Illustrations of Universal Progress Part 18

[T] Sir Charles Lyell is no longer to be cla.s.sed among Uniformitarians. With rare and admirable candour he has, since this was written, yielded to the arguments of Mr. Darwin.

Yet is this a.s.sumption indefensible, as some who make it very well know.

Facts may be cited against it which show that it is a more than questionable one--that it is a highly improbable one; while the evidence a.s.signed in its favour will not bear criticism.

Because in Bohemia, Great Britain, and portions of North America, the lowest unmetamorphosed strata yet discovered, contain but slight traces of life, Sir R. Murchison conceives that they were formed while yet few, if any, plants or animals had been created; and, therefore, cla.s.ses them as "Azoic." His own pages, however, show the illegitimacy of the conclusion that there existed at that period no considerable amount of life. Such traces of life as have been found in the Longmynd rocks, for many years considered unfossiliferous, have been found in some of the lowest beds; and the twenty thousand feet of superposed beds, still yield no organic remains. If now these superposed strata throughout a depth of four miles, are without fossils, though the strata over which they lie prove that life had commenced; what becomes of Sir R. Murchison's inference? At page 189 of _Siluria_, a still more conclusive fact will be found. The "Glengariff grits," and other accompanying strata there described as 13,500 feet thick, contain no signs of contemporaneous life. Yet Sir R. Murchison refers them to the Devonian period--a period that had a large and varied marine Fauna.

How then, from the absence of fossils in the Longmynd beds and their equivalents, can we conclude that the Earth was "azoic" when they were formed?

"But," it may be asked, "if living creatures then existed, why do we not find fossiliferous strata of that age, or an earlier age?" One reply is, that the non-existence of such strata is but a negative fact--we have not found them. And considering how little we know even of the two-fifths of the Earth's surface now above the sea, and how absolutely ignorant we are of the three-fifths below the sea, it is rash to say that no such strata exist. But the chief reply is, that these records of the Earth's earlier history have been in great part destroyed, by agencies that are ever tending to destroy such records.

It is an established geological doctrine, that sedimentary strata are liable to be changed, more or less completely, by igneous action. The rocks originally cla.s.sed as "transition," because they were intermediate in character between the igneous rocks found below them, and the sedimentary strata found above them, are now known to be nothing else than sedimentary strata altered in texture and appearance by the intense heat of adjacent molten matter; and hence are renamed "metamorphic rocks." Modern researches have shown, too, that these metamorphic rocks are not, as was once supposed, all of the same age. Besides primary and secondary strata that have been transformed by igneous action, there are similarly-changed deposits of tertiary origin; and that, even for a quarter of a mile from the point of contact with neighbouring granite. By this process fossils are of course destroyed. "In some cases," says Sir Charles Lyell, "dark limestones, replete with sh.e.l.ls and corals, have been turned into white statuary marble, and hard clays, containing vegetable or other remains, into slates called mica-schist or hornblende-schist; every vestige of the organic bodies having been obliterated."

Again, it is fast becoming an acknowledged truth, that igneous rock, of whatever kind, is the product of sedimentary strata that have been completely melted. Granite and gneiss, which are of like chemical composition, have been shown, in various cases, to pa.s.s one into the other: as at Valorsine, near Mont Blanc, where the two, in contact, are observed to "both undergo a modification of mineral character. The granite still remaining unstratified, becomes charged with green particles; and the talcose gneiss a.s.sumes a granitiform structure without losing its stratification." In the Aberdeen-granite, lumps of unmelted gneiss are frequently found; and we can ourselves bear witness that on the banks of Loch Sunart, there is ample proof that the granite of that region, when it was molten, contained incompletely-fused clots of sedimentary strata. Nor is this all. Fifty years ago, it was thought that all granitic rocks were primitive, or existed before any sedimentary strata; but it is now "no easy task to point out a single ma.s.s of granite demonstrably more ancient than all the known fossiliferous deposits."

