Life and Habit Part 12

I have dealt with bees only, and not with ants, which would perhaps seem to present greater difficulty, inasmuch as in some families of these there are two, or even three, castes of neuters with well- marked and wide differences of structure and instinct; but I think the reader will agree with me that the ants are sufficiently covered by the bees, and that enough, therefore, has been said already. Mr.

Darwin supposes that these modifications of structure and instinct have been effected by the acc.u.mulation of numerous slight, profitable, spontaneous variations on the part of the fertile parents, which has caused them (so, at least, I understand him) to lay this or that particular kind of egg, which should develop into a kind of bee or ant, with this or that particular instinct, which instinct is merely a co-ordination with structure, and in no way attributable to use or habit in preceding generations.

Even so, one cannot see that the habit of laying this particular kind of egg might not be due to use and memory in previous generations on the part of the fertile parents, "for the numerous slight spontaneous variations," on which "natural selection" is to work, must have had some cause than which none more reasonable than sense of need and experience presents itself; and there seems hardly any limit to what long-continued faith and desire, aided by intelligence, may be able to effect. But if sense of need and experience are denied, I see no escape from the view that machines are new species of life.

Mr. Darwin concludes: "I am surprised that no one has. .h.i.therto advanced this demonstrative case of neuter insects against the well- known doctrine of inherited habit as advanced by Lamarck" ("Natural Selection," p. 233, ed. 1876).

After reading this, one feels as though there was no more to be said.

The well-known doctrine of inherited habit, as advanced by Lamarck, has indeed been long since so thoroughly exploded, that it is not worth while to go into an explanation of what it was, or to refute it in detail. Here, however, is an argument against it, which is so much better than anything advanced yet, that one is surprised it has never been made use of; so we will just advance it, as it were, to slay the slain, and pa.s.s on. Such, at least, is the effect which the paragraph above quoted produced upon myself, and would, I think, produce on the great majority of readers. When driven by the exigencies of my own position to examine the value of the demonstration more closely, I conclude, either that I have utterly failed to grasp Mr. Darwin's meaning, or that I have no less completely mistaken the value and bearing of the facts I have myself advanced in these few last pages. Failing this, my surprise is, not that "no one has. .h.i.therto advanced" the instincts of neuter insects as a demonstrative case against the doctrine of inherited habit, but rather that Mr. Darwin should have thought the case demonstrative; or again, when I remember that the neuter working bee is only an aborted queen, and may be turned back again into a queen, by giving it such treatment as it can alone be expected to remember--then I am surprised that the structure and instincts of neuter bees has never (if never) been brought forward in support of the doctrine of inherited habit as advanced by Lamarck, and against any theory which would rob such instincts of their foundation in intelligence, and of their connection with experience and memory.

As for the instinct to mutilate, that is as easily accounted for as any other inherited habit, whether of man to mutilate cattle, or of ants to make slaves, or of birds to make their nests. I can see no way of accounting for the existence of any one of these instincts, except on the supposition that they have arisen gradually, through perceptions of power and need on the part of the animal which exhibits them--these two perceptions advancing hand in hand from generation to generation, and being acc.u.mulated in time and in the common course of nature.

I have already sufficiently guarded against being supposed to maintain that very long before an instinct or structure was developed, the creature descried it in the far future, and made towards it. We do not observe this to be the manner of human progress. Our mechanical inventions, which, as I ventured to say in "Erewhon," through the mouth of the second professor, are really nothing but extra-corporaneous limbs--a wooden leg being nothing but a bad kind of flesh leg, and a flesh leg being only a much better kind of wooden leg than any creature could be expected to manufacture introspectively and consciously--our mechanical inventions have almost invariably grown up from small beginnings, and without any very distant foresight on the part of the inventors. When Watt perfected the steam engine, he did not, it seems, foresee the locomotive, much less would any one expect a savage to invent a steam engine. A child breathes automatically, because it has learnt to breathe little by little, and has now breathed for an incalculable length of time; but it cannot open oysters at all, nor even conceive the idea of opening oysters for two or three years after it is born, for the simple reason that this lesson is one which it is only beginning to learn. All I maintain is, that, give a child as many generations of practice in opening oysters as it has had in breathing or sucking, and it would on being born, turn to the oyster-knife no less naturally than to the breast. We observe that among certain families of men there has been a tendency to vary in the direction of the use and development of machinery; and that in a certain still smaller number of families, there seems to be an almost infinitely great capacity for varying and inventing still further, whether socially or mechanically; while other families, and perhaps the greater number, reach a certain point and stop; but we also observe that not even the most inventive races ever see very far ahead. I suppose the progress of plants and animals to be exactly a.n.a.logous to this.

