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Darwiniana

T >> Thomas Henry Huxley >> Darwiniana




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."

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