Darwiniana; Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism Part 17

But is it true that man has all that he conceives of, or thinks would be useful, and has no "negative evidence of design afforded by the absence of a faculty" to set against the positive evidence afforded by its presence?

He notes that he lacks the faculty of flight, sometimes wants it, and in dreams imagines that he has it, yet as thoroughly believes that he was designed not to have it as that he was designed to have the faculties and organs which he possesses. He notes that some animals lack sight, and so, with this negative side of the testimony to the value of vision, he is "apt to infer creative wisdom" both in what he enjoys and in what the lower animal neither needs nor wants. That man does not miss that which he has no conception of, and is by this limitation disqualified from judging rightly of what he can conceive and know, is what the Westminster Reviewer comes to, as follows:

"We value the const.i.tution of our world because we live by it, and because we cannot conceive ourselves as living otherwise. Our conceptions of possibility, of law, of regularity, of logic, are all derived from the same source; and as we are constantly compelled to work with these conceptions, as in our increasing endeavors to better our condition and increase our provision we are constantly compelled to guide ourselves by Nature's regulations, we accustom ourselves to look upon these regularities and conceptions as antecedent to all work, even to a Creator's, and to judge of the origin of Nature as we judge of the origin of inventions and utilities ascribable to man. This explains why the argument of design has enjoyed such universal popularity. But that such popularity is no criterion of the argument's worth, and that, indeed, it is no evidence of anything save of an unhappy weakness in man's mental const.i.tution, is abundantly proved by the explanation itself." Well, the const.i.tution and condition of man being such that he always does infer design in Nature, what stronger presumption could there possibly be of the relevancy of the inference? We do not say of its correctness: that is another thing, and is not the present point. At the last, as has well been said, the whole question resolves itself into one respecting the ultimate veracity of Nature, or of the author of Nature, if there be any.

Pa.s.sing from these attempts to undermine the foundation of the doctrine--which we judge to be unsuccessful--we turn to the consideration of those aimed at the superstructure. Evidences of design may be relevant, but not cogent. They may, as Mill thought, preponderate, or the wavering balance may incline the other way. There are two lines of argument: one against the sufficiency, the other against the necessity, of the principle of design. Design has been denied on the ground that it squares with only one part of the facts, and fails to explain others; it may be superseded by showing that all the facts are in the way of being explained without it.

The things which the principle of design does not explain are many and serious. Some are in their nature inexplicable, at least are beyond the power and province of science. Others are of matters which scientific students have to consider, and upon which they may form opinions, more or less well grounded. As to biological science--with which alone we are concerned--it is getting to be generally thought that this principle, as commonly understood, is weighted with much more than it can carry.

This statement will not be thought exaggerated by those most familiar with the facts and the ideas of the age, and accustomed to look them in the face. Design is held to, no doubt, by most, and by a sure instinct; not, however, as always offering an explanation of the facts, but in spite of the failure to do so. The stumbling-blocks are various, and they lie in every path: we can allude only to one or two as specimens.

Adaptation and utility are the marks of design. What, then, are organs not adapted to use marks of? Functionless organs of some sort are the heritage of almost every species. We have ways of seeming to account for them--and of late one which may really account for them--but they are unaccountable on the principle of design. Some, shutting their eyes to the difficulty, deny that we know them to be functionless, and prefer to believe they must have a use because they exist, and are more or less connected with organs which are correlated to obvious use; but only blindfolded persons care to tread the round of so narrow a circle. Of late some such abortive organs in flowers and fruits are found to have a use, though not the use of their kind. But unwavering believers in design should not trust too much to instances of this sort. There is an old adage that, if anything be kept long enough, a use will be found for it. If the following up of this line, when it comes in our way, should bring us round again to a teleological principle, it will not be one which conforms to the prevalent ideas now attacked.

