CHAPTER X.

CRITICISM OF NATURAL SELECTION

-CONTINUED.

THE suggestion of modification under (1), leads to the check of adaptation under (2).

"Till adaptation could be explained," says Mr. Darwin, "it seemed useless to endeavour to prove by indirect evidence that species have been modified;" while in the known references to the action of conditions, or to Lamarckian will, explanation there is none. Neither the one nor the other will explain a woodpecker or a tree-frog, or a hooked or plumed seed.

With respect to conditions, we have already seen enough in Mr. Darwin's regard; and for our own part, if we acknowledge their function to foster principles, we are as incredulous as he is of their power to produce them.

Lamarck, we may remark too, need not be denied his relative right of place. Dr. Krause means it for distinguished praise when he styles Erasmus "a Lamarckian before Lamarck," and both of the grandsons endorse the book (Krause's). Lyell seems to exclaim with some surprise to Mr. Darwin, "You do not mean to ignore Lamarck he at least was for mutability of species, and the men of his school appealed to domesticated varieties." Mr. Darwin, for his own part also, while on almost all occasions even abusively contemptuous of Lamarck, yet

admits, from an early hearing of his views, a probable influence on himself, calls him in the Origin "this justly celebrated naturalist," and acknowledges to Hooker (ii. 23), "Heaven forefend me from Lamarck nonsense, but the conclusions I am led to are not widely different from his." Nor, whether in sexual or natural selection, is there wanting, it may be, at least the touch of a reflection from Lamarck. If the female choose the male for his manliness, it is her will that acts; and if in stalking his fish ever deeper and deeper, the legs continually lengthen to the stork, this is really not alien to his will even if due to successive advantage.

Here is a

It already

Nay, it is almost possible to go further. mass of formless jelly-an amoeba, say. takes in, digests, and throws out; and it already moves. Well, now, every one of these functions it just improves infinitely by adoption of advantage after advantage infinitely in the infinity of time. It acquires a stomach, and an end-gut. It acquires a mouth, and it gradually fills it with tongue and teeth that conduct into a gullet. It acquires processes to move by, which become hip, and thigh, and knee, and shin, and calf, and ankle, and heel, and sole, and toes- -toes with nails on them. What is this but Lamarckian acquirement through nisus of wish. It wants to take in better and better-it wants to give out better and better-it wants to move better and better and so better and better just follows to its wish. Absolutely, the shrewd old grandfather, imperious Dr. Erasmus, did not, after all, say anything so very far away when he presumed that "the tadpole acquires legs and lungs-when he wants them, and loses his tailwhen it is no longer of use to him!" And so, consequently, neither, after all, was "old J. E. Gray at the British Museum" elsewhere than in his rights when, says Mr. Darwin (ii. 242), "he attacked me in fine

:

style: You have just reproduced Lamarck's doctrine, and nothing else, and here Lyell and others have been attacking him for twenty years, and because you say the very same thing, they are all coming round; it is the most ridiculous inconsistency," etc. And both of you, he might have added, only tell stories to children, like the Sophists in Plato (μυθόν τινα ἕκαστος Οαίνεταί μοι διηγεῖσθαι παισὶν ὡς οὖσιν ἡμῖν, Soph. 242).1

That Mr. Francis Darwin should admit so freely adversaria in his volumes, is very admirable on his part; nor if it is through confidence in his position, will that detract from his fairness. He allows Sedgwick publicly to tell his father, "Many of your wide conclusions are based upon assumptions which can neither be proved nor disproved-parts of the book I laughed at till my sides were almost sore." We have seen already, by favour of note or text, what was said by Pictet and by Haughton of Dublin. He has no hesitation in letting us know that the partiality of such intimate friends as Henslow and Jenyns (Bloomfield) only "goes the length of imagining that many of the smaller groups both of animals and plants may at some remote period have had a common parentage,” and is not equal to say that "the whole of the theory cannot be true, but that it is very far from being proved; and doubts its ever being possible to prove it." Sir John Herschel characterised the proposition of the Origin as "the law of higgledy-piggledy;" we are told that Mr. Darwin felt this as "evidently very contemptuous,” and as 66 a great blow and discouragement." We are allowed to know also (ii. 39) that "Owen is vehemently opposed to any mutability in species." We did not need to hear, but we do hear, of how Agassiz "considered the transmutation theory a scientific mistake, untrue in its facts, unscientific in its method," and how its arguments "made not the slightest impression" on his mind. We do not wonder that the extravagant exclamations of the distinguished French naturalist Flourens are quoted with silent contempt: "Que d'idées obscures, que d'idées fausses! Quel jargon métaphysique jeté mal à propos dans l'histoire naturelle! Quelles personnifications puériles et surannées!" As Mr. Darwin at last was elected to the French Institute too, we are not surprised to be allowed to read (iii. 224) that its doors had been long kept closed to him because the science of his chief books was "not science, but a mass of assertions and absolutely gratuitous hypotheses.” We must,