In brief, acc.u.mulated evidence clearly shows, that by contact with, or proximity to, the molten matter of the Earth's nucleus, all beds of sediment are liable to be actually melted, or partially fused, or so heated as to agglutinate their particles; and that according to the temperature they have been raised to, and the circ.u.mstances under which they cool, they a.s.sume the forms of granite, porphyry, trap, gneiss, or rock otherwise altered. Further, it is manifest that though strata of various ages have been thus changed, yet that the most ancient strata have been so changed to the greatest extent: both because they have habitually lain nearer to the centre of igneous agency; and because they have been for a longer period liable to the effects of this agency. Whence it follows, that sedimentary strata pa.s.sing a certain antiquity, are unlikely to be found in an unmetamorphosed state; and that strata much earlier than those are certain to have been melted up. Thus if, throughout a past of indefinite duration, there had been at work those aqueous and igneous agencies which we see still at work, the state of the Earth's crust might be just what we find it. We have no evidence which puts a limit to the period throughout which this formation and destruction of strata has been going on. For aught the facts prove, it may have been going on for ten times the period measured by our whole series of sedimentary deposits.

Besides having, in the present appearances of the Earth's crust, no data for fixing a commencement to these processes--besides finding that the evidence permits us to a.s.sume such commencement to have been inconceivably remote, as compared even with the vast eras of geology; we are not without positive grounds for inferring the inconceivable remoteness of such commencement. Modern geology has established truths which are irreconcilable with the belief that the formation and destruction of strata began when the Cambrian rocks were formed; or at anything like so recent a time. One fact from _Siluria_ will suffice. Sir R. Murchison estimates the vertical thickness of Silurian strata in Wales, at from 26,000 to 27,000 feet, or about five miles; and if to this we add the vertical depth of the Cambrian strata, on which the Silurians lie conformably, there results, on the lowest computation, a total depth of seven miles.

Now it is held by geologists, that this vast acc.u.mulation of strata must have been deposited in an area of gradual subsidence. These strata could not have been thus laid on each other in regular order, unless the Earth's crust had been at that place sinking, either continuously or by very small steps. Such an immense subsidence, however, must have been impossible without a crust of great thickness. The Earth's molten nucleus tends ever, with enormous force, to a.s.sume the form of a regular oblate spheroid. Any depression of its crust below the surface of equilibrium, and any elevation of its crust above that surface, have to withstand immense resistance. It follows inevitably that, with a thin crust, nothing but small elevations and subsidences would be possible; and that, conversely, a subsidence of seven miles implies a crust of comparatively great strength, or, in other words, of great thickness. Indeed, if we compare this inferred subsidence in the Silurian period, with such elevations and depressions as our existing continents and oceans display, we see no evidence that the Earth's crust was appreciably thinner then than now. What are the implications? If, as geologists generally admit, the Earth's crust has resulted from that slow cooling which is even still going on--if we see no sign that at the time when the earliest Cambrian strata were formed, this crust was appreciably thinner than now; we are forced to conclude that the era during which it acquired that great thickness possessed in the Cambrian period, was enormous as compared with the interval between the Cambrian period and our own. But during the incalculable series of epochs thus inferred, there existed an ocean, tides, winds, waves, rain, rivers. The agencies by which the denudation of continents and filling up of seas have all along been carried on, were as active then as now. Endless successions of strata must have been formed. And when we ask--Where are they? Nature's obvious reply is--They have been destroyed by that igneous action to which so great a part of our oldest-known strata owe their fusion or metamorphosis.

Only the last chapter of the Earth's history has come down to us. The many previous chapters, stretching back to a time immeasurably remote, have been burnt; and with them all the records of life we may presume they contained.

The greater part of the evidence which might have served to settle the Development-controversy, is for ever lost; and on neither side can the arguments derived from Geology be conclusive.

"But how happen there to be such evidences of progression as exist?" it may be asked. "How happens it that, in ascending from the most ancient strata to the most recent strata, we do find a succession of organic forms, which, however irregularly, carries us from lower to higher?" This question seems difficult to answer. Nevertheless, there is reason for thinking that nothing can be safely inferred from the apparent progression here cited.

And the ill.u.s.tration which shows as much, will, we believe, also show how little trust is to be placed in certain geological generalizations that appear to be well established. With this somewhat elaborate ill.u.s.tration, to which we now pa.s.s, our criticisms may fitly conclude.

Let us suppose that in a region now covered by wide ocean, there begins one of those great and gradual upheavals by which new continents are formed. To be precise, let us say that in the South Pacific, midway between New Zealand and Patagonia, the sea-bottom has been little by little thrust up towards the surface, and is about to emerge. What will be the successive phenomena, geological and biological, which are likely to occur before this emerging sea-bottom has become another Europe or Asia?