Mr. Darwin has always maintained that the effects of use and disuse are highly important in the development of structure, and if, as he has said, habits are sometimes inherited--then they should sometimes be important also in the development of instinct, or habit. But what does the development of an instinct or structure, or, indeed, any effect upon the organism produced by "use and disuse," imply? It implies an effect produced by a desire to do something for which the organism was not originally well adapted or sufficient, but for which it has come to be sufficient in consequence of the desire. The wish has been father to the power; but this again opens up the whole theory of Lamarck, that the development of organs has been due to the wants or desires of the animal in which the organ appears. So far as I can see, I am insisting on little more than this.

Once grant that a blacksmith's arm grows thicker through hammering iron, and you have an organ modified in accordance with a need or wish. Let the desire and the practice be remembered, and go on for long enough, and the slight alterations of the organ will be acc.u.mulated, until they are checked either by the creature's having got all that he cares about making serious further effort to obtain, or until his wants prove inconvenient to other creatures that are stronger than he, and he is hence brought to a standstill. Use and disuse, then, with me, and, as I gather also, with Lamarck, are the keys to the position, coupled, of course, with continued personality and memory. No sudden and striking changes would be effected, except that occasionally a blunder might prove a happy accident, as happens not unfrequently with painters, musicians, chemists, and inventors at the present day; or sometimes a creature, with exceptional powers of memory or reflection, would make his appearance in this race or in that. We all profit by our accidents as well as by our more cunning contrivances, so that a.n.a.logy would point in the direction of thinking that many of the most happy thoughts in the animal and vegetable kingdom were originated much as certain discoveries that have been made by accident among ourselves. These would be originally blind variations, though even so, probably less blind than we think, if we could know the whole truth. When originated, they would be eagerly taken advantage of and improved upon by the animal in whom they appeared; but it cannot be supposed that they would be very far in advance of the last step gained, more than are those "flukes" which sometimes enable us to go so far beyond our own ordinary powers. For if they were, the animal would despair of repeating them. No creature hopes, or even wishes, for very much more than he has been accustomed to all his life, he and his family, and the others whom he can understand, around him. It has been well said that "enough" is always "a little more than one has." We do not try for things which we believe to be beyond our reach, hence one would expect that the fortunes, as it were, of animals should have been built up gradually. Our own riches grow with our desires and the pains we take in pursuit of them, and our desires vary and increase with our means of gratifying them; but unless with men of exceptional business apt.i.tude, wealth grows gradually by the adding field to field and farm to farm; so with the limbs and instincts of animals; these are but the things they have made or bought with their money, or with money that has been left them by their forefathers, which, though it is neither silver nor gold, but faith and protoplasm only, is good money and capital notwithstanding.

I have already admitted that instinct may be modified by food or drugs, which may affect a structure or habit as powerfully as we see certain poisons affect the structure of plants by producing, as Mr.

Darwin tells us, very complex galls upon their leaves. I do not, therefore, for a moment insist on habit as the sole cause of instinct. Every habit must have had its originating cause, and the causes which have started one habit will from time to time start or modify others; nor can I explain why some individuals of a race should be cleverer than others, any more than I can explain why they should exist at all; nevertheless, I observe it to be a fact that differences in intelligence and power of growth are universal in the individuals of all those races which we can best watch. I also most readily admit that the common course of nature would both cause many variations to arise independently of any desire on the part of the animal (much as we have lately seen that the moons of Mars were on the point of being discovered three hundred years ago, merely through Galileo sending to Kepler a Latin anagram which Kepler could not understand, and arranged into the line--"Salve umbistineum geminatum Martia prolem," and interpreted to mean that Mars had two moons, whereas Galileo had meant to say "Altissimum planetam tergeminum observavi," meaning that he had seen Saturn's ring), and would also preserve and acc.u.mulate such variations when they had arisen; but I can no more believe that the wonderful adaptation of structures to needs, which we see around us in such an infinite number of plants and animals, can have arisen without a perception of those needs on the part of the creature in whom the structure appears, than I can believe that the form of the dray-horse or greyhound--so well adapted both to the needs of the animal in his daily service to man, and to the desires of man, that the creature should do him this daily service--can have arisen without any desire on man's part to produce this particular structure, or without the inherited habit of performing the corresponding actions for man, on the part of the greyhound and dray-horse.