It is commonly said that abortive and useless organs exist for the sake of symmetry, or as parts of a plan. To say this, and stop there, is a fine instance of mere seeming to say something. For, under the principle of design, what is the sense of introducing useless parts into a useful organism, and what shadow of explanation does "symmetry" give? To go further and explain the cause of the symmetry and how abortive organs came to be, is more to the purpose, but it introduces quite another principle than that of design. The difficulty recurs in a somewhat different form when an organ is useful and of exquisite perfection in some species, but functionless in another. An organ, such as an eye, strikes us by its exquisite and, as we may, perfect adaptation and utility in some animal; it is found repeated, still useful but dest.i.tute of many of its adaptations, in some animal of lower grade; in some one lower still it is rudimentary and useless. It is asked, If the first was so created for its obvious and actual use, and the second for such use as it has, what was the design of the third? One more case, in which use after all is well subserved, we cite from the article already much quoted from:

"It is well known that certain fishes (Pleuronecta) display the singularity of having both eyes on the same side of their head, one eye being placed a little higher than the other. This arrangement has its utility; for the Pleuronecta, swimming on their side quite near the bottom of the sea, have little occasion for their eyesight except to observe what is going on above them. But the detail to which we would call notice is, that the original position of the eyes is symmetrical in these fishes, and that it is only at a certain point of their development that the anomaly is manifested, one of the eyes pa.s.sing to the other side of the head. It is almost inconceivable that an intelligent being should have selected such an arrangement; and that, intending the eyes to be used only on one side of the head, he should have placed them originally on different sides."

Then the waste of being is enormous, far beyond the common apprehension.

Seeds, eggs, and other germs, are designed to be plants and animals, but not one of a thousand or of a million achieves its destiny. Those that fall into fitting places and in fitting numbers find beneficent provision, and, if they were to wake to consciousness, might argue design from the adaptation of their surroundings to their well-being. But what of the vast majority that perish? As of the light of the sun, sent forth in all directions, only a minute portion is intercepted by the earth or other planets where some of it may be utilized for present or future life, so of potential organisms, or organisms begun, no larger proportion attain the presumed end of their creation.

"Destruction, therefore, is the rule; life is the exception. We notice chiefly the exception--namely, the lucky prize-winner in the lottery-- and take but little thought about the losers, who vanish from our field of observation, and whose number it is often impossible to estimate. But, in this question of design, the losers are important witnesses. If the maxim 'audi alteram partem' is applicable anywhere, it is applicable here. We must hear both sides, and the testimony of the seed fallen on good ground must be corrected by the testimony of that which falls by the wayside, or on the rocks. When we find, as we have seen above, that the sowing is a scattering at random, and that, for one being provided for and living, ten thousand perish unprovided for, we must allow that the existing order would be accounted as the worst disorder in any human sphere of action."

It is urged, moreover, that all this and much more applies equally to the past stages of our earth and its immensely long and varied succession of former inhabitants, different from, yet intimately connected with, the present. It is not one specific creation that the question has to deal with--as was thought not very many years ago--but a series of creations through countless ages, and of which the beginning is unknown.

These references touch a few out of many points, and merely allude to some of the difficulties which the unheeding pa.s.s by, but which, when brought before the mind, are seen to be stupendous.

Somewhat may be justly, or at least plausibly, said in reply to all this from the ordinary standpoint, but probably not to much effect. There were always insuperable difficulties, which, when they seemed to be few, might be regarded as exceptional; but, as they increase in number and variety, they seem to fall into a system. No doubt we may still insist that, "in the present state of our knowledge, the adaptations in Nature afford a large balance of probability in favor of creation by intelligence," as Mill concluded; and probability must needs be the guide of reason through these dark places. Still, the balancing of irreconcilable facts is not a satisfying occupation, nor a wholly hopeful one, while fresh weights are from time to time dropping into the lighter side of the balance. Strong as our convictions are, they may be overborne by evidence. We cannot rival the fabled woman of Ephesus, who, beginning by carrying her calf from the day of its birth, was still able to do so when it became an ox. The burden which our fathers carried comfortably, with some advent.i.tious help, has become too heavy for our shoulders.

