that all functions,
+intellectual, moral, and others, are the expression or the result, in the
+long run, of structures, and of the molecular forces which they exert." It
+is quite true that I do so.
+
+"Well, but," I am told at once, somewhat triumphantly, "you say in the same
+breath that there is a great moral and intellectual chasm between man and
+the lower animals. How is this possible when you declare that moral and
+intellectual characteristics depend on structure, and yet tell us that
+there is no such gulf between the structure of man and that of the lower
+animals?"
+
+I think that objection is based upon a misconception of the real relations
+which exist between structure and function, between mechanism and work.
+Function is the expression of molecular forces and arrangements no doubt;
+but, does it follow from this, that variation in function so depends upon
+variation in structure that the former is always exactly proportioned to
+the latter? If there is no such relation, if the variation in function
+which follows on a variation in structure may be enormously greater than
+the variation of the structure, then, you see, the objection falls to the
+ground.
+
+Take a couple of watches--made by the same maker, and as completely alike
+as possible; set them upon the table, and the function of each--which is
+its rate of going--will be performed in the same manner, and you shall be
+able to distinguish no difference between them; but let me take a pair of
+pincers, and if my hand is steady enough to do it, let me just lightly
+crush together the bearings of the balance-wheel, or force to a slightly
+different angle the teeth of the escapement of one of them, and of course
+you know the immediate result will be that the watch, so treated, from that
+moment will cease to go. But what proportion is there between the
+structural alteration and the functional result? Is it not perfectly
+obvious that the alteration is of the minutest kind, yet that, slight as it
+is, it has produced an infinite difference in the performance of the
+functions of these two instruments?
+
+Well, now, apply that to the present question. What is it that constitutes
+and makes man what he is? What is it but his power of language--that
+language giving him the means of recording his experience--making every
+generation somewhat wiser than its predecessor--more in accordance with the
+established order of the universe?
+
+What is it but this power of speech, of recording experience, which enables
+men to be men--looking before and after and, in some dim sense,
+understanding the working of this wondrous universe--and which
+distinguishes man from the whole of the brute world? I say that this
+functional difference is vast, unfathomable, and truly infinite in its
+consequences; and I say at the same time, that it may depend upon
+structural differences which shall be absolutely inappreciable to us with
+our present means of investigation. What is this very speech that we are
+talking about? I am speaking to you at this moment, but if you were to
+alter, in the minutest degree, the proportion of the nervous forces now
+active in the two nerves which supply the muscles of my glottis, I should
+become suddenly dumb. The voice is produced only so long as the vocal
+chords are parallel; and these are parallel only so long as certain muscles
+contract with exact equality; and that again depends on the equality of
+action of those two nerves I spoke of. So that a change of the minutest
+kind in the structure of one of these nerves, or in the structure of the
+part in which it originates, or of the supply of blood to that part, or of
+one of the muscles to which it is distributed, might render all of us dumb.
+But a race of dumb men, deprived of all communication with those who could
+speak, would be little indeed removed from the brutes. And the moral and
+intellectual difference between them and ourselves would be practically
+infinite, though the naturalist should not be able to find a single shadow
+of even specific structural difference.
+
+But let me dismiss this question now, and, in conclusion, let me say that
+you may go away with it as my mature conviction, that Mr. Darwin's work is
+the greatest contribution which has been made to biological science since
+the publication of the "Regne Animal" of Cuvier, and since that of the
+"History of Development," of Von Baer. I believe that if you strip it of
+its theoretical part it still remains one of the greatest encyclopaedias of
+biological doctrine that any one man ever brought forth; and I believe
+that, if you take it as the embodiment of an hypothesis, it is destined to
+be the guide of biological and psychological speculation for the next three
+or four generations.
+
+END OF VOL. II
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, DARWINIANA ***
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