And I believe that this will be felt as reasonable by the great majority of my readers. I believe that nine fairly intelligent and observant men out of ten, if they were asked which they thought most likely to have been the main cause of the development of the various phases either of structure or instinct which we see around us, namely--sense of need, or even whim, and hence occasional discovery, helped by an occasional piece of good luck, communicated, it may be, and generally adopted, long practised, remembered by offspring, modified by changed surroundings, and acc.u.mulated in the course of time--or, the acc.u.mulation of small divergent, indefinite, and perfectly unintelligent variations, preserved through the survival of their possessor in the struggle for existence, and hence in time leading to wide differences from the original type--would answer in favour of the former alternative; and if for no other cause yet for this--that in the human race, which we are best able to watch, and between which and the lower animals no difference in kind will, I think, be supposed, but only in degree, we observe that progress must have an internal current setting in a definite direction, but whither we know not for very long beforehand; and that without such internal current there is stagnation. Our own progress--or variation--is due not to small, fortuitous inventions or modifications which have enabled their fortunate possessors to survive in times of difficulty, not, in fact, to strokes of luck (though these, of course, have had some effect--but not more, probably, than strokes of ill luck have counteracted) but to strokes of cunning--to a sense of need, and to study of the past and present which have given shrewd people a key with which to unlock the chambers of the future.

Further, Mr. Darwin himself says ("Plants and Animals under Domestication," ii. p. 237, ed. 1875):-

"But I think we must take a broader view and conclude that organic beings when subjected during several generations to any change whatever in their conditions tend to vary: THE KIND OF VARIATION WHICH ENSUES DEPENDING IN MOST CASES IN A FAR HIGHER DEGREE ON THE NATURE OR CONSt.i.tUTION OF THE BEING, THAN ON THE NATURE OF THE CHANGED CONDITIONS." And this we observe in man. The history of a man prior to his birth is more important as far as his success or failure goes than his surroundings after birth, important though these may indeed be. The able man rises in spite of a thousand hindrances, the fool fails in spite of every advantage. "Natural selection," however, does not make either the able man or the fool.

It only deals with him after other causes have made him, and would seem in the end to amount to little more than to a statement of the fact that when variations have arisen they will acc.u.mulate. One cannot look, as has already been said, for the origin of species in that part of the course of nature which settles the preservation or extinction of variations which have already arisen from some unknown cause, but one must look for it in the causes that have led to variation at all. These causes must get, as it were, behind the back of "natural selection," which is rather a shield and hindrance to our perception of our own ignorance than an explanation of what these causes are.

The remarks made above will apply equally to plants such as the misletoe and red clover. For the sake of brevity I will deal only with the misletoe, which seems to be the more striking case. Mr.

Darwin writes:-

"Naturalists continually refer to external conditions, such as climate, food, &c., as the only possible cause of variation. In one limited sense, as we shall hereafter see, this may be true; but it is preposterous to attribute to mere external conditions, the structure, for instance, of the woodp.e.c.k.e.r, with its feet, tail, beak, and tongue, so admirably adapted to catch insects under the bark of trees. In the case of the misletoe, which draws its nourishment from certain trees, which has seeds that must be transported by certain birds, and which has flowers with separate s.e.xes absolutely requiring the agency of certain insects to bring pollen from one flower to another, it is equally preposterous to account for the structure of this parasite with its relations to several distinct organic beings, by the effect of external conditions, or of habit, or of the volition of the plant itself" ("Natural Selection," p. 3, ed. 1876).

I cannot see this. To me it seems still more preposterous to account for it by the action of "natural selection" operating upon indefinite variations. It would be preposterous to suppose that a bird very different from a woodp.e.c.k.e.r should have had a conception of a woodp.e.c.k.e.r, and so by volition gradually grown towards it. So in like manner with the misletoe. Neither plant nor bird knew how far they were going, or saw more than a very little ahead as to the means of remedying this or that with which they were dissatisfied, or of getting this or that which they desired; but given perceptions at all, and thus a sense of needs and of the gratification of those needs, and thus hope and fear, and a sense of content and discontent- -given also the lowest power of gratifying those needs--given also that some individuals have these powers in a higher degree than others--given also continued personality and memory over a vast extent of time--and the whole phenomena of species and genera resolve themselves into an ill.u.s.tration of the old proverb, that what is one man's meat is another man's poison. Life in its lowest form under the above conditions--and we cannot conceive of life at all without them--would be bound to vary, and to result after not so very many millions of years in the infinite forms and instincts which we see around us.