In the first place, such portions of the incipient land as are raised to the level of the waves, will be rapidly denuded by them: their soft substance will be torn up by the breakers, carried away by the local currents, and deposited in neighbouring deeper water. Successive small upheavals will bring new and larger areas within reach of the waves; fresh portions will each time be removed from the surfaces previously denuded; and further, some of the newly-formed strata, being elevated nearly to the level of the water, will be washed away and re-deposited. In course of time, the harder formations of the upraised sea-bottom will be uncovered.

These being less easily destroyed, will remain permanently above the surface; and at their margins will arise the usual breaking down of rocks into beach-sand and pebbles. While in the slow process of this elevation, going on at the rate of perhaps two or three feet in a century, most of the sedimentary deposits produced will be again and again destroyed and reformed; there will, in those adjacent areas of subsidence which accompany areas of elevation, be more or less continuous successions of sedimentary deposits.

And now what will be the character of these new strata? They will necessarily contain scarcely any traces of life. The deposits that had previously been slowly formed at the bottom of this wide ocean, would be sprinkled with fossils of but few species. The oceanic Fauna is not a rich one; its hydrozoa do not admit of preservation; and the hard parts of its few kinds of molluscs and crustaceans and insects are mostly fragile.

Hence, when the ocean-bed was here and there raised to the surface--when its strata of sediment with their contained organic fragments were torn up and long washed about by the breakers before being re-deposited--when the re-deposits were again and again subject to this violent abrading action by subsequent small elevations, as they would mostly be; what few fragile organic remains they contained, would be in nearly all cases destroyed.

Thus such of the first-formed strata as survived the repeated changes of level, would be practically "azoic;" like the Cambrian of our geologists.

When by the washing away of the soft deposits, the hard sub-strata had been exposed in the shape of rocky islets, and a footing had thus been furnished, the pioneers of a new life might be expected to make their appearance. What would they be? Not any of the surrounding oceanic species, for these are not fitted for a littoral life; but species flourishing on some of the far-distant sh.o.r.es of the Pacific. Of such the first to establish themselves would be sea-weeds and zoophytes; both because their swarming spores and gemmules would be the most readily conveyed with safety, and because when conveyed they would find fit food. It is true that Cirrhipeds and Lamellibranchs, subsisting on the minute creatures which everywhere people the sea, would also find fit food.

But pa.s.sing over the fact that the germs of such higher forms are neither so abundant nor so well fitted to bear long voyages, there is the more important fact that the individuals arising from these germs can reproduce only s.e.xually, and that this vastly increases the obstacles to the establishment of their races. The chances of early colonization are immensely in favour of species which, multiplying by agamogenesis, can people a whole sh.o.r.e from a single germ; and immensely against species which, multiplying only by gamogenesis, must be introduced in considerable numbers that some may survive, meet, and propagate. Thus we infer that the earliest traces of life left in the sedimentary deposits near these new sh.o.r.es, will be traces of life as humble as that indicated in the most ancient rocks of Great Britain and Ireland. Imagine now that the processes we have briefly indicated, continue--that the emerging lands become wider in extent, and fringed by higher and more varied sh.o.r.es; and that there still go on those ocean-currents which, at long intervals, convey from far distant sh.o.r.es immigrant forms of life. What will result? Lapse of time will of course favour the introduction of such new forms: admitting, as it must, of those combinations of fit conditions, which, under the law of probabilities, can occur only at very distant intervals. Moreover, the increasing area of the islands, individually and as a group, implies increasing length of coast; from which there follows a longer line of contact with the streams and waves that bring drifting ma.s.ses; and, therefore, a greater chance that germs of fresh life will be stranded.

And once more, the comparatively-varied sh.o.r.es, presenting physical conditions that change from mile to mile, will furnish suitable habitats for more numerous species. So that as the elevation proceeds, three causes conspire to introduce additional marine plants and animals. To what cla.s.ses will the increasing Fauna be for a long period confined? Of course, to cla.s.ses of which individuals, or their germs, are most liable to be carried far away from their native sh.o.r.es by floating sea-weed or drift-wood; to cla.s.ses which are also least likely to perish in transit, or from change of climate; and to those which can best subsist around coasts comparatively bare of life. Evidently, then, corals, annelids, inferior molluscs, and crustaceans of low grade, will chiefly const.i.tute the early Fauna. The large predatory members of these cla.s.ses, will be later in establishing themselves; both because the new sh.o.r.es must first become well peopled by the creatures they prey on, and because, being more complex, they or their ova must be less likely to survive the journey, and the change of conditions.