(3.) Haunted by the idea of modification, and arrested by that of adaptation, Mr. Darwin now sets himself, in every way he can think of, to seek for evidence on what

however, admire in excelsis the chivalrous candour that tells of Sir Wyville Thomson. This naturalist "wrote, in the Introduction to the Voyage of the Challenger: The character of the abyssal fauna refuses to give the least support to the theory which refers the evolution of species to extreme variation guided only by natural selection."" Whereupon Mr. Darwin writes (November 11, 1880) a letter to Nature. This letter, says Mr. Francis, "is, I believe, the only instance in which he wrote publicly with anything like severity." "My father," he continues, "after characterising these remarks as a standard of criticism, not uncommonly reached by theologians and metaphysicians,' goes on to take exception to the term extreme variation, and challenges Sir Wyville to name any one who has said that the evolution of species depends only on natural selection.' The letter closes with an imaginary scene between Sir Wyville and a breeder," who is supposed to make use of “emphatic but irreverent language about naturalists." "The letter, as originally written, ended with a quotation from Sedgwick on the invulnerability of those who write on what they do not understand." Mr. Darwin must have been "riled" indeed to have permitted himself to give way to such an expression in regard of a man as eminent as himself, and the head of an expedition which was privileged to have been under much more distinguished auspices than even those of the Beagle. The expression was omitted, however, and "on the advice of a friend, curiously enough, whose combativeness in the good cause Mr. Darwin had occasionally curbed!"

Perhaps, however, the most glaring instance of the fairness of Mr. F. Darwin to adversaria is the even gratuitous note (ii. 260) which concerns the Saturday Review on the Origin. The reviewer is quoted to say that, "if a million of centuries, more or less, is needed for any part of his argument, he feels no scruple in taking them to suit his purpose;" and the instance in view relates to the denudation of the Weald, which suggested to Mr. Darwin "that a longer period than 300 million years had elapsed since the latter part of the secondary period" (ii. 264). The age of the whole earth, so far as life is concerned, is now generally put down at 20 millions of years!

he wants. He reads a multitude of books together with whole series of Journals and Transactions. He sends out queries "wholesale" to breeders and gardeners; he converses with breeders and gardeners, and with pigeonfanciers-even at Gin-palaces in the Borough. He calls this "working on true Baconian principles." It was certainly the means of producing, as we have partly seen already, an enormous compilation of what are termed facts--facts not subjected, we may allow ourselves to say on the whole, to any very strict or straitened regulations of reception. But the precise result was this, That the secret of breeding was selection ("Selection was the keystone of man's success, whether with animals or plants") so that the only question now was, Did Nature act with her species as the breeder acted with his races ? In other words, does Nature breed, even as man breeds? does she breed spontaneously, naturally, and unconsciously, just as he breeds consciously, elaborately, and artificially?does she breed species, just as he breeds Even at a glance one sees that this is a hard matter. The two cases and places seem very widely apart and very far from being on a par. No doubt nature can foster individuals by contingency of chance, just as man does by necessity of plan. We saw how the horses of the marsh were fed heavily into flesh. But how is she to breed--breed with a purpose-breed to a foregone conclusion, if even blindly? Bulls, and rams, and stallions, cows, and ewes, and mares, are all chosen. But nature is utterly indiscriminate. We all know that if we want robust children, or blue-eyed children, or redhaired children, we are almost to a certainty sure to succeed if we will but accordingly pair. No breeder knows any secret but that. Whether he would breed general quality-the strong, or particular quality—the woolly, he has only suitably to pair. But can Nature do

races?