CHAPTER XIII--LAMARCK AND MR. DARWIN

It will have been seen that in the preceding pages the theory of evolution, as originally propounded by Lamarck, has been more than once supported, as against the later theory concerning it put forward by Mr. Darwin, and now generally accepted.

It is not possible for me, within the limits at my command, to do anything like justice to the arguments that may be brought forward in favour of either of these two theories. Mr. Darwin's books are at the command of every one; and so much has been discovered since Lamarck's day, that if he were living now, he would probably state his case very differently; I shall therefore content myself with a few brief remarks, which will hardly, however, aspire to the dignity of argument.

According to Mr. Darwin, differentiations of structure and instinct have mainly come about through the acc.u.mulation of small, fortuitous variations without intelligence or desire upon the part of the creature varying; modification, however, through desire and sense of need, is not denied entirely, inasmuch as considerable effect is ascribed by Mr. Darwin to use and disuse, which involves, as has been already said, the modification of a structure in accordance with the wishes of its possessor.

According to Lamarck, genera and species have been evolved, in the main, by exactly the same process as that by which human inventions and civilisations are now progressing; and this involves that intelligence, ingenuity, heroism, and all the elements of romance, should have had the main share in the development of every herb and living creature around us.

I take the following brief outline of the most important part of Lamarck's theory from vol. x.x.xvi. of the Naturalist's Library (Edinburgh, 1843):-

"The more simple bodies," says the editor, giving Lamarck's opinion without endorsing it, "are easily formed, and this being the case, it is easy to conceive how in the lapse of time animals of a more complex structure should be produced, FOR IT MUST BE ADMITTED AS A FUNDAMENTAL LAW, THAT THE PRODUCTION OF A NEW ORGAN IN AN ANIMAL BODY RESULTS FROM ANY NEW WANT OR DESIRE IT MAY EXPERIENCE. The first effort of a being just beginning to develop itself must be to procure subsistence, and hence in time there comes to be produced a stomach or alimentary cavity." (Thus we saw that the amoeba is in the habit of "extemporising" a stomach when it wants one.) "Other wants occasioned by circ.u.mstances will lead to other efforts, which in their turn will generate new organs."

Lamarck's wonderful conception was hampered by an unnecessary adjunct, namely, a belief in an inherent tendency towards progressive development in every low organism. He was thus driven to account for the presence of many very low and very ancient organisms at the present day, and fell back upon the theory, which is not yet supported by evidence, that such low forms are still continually coming into existence from inorganic matter. But there seems no necessity to suppose that all low forms should possess an inherent tendency towards progression. It would be enough that there should occasionally arise somewhat more gifted specimens of one or more original forms. These would vary, and the ball would be thus set rolling, while the less gifted would remain in statu quo, provided they were sufficiently gifted to escape extinction.

Nor do I gather that Lamarck insisted on continued personality and memory so as to account for heredity at all, and so as to see life as a single, or as at any rate, only a few, vast compound animals, but without the connecting organism between each component item in the whole creature, which is found in animals that are strictly called compound. Until continued personality and memory are connected with the idea of heredity, heredity of any kind is little more than a term for something which one does not understand. But there seems little a priori difficulty as regards Lamarck's main idea, now that Mr.

Darwin has familiarised us with evolution, and made us feel what a vast array of facts can be brought forward in support of it.

Mr. Darwin tells us, in the preface to his last edition of the "Origin of Species," that Lamarck was partly led to his conclusions by the a.n.a.logy of domestic productions. It is rather hard to say what these words imply; they may mean anything from a baby to an apple dumpling, but if they imply that Lamarck drew inspirations from the gradual development of the mechanical inventions of man, and from the progress of man's ideas, I would say that of all sources this would seem to be the safest and most fertile from which to draw.