Seriously, there must be something wrong in the position, some baleful error mixed with the truth, to which this contradiction of our inmost convictions may be attributed. The error, as we suppose, lies in the combination of the principle of design with the hypothesis of the immutability and isolated creation of species. The latter hypothesis, in its nature un-provable, has, on scientific grounds, become so far improbable that few, even of the anti-Darwinian naturalists, now hold to it; and, whatever may once have been its religious claims, it is at present a hinderance rather than a help to any just and consistent teleology.

By the adoption of the Darwinian hypothesis, or something like it, which we incline to favor, many of the difficulties are obviated, and others diminished. In the comprehensive and far-reaching teleology which may take the place of the former narrow conceptions, organs and even faculties, useless to the individual, find their explanation and reason of being.

Either they have done service in the past, or they may do service in the future. They may have been essentially useful in one way in a past species, and, though now functionless, they may be turned to useful account in some very different way hereafter. In botany several cases come to our mind which suggest such interpretation.

Under this view, moreover, waste of life and material in organic Nature ceases to be utterly inexplicable, because it ceases to be objectless. It is seen to be a part of the general "economy of Nature," a phrase which has a real meaning. One good ill.u.s.tration of it is furnished by the pollen of flowers. The seeming waste of this in a pine-forest is enormous. It gives rise to the so-called "showers of sulphur," which every one has heard of.

Myriads upon myriads of pollen-grains (each an elaborate organic structure) are wastefully dispersed by the winds to one which reaches a female flower and fertilizes a seed. Contrast this with one of the close-fertilized flowers of a violet, in which there are not many times more grains of pollen produced than there are of seeds to be fertilized; or with an orchis-flower, in which the proportion is not widely different. These latter are certainly the more economical; but there is reason to believe that the former arrangement is not wasteful. The plan in the violet-flower a.s.sures the result with the greatest possible saving of material and action; but this result, being close-fertilization or breeding in and in, would, without much doubt, in the course of time, defeat the very object of having seeds at all.[XIII-3] So the same plant produces other flowers also, provided with a large surplus of pollen, and endowed (as the others are not) with color, fragrance, and nectar, attractive to certain insects, which are thereby induced to convey this pollen from blossom to blossom, that it may fulfill its office. In such blossoms, and in the great majority of flowers, the fertilization and consequent perpetuity of which are committed to insects, the likelihood that much pollen may be left behind or lost in the transit is sufficient reason for the apparent superfluity. So, too, the greater economy in orchis-flowers is accounted for by the fact that the pollen is packed in coherent ma.s.ses, all attached to a common stalk, the end of which is expanded into a sort of b.u.t.ton, with a glutinous adhesive face (like a bit of sticking-plaster), and this is placed exactly where the head of a moth or b.u.t.terfly will be pressed against it when it sucks nectar from the flower, and so the pollen will be bodily conveyed from blossom to blossom, with small chance of waste or loss. The floral world is full of such contrivances; and while they exist the doctrine of purpose or final cause is not likely to die out. Now, in the contrasted case, that of pine-trees, the vast superabundance of pollen would be sheer waste if the intention was to fertilize the seeds of the same tree, or if there were any provision for insect-carriage; but with wide-breeding as the end, and the wind which "bloweth where it listeth" as the means, no one is ent.i.tled to declare that pine-pollen is in wasteful excess. The cheapness of wind-carriage may be set against the overproduction of pollen.

Similar considerations may apply to the mould-fungi and other very low organisms, with spores dispersed through the air in countless myriads, but of which only an infinitesimal portion find opportunity for development.

The myriads perish. The exceptional one, falling into a fit medium, is imagined by the Westminster Reviewer to argue design from the beneficial provision it finds itself enjoying, in happy ignorance of the perishing or latent mult.i.tude. But, in view of the large and important part they play (as the producers of all fermentation and as the omnipresent scavenger-police of Nature), no good ground appears for arguing either wasteful excess or absence of design from the vast disparity between their potential and their actual numbers. The reserve and the active members of the force should both be counted in, ready as they always and everywhere are for service. Considering their ubiquity, persistent vitality, and prompt.i.tude of action upon fitting occasion, the suggestion would rather be that, while

". . . thousands at His bidding speed, And post o'er land and ocean without rest, They also serve [which] only stand and wait."