We may infer, then, that the strata deposited next after the almost "azoic"

strata, would contain the remains of invertebrata, allied to those found near the sh.o.r.es of Australia and South America. Of such invertebrate remains, the lower beds would furnish comparatively few genera, and those of relatively low types; while in the upper beds the number of genera would be greater, and the types higher: just as among the fossils of our Silurian system. As this great geologic change slowly progressed through its long history of earthquakes, volcanic disturbances, minor upheavals and subsidences--as the extent of the archipelago became greater and its smaller islands coalesced into larger ones, while its coast line grew still longer and more varied, and the neighbouring sea more thickly inhabited by inferior forms of life; the lowest division of the vertebrata would begin to be represented. In order of time, fish would naturally come after the lower invertebrata: both as being less likely to have their ova transported across the waste of waters, and as requiring for their subsistence a pre-existing Fauna of some development. They might be expected to make their appearance along with the predaceous crustaceans; as they do in the uppermost Silurian rocks.

And here, too, let us remark, that as, during this long epoch we have been describing, the sea would have made great inroads on some of the newly raised lands that had remained stationary; and would probably in some places have reached ma.s.ses of igneous or metamorphic rocks; there might, in course of time, arise by the decomposition and denudation of such rocks, local deposits coloured with oxide of iron, like our Old Red Sandstone. And in these deposits might be buried the remains of the fish then peopling the neighbouring sea.

Meanwhile, how would the surfaces of the upheaved ma.s.ses be occupied? At first their deserts of naked rocks and pebbles would bear only the humblest forms of vegetal life, such as we find in grey and orange patches on our own rugged mountain sides; for these alone could flourish on such surfaces, and their spores would be the most readily transported. When, by the decay of such protophytes, and that decomposition of rock effected by them, there had resulted a fit habitat for mosses; these, of which the germs might be conveyed in drifted trees, would begin to spread. A soil having been eventually thus produced, it would become possible for plants of higher organization to find roothold; and as in the way we have described the archipelago and its const.i.tuent islands grew larger, and had more multiplied relations with winds and waters, such higher plants might be expected ultimately to have their seeds transferred from the nearest lands.

After something like a Flora had thus colonized the surface, it would become possible for insects to exist; and of air-breathing creatures, insects would manifestly be among the first to find their way from elsewhere.

As, however, terrestrial organisms, both vegetal and animal, are much less likely than marine organisms to survive the accidents of transport from distant sh.o.r.es; it is clear that long after the sea surrounding these new lands had acquired a varied Flora and Fauna, the lands themselves would still be comparatively bare; and thus that the early strata, like our Silurians, would afford no traces of terrestrial life. By the time that large areas had been raised above the ocean, we may fairly suppose a luxuriant vegetation to have been acquired. Under what circ.u.mstances are we likely to find this vegetation fossilized? Large surfaces of land imply large rivers with their accompanying deltas; and are liable to have lakes and swamps. These, as we know from extant cases, are favourable to rank vegetation; and afford the conditions needful for preserving it in the shape of coal-beds. Observe, then, that while in the early history of such a continent a carboniferous period could not occur, the occurrence of a carboniferous period would become probable after long-continued upheavals had uncovered large areas. As in our own sedimentary series, coal-beds would make their appearance only after there had been enormous acc.u.mulations of earlier strata charged with marine fossils.

Let us ask next, in what order the higher forms of animal life would make their appearance. We have seen how, in the succession of marine forms, there would be something like a progress from the lower to the higher: bringing us in the end to predaceous molluscs, crustaceans, and fish. What are likely to succeed fish? After marine creatures, those which would have the greatest chance of surviving the voyage would be amphibious reptiles: both because they are more tenacious of life than higher animals, and because they would be less completely out of their element. Such reptiles as can live in both fresh and salt water, like alligators; and such as are drifted out of the mouths of great rivers on floating trees, as Humboldt says the Orinoco alligators are; might be early colonists.

It is manifest, too, that reptiles of other kinds would be among the first vertebrata to people the new continent. If we consider what will occur on one of those natural rafts of trees, soil, and matted vegetable matter, sometimes swept out to sea by such currents as the Mississippi, with a miscellaneous living cargo; we shall see that while the active, hot-blooded, highly-organized creatures will soon die of starvation and exposure, the inert, cold-blooded ones, which can go long without food, will live perhaps for weeks; and so, out of the chances from time to time occurring during long periods, reptiles will be the first to get safely landed on foreign sh.o.r.es: as indeed they are even now known sometimes to be. The transport of mammalia being comparatively precarious, must, in the order of probability, be longer postponed; and would, indeed, be unlikely to occur until by the enlargement of the new continent, the distances of its sh.o.r.es from adjacent lands had been greatly diminished, or the formation of intervening islands had increased the chances of survival.

a.s.suming, however, that the facilities of immigration had become adequate; which would be the first mammals to arrive and live? Not large herbivores; for they would be soon drowned if by any accident carried out to sea. Not the carnivora; for these would lack appropriate food, even if they outlived the voyage. Small quadrupeds frequenting trees, and feeding on insects, would be those most likely both to be drifted away from their native lands and to find fit food in a new one. Insectivorous mammals, like in size to those found in the Trias and the Stonesfield slate, might naturally be looked for as the pioneers of the higher vertebrata. And if we suppose the facilities of communication to be again increased, either by a further shallowing of the intervening sea and a consequent multiplication of islands, or by an actual junction of the new continent with an old one, through continued upheavals; we should finally have an influx of the larger and more perfect mammals.

Now rude as is this sketch of a process that would be extremely elaborate and involved, and open as some of its propositions are to criticisms which there is no s.p.a.ce here to meet; no one will deny that it represents something like the biologic history of the supposed new continent. Details apart, it is manifest that simple organisms, able to flourish under simple conditions of life, would be the first successful immigrants; and that more complex organisms, needing for their existence the fulfilment of more complex conditions, would afterwards establish themselves in something like an ascending succession. At the one extreme we see every facility. The new individuals can be conveyed in the shape of minute germs; these are infinite in their numbers; they are diffused in the sea; they are perpetually being carried in all directions to great distances by ocean-currents; they can survive such long journeys unharmed; they can find nutriment wherever they arrive; and the resulting organisms can multiply as.e.xually with great rapidity.

At the other extreme, we see every difficulty. The new individuals must be conveyed in their adult forms; their numbers are, in comparison, utterly insignificant; they live on land, and are very unlikely to be carried out to sea; when so carried, the chances are immense against their escape from drowning, starvation, or death by cold; if they survive the transit, they must have a pre-existing Flora or Fauna to supply their special food; they require, also, the fulfilment of various other physical conditions; and unless at least two individuals of different s.e.xes are safely landed, the race cannot be established. Manifestly, then, the immigration of each successively higher order of organisms, having, from one or other additional condition to be fulfilled, an enormously-increased probability against it, would naturally be separated from the immigration of a lower order by some period like a geologic epoch.

And thus the successive sedimentary deposits formed while this new continent was undergoing gradual elevation, would seem to furnish clear evidence of a general progress in the forms of life. That lands thus raised up in the midst of a wide ocean, would first give origin to unfossiliferous strata; next, to strata containing only the lowest marine forms; next, to strata containing higher marine forms, ascending finally to fish; and that the strata above these would contain reptiles, then small mammals, then great mammals; seems to us to be demonstrable from the known laws of organic life.

And if the succession of fossils presented by the strata of this supposed new continent, would thus simulate the succession presented by our own sedimentary series; must we not say that our own sedimentary series very possibly records nothing more than the phenomena accompanying one of these great upheavals? We think this must be considered not only possible, but highly probable: harmonizing as it does with the unavoidable conclusion before pointed out, that geological changes must have been going on for a period immeasurably greater than that of which we have records. And if the probability of this conclusion be admitted, it must be admitted that the facts of Palaeontology can never suffice either to prove or disprove the Development Hypothesis; but that the most they can do is, to show whether the last few pages of the Earth's biologic history are or are not in harmony with this hypothesis--whether the existing Flora and Fauna can or can not be affiliated upon the Flora and Fauna of the most recent geologic times.

IX. THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS.

In a debate upon the development hypothesis, lately narrated to me by a friend, one of the disputants was described as arguing, that as, in all our experience, we know no such phenomenon as trans.m.u.tation of species, it is unphilosophical to a.s.sume that trans.m.u.tation of species ever takes place.

Had I been present, I think that, pa.s.sing over his a.s.sertion, which is open to criticism, I should have replied that, as in all our experience we have never known a species _created_, it was, by his own showing, unphilosophical to a.s.sume that any species ever had been created.