Finally, Darwinian teleology has the special advantage of accounting for the imperfections and failures as well as for successes. It not only accounts for them, but turns them to practical account. It explains the seeming waste as being part and parcel of a great economical process.

Without the competing mult.i.tude, no struggle for life; and without this, no natural selection and survival of the fittest, no continuous adaptation to changing surroundings, no diversification and improvement, leading from lower up to higher and n.o.bler forms. So the most puzzling things of all to the old-school teleologists are the principia of the Darwinian. In this system the forms and species, in all their variety, are not mere ends in themselves, but the whole a series of means and ends, in the contemplation of which we may obtain higher and more comprehensive, and perhaps worthier, as well as more consistent, views of design in Nature than heretofore. At least, it would appear that in Darwinian evolution we may have a theory that accords with if it does not explain the princ.i.p.al facts, and a teleology that is free from the common objections.

But is it a teleology, or rather--to use the new-fangled term--a dysteleology? That depends upon how it is held. Darwinian evolution (whatever may be said of other kinds) is neither theistical nor nontheistical. Its relations to the question of design belong to the natural theologian, or, in the larger sense, to the philosopher. So long as the world lasts it will probably be open to any one to hold consistently, in the last resort, either of the two hypotheses, that of a divine mind, or that of no divine mind. There is no way that we know of C by which the alternative may be excluded. Viewed philosophically, the question only is, Which is the better supported hypothesis of the two?

We have only to say that the Darwinian system, as we understand it, coincides well with the theistic view of Nature. It not only acknowledges purpose (in the Contemporary Reviewer's sense), but builds upon it; and if purpose in this sense does not of itself imply design, it is certainly compatible with it, and suggestive of it. Difficult as it may be to conceive and impossible to demonstrate design in a whole of which the series of parts appear to be contingent, the alternative may be yet more difficult and less satisfactory. If all Nature is of a piece--as modern physical philosophy insists-- then it seems clear that design must in some way, and in some sense, pervade the system, or be wholly absent from it. Of the alternatives, the predication of design--special, general, or universal, as the case may be--is most natural to the mind; while the exclusion of it throughout, because some utilities may happen, many adaptations may be contingent results, and no organic maladaptations could continue, runs counter to such a.n.a.logies as we have to guide us, and leads to a conclusion which few men ever rested in. It need not much trouble us that we are incapable of drawing clear lines of demarkation between mere utilities, contingent adaptations, and designed contrivances in Nature; for we are in much the same condition as respects human affairs and those of lower animals. What results are comprehended in a plan, and what are incidental, is often more than we can readily determine in matters open to observation. And in plans executed mediately or indirectly, and for ends comprehensive and far-reaching, many purposed steps must appear to us incidental or meaningless. But the higher the intelligence, the more fully will the incidents enter into the plan, and the more universal and interconnected may the ends be. Trite as the remark is, it would seem still needful to insist that the failure of a finite being to compa.s.s the designs of an infinite mind should not invalidate its conclusions respecting proximate ends which he can understand. It is just as in physical science, where, as our knowledge and grasp increase, and happy discoveries are made, wider generalizations are formed, which commonly comprehend, rather than destroy, the earlier and partial ones. So, too, the "sterility" of the old doctrine of final causes in science, and the presumptuous uses made of them, when it was supposed that every adapted arrangement or structure existed for this or that direct and special end, and for no other, can hardly be pressed to the conclusion that there are no final causes, i.e., ultimate reasons of things.[XIII-4] Design in Nature is distinguished from that in human affairs--as it fittingly should be--by all comprehensiveness and system. Its theological synonym is Providence. Its application in particular is surrounded by similar insoluble difficulties; nevertheless, both are bound up with theism.

Probably few at the present day will maintain that Darwinian evolution is incompatible with the principle of design; but some insist that the theory can dispense with, and in fact supersedes, this principle.

The Westminster Reviewer cleverly expounds how it does so. The exposition is too long to quote, and an abstract is unnecessary, for the argument adverse to design is, as usual, a mere summation or ill.u.s.tration of the facts and a.s.sumptions of the hypothesis itself, by us freely admitted.