Those who cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution, as not adequately supported by facts, seem quite to forget that their own theory is supported by no facts at all. Like the majority of men who are born to a given belief, they demand the most rigorous proof of any adverse belief, but a.s.sume that their own needs none. Here we find, scattered over the globe, vegetable and animal organisms numbering, of the one kind (according to Humboldt), some 320,000 species, and of the other, some 2,000,000 species (see Carpenter); and if to these we add the numbers of animal and vegetable species that have become extinct, we may safely estimate the number of species that have existed, and are existing, on the Earth, at not less than _ten millions_. Well, which is the most rational theory about these ten millions of species? Is it most likely that there have been ten millions of special creations? or is it most likely that by continual modifications, due to change of circ.u.mstances, ten millions of varieties have been produced, as varieties are being produced still?

Doubtless many will reply that they can more easily conceive ten millions of special creations to have taken place, than they can conceive that ten millions of varieties have arisen by successive modifications. All such, however, will find, on inquiry, that they are under an illusion. This is one of the many cases in which men do not really believe, but rather _believe they believe_. It is not that they can truly conceive ten millions of special creations to have taken place, but that they _think they can do so_. Careful introspection will show them that they have never yet realized to themselves the creation of even _one_ species. If they have formed a definite conception of the process, let them tell us how a new species is constructed, and how it makes its appearance. Is it thrown down from the clouds? or must we hold to the notion that it struggles up out of the ground? Do its limbs and viscera rush together from all the points of the compa.s.s? or must we receive the old Hebrew idea, that G.o.d takes clay and moulds a new creature? If they say that a new creature is produced in none of these modes, which are too absurd to be believed; then they are required to describe the mode in which a new creature _may_ be produced--a mode which does _not_ seem absurd: and such a mode they will find that they neither have conceived nor can conceive.

Should the believers in special creations consider it unfair thus to call upon them to describe how special creations take place, I reply, that this is far less than they demand from the supporters of the Development Hypothesis. They are merely asked to point out a _conceivable_ mode. On the other hand, they ask, not simply for a _conceivable_ mode, but for the _actual_ mode. They do not say--Show us how this _may_ take place; but they say--Show us how this _does_ take place. So far from its being unreasonable to put the above question, it would be reasonable to ask not only for a _possible_ mode of special creation, but for an _ascertained_ mode; seeing that this is no greater a demand than they make upon their opponents.

And here we may perceive how much more defensible the new doctrine is than the old one. Even could the supporters of the Development Hypothesis merely show that the origination of species by the process of modification is conceivable, they would be in a better position than their opponents. But they can do much more than this. They can show that the process of modification has effected, and is effecting, decided changes in all organisms subject to modifying influences. Though, from the impossibility of getting at a sufficiency of facts, they are unable to trace the many phases through which any existing species has pa.s.sed in arriving at its present form, or to identify the influences which caused the successive modifications; yet, they can show that any existing species--animal or vegetable--when placed under conditions different from its previous ones, _immediately begins to undergo certain changes of structure fitting it for the new conditions_. They can show that in successive generations these changes continue, until ultimately the new conditions become the natural ones. They can show that in cultivated plants, in domesticated animals, and in the several races of men, such alterations have taken place. They can show that the degrees of difference so produced are often, as in dogs, greater than those on which distinctions of species are in other cases founded. They can show that it is a matter of dispute whether some of these modified forms _are_ varieties or separate species. They can show, too, that the changes daily taking place in ourselves--the facility that attends long practice, and the loss of apt.i.tude that begins when practice ceases--the strengthening of pa.s.sions habitually gratified, and the weakening of those habitually curbed--the development of every faculty, bodily, moral, or intellectual, according to the use made of it--are all explicable on this same principle. And thus they can show that throughout all organic nature there _is_ at work a modifying influence of the kind they a.s.sign as the cause of these specific differences: an influence which, though slow in its action, does, in time, if the circ.u.mstances demand it, produce marked changes--an influence which, to all appearance, would produce in the millions of years, and under the great varieties of condition which geological records imply, any amount of change.

Which, then, is the most rational hypothesis?--that of special creations which has neither a fact to support it nor is even definitely conceivable; or that of modification, which is not only definitely conceivable, but is countenanced by the habitudes of every existing organism?

That by any series of changes a protozoon should ever become a mammal, seems to those who are not familiar with zoology, and who have not seen how clear becomes the relationship between the simplest and the most complex forms when intermediate forms are examined, a very grotesque notion.