Simplest forms began; variations occurred among them; under the compet.i.tion consequent upon the arithmetical or geometrical progression in numbers, only the fittest for the conditions survive and propagate, vary further, and are similarly selected; and so on.

"Progress having once begun by the establishment of species, the laws of atavism and variability will suffice to tell the remainder of the story.

The colonies gifted with the faculty of forming others in their likeness will soon by their increase become sole masters of the field; but the common enemy being thus destroyed, the struggle for life will be renewed among the conquerors. The saying that 'a house divided against itself cannot stand,' receives in Nature its flattest contradiction. Civil war is here the very instrument of progress; it brings about the survival of the fittest. Original differences in the cell-colonies, however slight, will bring about differences of life and action; the latter, continued through successive generations, will widen the original differences of structure; innumerable species will thus spring up, branching forth in every direction from the original stock; and the compet.i.tion of these species among each other for the ground they occupy, or the food they seek, will bring out and develop the powers of the rivals. One chief cause of superiority will lie in the division of labor inst.i.tuted by each colony; or, in other words, in the localization of the colony's functions. In the primitive a.s.sociations (as in the lowest organisms existing now), each cell performed much the same work as its neighbor, and the functions necessary to the existence of the whole (alimentation, digestion, respiration, etc.) were exercised by every colonist in his own behalf. Social life, however, acting upon the cells as it acts upon the members of a human family, soon created differences among them--differences ever deepened by continuance, and which, by narrowing the limits of each colonist's activity, and increasing his dependence on the rest, rendered him fitter for his special task. Each function was thus gradually monopolized; but it came to be the appanage of a single group of cells, or organ; and so excellent did this arrangement prove, so greatly were the powers of each commonwealth enhanced by the division of its labor, that the more organs a colony possessed, the more likely it was to succeed in its struggle for life. . . We shall go no further, for the reader will easily fill out the remainder of the picture for himself. Man is but an immense colony of cells, in which the division of labor, together with the centralization of the nervous system, has reached its highest limit. It is chiefly to this that his superiority is due; a superiority so great, as regards certain functions of the brain, that he may be excused for having denied his humbler relatives, and dreamed that, standing alone in the centre of the universe, sun, moon, and stars, were made for him."

Let us learn from the same writer how both eyes of the flounder get, quite unintentionally, on the same side of the head. The writer makes much of this case (see p. 306), and we are not disposed to pa.s.s it by:

"A similar application may be made to the Pleuronecta. Presumably, these fishes had adopted their peculiar mode of swimming long before the position of their eyes became adapted to it. A spontaneous variation occurred, consisting in the pa.s.sage of one eye to the opposite side of the head; and this variation afforded its possessors such increased facilities of sight that in the course of time the exception became the rule. But the remarkable point is, that the law of heredity not only preserved the variation itself, but the date of its occurrence; and that, although for thousands of years the adult Pleuronecta have had both eyes on the same side, the young still continue during their earlier development to exhibit the contrary arrangement, just as if the variation still occurred spontaneously."

Here a wonderful and one would say unaccountable transference takes place in a short time. As Steenstrup showed, one eye actually pa.s.ses through the head while the young fish is growing. We ask how this comes about; and we are told, truly enough, that it takes place in each generation because it did so in the parents and in the whole line of ancestors. Why offspring should be like parent is more than any one can explain; but so it is, in a manner so nearly fixed and settled that we can count on it; yet not from any absolute necessity that we know of, and, indeed, with sufficiently striking difference now and then to demonstrate that it might have been otherwise, or is so in a notable degree. This transference of one eye through the head, from the side where it would be nearly useless to that in which it may help the other, bears all the marks of purpose, and so carries the implication of design. The case is adduced as part of the evidence that Darwinian evolution supersedes design. But how? Not certainly in the way this goes on from generation to generation; therefore, doubtless in the way it began. So we look for the explanation of how it came about at the first unintentionally or accidentally; how, under known or supposed conditions, it must have happened, or at least was likely to happen. And we read, "A spontaneous variation occurred, consisting in the pa.s.sage of one eye to the opposite side of the head." That is all; and we suppose there is nothing more to be said. In short, this surprising thing was undesigned because it took place, and has taken place ever since! The writer presumes, moreover (but this is an obiter dictum), that the peculiarity originated long after flounders had fixed the habit of swimming on one side (and in this particular case it is rather difficult to see how the two may have gone on pari pa.s.su), and so he cuts away all obvious occasion for the alteration through the summation of slight variations in one direction, each bringing some advantage.

This is a strongly-marked case; but its features, although unusually prominent, are like those of the general run of the considerations by which evolution is supposed to exclude design. Those of the penultimate citation and its context are all of the same stamp. The differences which begin as variations are said to be spontaneous--a metaphorical word of wide meanings--are inferred to be casual (whereas we only know them to be occult), or to be originated by surrounding agencies (which is not in a just sense true); they are legitimately inferred to be led on by natural selection, wholly new structures or organs appear, no one can say how, certainly no one can show that they are necessary outcomes of what preceded; and these two are through natural selection kept in harmony with the surroundings, adapted to different ones, diversified, and perfected; purposes are all along subserved through exquisite adaptations; and yet the whole is thought to be undesigned, not because of any a.s.signed reason why this or that must have been thus or so, but simply because they all occurred in Nature! The Darwinian theory implies that the birth and development of a species are as natural as those of an individual, are facts of the same kind in a higher order. The alleged proof of the absence of design from it amounts to a simple reiteration of the statement, with particulars. Now, the marks of contrivance in the structure of animals used not to be questioned because of their coming in the way of birth and development. It is curious that a further extension of this birth and development should be held to disprove them. It appears to us that all this is begging the question against design in Nature, instead of proving that it may be dispensed with.

Two things have helped on this confusion. One is the notion of the direct and independent creation of species, with only an ideal connection between them, to question which was thought to question the principle of design.

The other is a wrong idea of the nature and province of natural selection.

In former papers we have over and over explained the Darwinian doctrine in this respect. It may be briefly ill.u.s.trated thus: Natural selection is not the wind which propels the vessel, but the rudder which, by friction, now on this side and now on that, shapes the course. The rudder acts while the vessel is in motion, effects nothing when it is at rest. Variation answers to the wind: "Thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell when it cometh and whither it goeth." Its course is controlled by natural selection, the action of which, at any given moment, is seemingly small or insensible; but the ultimate results are great. This proceeds mainly through outward influences. But we are more and more convinced that variation, and therefore the ground of adaptation, is not a product of, but a response to, the action of the environment. Variations, in other words, the differences between individual plants and animals, however originated, are evidently not from without but from within--not physical but physiological.

We cannot here a.s.sign particularly the reasons for this opinion. But we notice that the way in which varieties make their appearance strongly suggests it. The variations of plants which spring up in a seed-bed, for instance, seem to be in no a.s.signable relation to the external conditions.

They arise, as we say, spontaneously, and either with decided characters from the first, or with obvious tendencies in one or few directions. The occult power, whatever it be, does not seem in any given case to act vaguely, producing all sorts of variations from a common centre, to be reduced by the struggle for life to fewness and the appearance of order; there are, rather, orderly indications from the first. The variations of which we speak, as originating in no obvious casual relation to the external conditions, do not include dwarfed or starved, and gigantesque or luxuriant forms, and those drawn up or expanded on the one hand, or contracted and hardened on the other, by the direct difference in the supply of food and moisture, light and heat. Here the action of the environment is both obvious and direct. But such cases do not account for much in evolution.

Moreover, while we see how the mere struggle and interplay among occurring forms may improve them and lead them on, we cannot well imagine how the adaptations which arrest our attention are thereby secured. Our difficulty, let it be understood, is not about the natural origination of organs. To the triumphant outcry, "How can an organ, such as an eye, be formed under Nature?" we would respond with a parallel question, How can a complex and elaborate organ, such as a nettle-sting, be formed under Nature? But it is so formed. In the same species some individuals have these exquisitely-constructed organs and some have not. And so of other glands, the structure and adaptation of which, when looked into, appear to be as wonderful as anything in Nature. The impossibility lies in conceiving how the obvious purpose was effectuated under natural selection alone. This, under our view, any amount of gradation in a series of forms goes a small way in explaining. The transit of a young flounder's eye across the head is a capital instance of a wonderful thing done under Nature, and done unaccountably.