Habitually looking at things rather in their statical than in their dynamical aspect, they never realize the fact that, by small increments of modification, any amount of modification may in time be generated. That surprise which they feel on finding one whom they last saw as a boy, grown into a man, becomes incredulity when the degree of change is greater.

Nevertheless, abundant instances are at hand of the mode in which we may pa.s.s to the most diverse forms, by insensible gradations. Arguing the matter some time since with a learned professor, I ill.u.s.trated my position thus:--You admit that there is no apparent relationship between a circle and an hyperbola. The one is a finite curve; the other is an infinite one.

All parts of the one are alike; of the other no two parts are alike. The one incloses a s.p.a.ce; the other will not inclose a s.p.a.ce though produced for ever. Yet opposite as are these curves in all their properties, they may be connected together by a series of intermediate curves, no one of which differs from the adjacent ones in any appreciable degree. Thus, if a cone be cut by a plane at right angles to its axis we get a circle. If, instead of being perfectly at right angles, the plane subtends with the axis an angle of 89 59', we have an ellipse, which no human eye, even when aided by an accurate pair of compa.s.ses, can distinguish from a circle.

Decreasing the angle minute by minute, the ellipse becomes first perceptibly eccentric, then manifestly so, and by and by acquires so immensely elongated a form, as to bear no recognisable resemblance to a circle. By continuing this process, the ellipse pa.s.ses insensibly into a parabola; and ultimately, by still further diminishing the angle, into an hyperbola. Now here we have four different species of curve--circle, ellipse, parabola, and hyperbola--each having its peculiar properties and its separate equation, and the first and last of which are quite opposite in nature, connected together as members of one series, all producible by a single process of insensible modification.

But the blindness of those who think it absurd to suppose that complex organic forms may have arisen by successive modifications out of simple ones, becomes astonishing when we remember that complex organic forms are daily being thus produced. A tree differs from a seed immeasurably in every respect--in bulk, in structure, in colour, in form, in specific gravity, in chemical composition: differs so greatly that no visible resemblance of any kind can be pointed out between them. Yet is the one changed in the course of a few years into the other: changed so gradually, that at no moment can it be said--Now the seed ceases to be, and the tree exists. What can be more widely contrasted than a newly-born child and the small, semi-transparent, gelatinous spherule const.i.tuting the human ovum? The infant is so complex in structure that a cyclopaedia is needed to describe its const.i.tuent parts. The germinal vesicle is so simple that it may be defined in a line. Nevertheless, a few months suffice to develop the one out of the other; and that, too, by a series of modifications so small, that were the embryo examined at successive minutes, even a microscope would with difficulty disclose any sensible changes. That the uneducated and the ill-educated should think the hypothesis that all races of beings, man inclusive, may in process of time have been evolved from the simplest monad, a ludicrous one, is not to be wondered at. But for the physiologist, who knows that every individual being is so evolved--who knows further, that in their earliest condition the germs of all plants and animals whatever are so similar, "that there is no appreciable distinction amongst them which would enable it to be determined whether a particular molecule is the germ of a conferva or of an oak, of a zoophyte or of a man;"[U]--for him to make a difficulty of the matter is inexcusable. Surely if a single cell may, when subjected to certain influences, become a man in the s.p.a.ce of twenty years; there is nothing absurd in the hypothesis that under certain other influences, a cell may in the course of millions of years give origin to the human race. The two processes are generically the same; and differ only in length and complexity.

[U] Carpenter.

We have, indeed, in the part taken by many scientific men in this controversy of "Law _versus_ Miracle," a good ill.u.s.tration of the tenacious vitality of superst.i.tions. Ask one of our leading geologists or physiologists whether he believes in the Mosaic account of the creation, and he will take the question as next to an insult. Either he rejects the narrative entirely, or understands it in some vague non-natural sense. Yet one part of it he unconsciously adopts; and that, too, literally. For whence has he got this notion of "special creations," which he thinks so reasonable, and fights for so vigorously? Evidently he can trace it back to no other source than this myth which he repudiates. He has not a single fact in nature to quote in proof of it; nor is he prepared with any chain of abstract reasoning by which it may be established. Catechise him, and he will be forced to confess that the notion was put into his mind in childhood as part of a story which he now thinks absurd. And why, after rejecting all the rest of this story, he should strenuously defend this last remnant of it as though he had received it on valid authority, he would be puzzled to say.

X. THE SOCIAL ORGANISM.