But simpler correlations are involved in similar difficulty. The superabundance of the pollen of pine-trees above referred to, and in oak-trees, is correlated with chance fertilization under the winds. In the a.n.a.logous instance of willows a diminished amount of pollen is correlated with direct transportation by insects. Even in so simple a case as this it is not easy to see how this difference in the conveyance would reduce the quant.i.ty of pollen produced. It is, we know, in the very alphabet of Darwinism that if a male willow-tree should produce a smaller amount of pollen, and if this pollen communicated to the offspring of the female flowers it fertilized a similar tendency (as it might), this male progeny would secure whatever advantage might come from the saving of a certain amount of work and material; but why should it begin to produce less pollen?

But this is as nothing compared with the arrangements in orchid-flowers, where new and peculiar structures are introduced--structures which, once originated and then set into variation, may thereupon be selected, and thereby led on to improvement and diversification. But the origination, and even the variation, still remains unexplained either by the action of insects or by any of the processes which collectively are personified by the term natural selection. We really believe that these exquisite adaptations have come to pa.s.s in the course of Nature, and under natural selection, but not that natural selection alone explains or in a just sense originates them. Or rather, if this term is to stand for sufficient cause and rational explanation, it must denote or include that inscrutable something which produces--as well as that which results in the survival of--"the fittest."

We have been considering this cla.s.s of questions only as a naturalist might who sought for the proper or reasonable interpretation of the problem before him, unmingled with considerations from any other source. Weightier arguments in the last resort, drawn from the intellectual and moral const.i.tution of man, lie on a higher plane, to which it was unnecessary for our particular purpose to rise, however indispensable this be to a full presentation of the evidence of mind in Nature. To us the evidence, judged as impartially as we are capable of judging, appears convincing. But, whatever view one unconvinced may take, it cannot remain doubtful what position a theist ought to occupy. If he cannot recognize design in Nature because of evolution, he may be ranked with those of whom it was said, "Except ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe." How strange that a convinced theist should be so p.r.o.ne to a.s.sociate design only with miracle!

All turns, however, upon what is meant by this Nature, to which it appears more and more probable that the being and becoming--no less than the well-being and succession--of species and genera, as well as of individuals, are committed. To us it means "the world of force and movement in time and s.p.a.ce," as Aristotle defined it--the system and totality of things in the visible universe. What is generally called Nature Prof.

Tyndall names matter--a peculiar nomenclature, requiring new definitions (as he avers), inviting misunderstanding, and leaving the questions we are concerned with just where they were. For it is still to ask: whence this rich endowment of matter? Whence comes that of which all we see and know is the outcome? That to which potency may in the last resort be ascribed, Prof. Tyndall, suspending further judgment, calls mystery--using the word in one of its senses, namely, something hidden from us which we are not to seek to know. But there are also mysteries proper to be inquired into and to be reasoned about; and, although it may not be given unto us to know the mystery of causation, there can hardly be a more legitimate subject of philosophical inquiry. Most scientific men have thought themselves intellectually authorized to have an opinion about it. "For, by the primitive and very ancient men, it has been handed down in the form of myths, and thus left to later generations, that the Divine it is which holds together all Nature;" and this tradition, of which Aristotle, both naturalist and philosopher, thus n.o.bly speaks[XIII-5]--continued through succeeding ages, and illuminated by the Light which has come into the world--may still express the worthiest thoughts of the modern scientific investigator and reasoner.

FOOTNOTES:

I-1. "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life," by Charles Darwin, M.A., Fellow of the Royal, Geological, Linnaean, etc., Societies, Author of "Journal of Researches during H. M. S. Beagle's Voyage round the World."

London: John Murray. 1859. 502 pp., post 8vo.

I-2. Article in this Journal, vol. xxiv., p. 305.