Plants and animals under domestication are indeed a suggestive field for study, but machines are the manner in which man is varying at this moment. We know how our own minds work, and how our mechanical organisations--for, in all sober seriousness, this is what it comes to--have progressed hand in hand with our desires; sometimes the power a little ahead, and sometimes the desire; sometimes both combining to form an organ with almost infinite capacity for variation, and sometimes comparatively early reaching the limit of utmost development in respect of any new conception, and accordingly coming to a full stop; sometimes making leaps and bounds, and sometimes advancing sluggishly. Here we are behind the scenes, and can see how the whole thing works. We have man, the very animal which we can best understand, caught in the very act of variation, through his own needs, and not through the needs of others; the whole process is a natural one; the varying of a creature as much in a wild state as the ants and b.u.t.terflies are wild. There is less occasion here for the continual "might be" and "may be," which we are compelled to put up with when dealing with plants and animals, of the workings of whose minds we can only obscurely judge. Also, there is more prospect of pecuniary profit attaching to the careful study of machinery than can be generally hoped for from the study of the lower animals; and though I admit that this consideration should not be carried too far, a great deal of very unnecessary suffering will be spared to the lower animals; for much that pa.s.ses for natural history is little better than prying into other people's business, from no other motive than curiosity. I would, therefore, strongly advise the reader to use man, and the present races of man, and the growing inventions and conceptions of man, as his guide, if he would seek to form an independent judgement on the development of organic life.

For all growth is only somebody making something.

Lamarck's theories fell into disrepute, partly because they were too startling to be capable of ready fusion with existing ideas; they were, in fact, too wide a cross for fertility; partly because they fell upon evil times, during the reaction that followed the French Revolution; partly because, unless I am mistaken, he did not sufficiently link on the experience of the race to that of the individual, nor perceive the importance of the principle that consciousness, memory, volition, intelligence, &c., vanish, or become latent, on becoming intense. He also appears to have mixed up matter with his system, which was either plainly wrong, or so incapable of proof as to enable people to laugh at him, and pooh-pooh him; but I believe it will come to be perceived, that he has received somewhat scant justice at the hands of his successors, and that his "crude theories," as they have been somewhat cheaply called, are far from having had their last say.

Returning to Mr. Darwin, we find, as we have already seen, that it is hard to say exactly how much Mr. Darwin differs from Lamarck, and how much he agrees with him. Mr. Darwin has always maintained that use and disuse are highly important, and this implies that the effect produced on the parent should be remembered by the offspring, in the same way as the memory of a wound is transmitted by one set of cells to succeeding ones, who long repeat the scar, though it may fade finally away. Also, after dealing with the manner in which one eye of a young flat-fish travels round the head till both eyes are on the same side of the fish, he gives ("Natural Selection," p. 188, ed.

1875) an instance of a structure "which apparently owes its origin exclusively to use or habit." He refers to the tail of some American monkeys "which has been converted into a wonderfully perfect prehensile organ, and serves as a fifth hand. A reviewer," he continues, . . . "remarks on this structure--'It is impossible to believe that in any number of ages the first slight incipient tendency to grasp, could preserve the lives of the individuals possessing it, or favour their chance of having and of rearing offspring.' But there is no necessity for any such belief. Habit, and this almost implies that some benefit, great or small, is thus derived, would in all probability suffice for the work." If, then, habit can do this--and it is no small thing to develop a wonderfully perfect prehensile organ which can serve as a fifth hand--how much more may not habit do, even though unaided, as Mr. Darwin supposes to have been the case in this instance, by "natural selection"? After attributing many of the structural and instinctive differences of plants and animals to the effects of use--as we may plainly do with Mr. Darwin's own consent--after attributing a good deal more to unknown causes, and a good deal to changed conditions, which are bound, if at all important, to result either in sterility or variation--how much of the work of originating species is left for natural selection?--which, as Mr. Darwin admits ("Natural Selection,"

p. 63, ed. 1876), does not INDUCE VARIABILITY, but "implies only the preservation of SUCH VARIATIONS AS ARISE, and are beneficial to the being under its conditions of life?" An important part a.s.suredly, and one which we can never sufficiently thank Mr. Darwin for having put so forcibly before us, but an indirect part only, like the part played by time and s.p.a.ce, and not, I think, the one which Mr. Darwin would a.s.sign to it.

Mr. Darwin himself has admitted that in the earlier editions of his "Origin of Species" he "underrated, as it now seems probable, the frequency and importance of modifications due to spontaneous variability." And this involves the having over-rated the action of "natural selection" as an agent in the evolution of species. But one gathers that he still believes the acc.u.mulation of small and fortuitous variations through the agency of "natural selection" to be the main cause of the present divergencies of structure and instinct.

I do not, however, think that Mr. Darwin is clear about his own meaning. I think the prominence given to "natural selection" in connection with the "origin of species" has led him, in spite of himself, and in spite of his being on his guard (as is clearly shown by the paragraph on page 63 "Natural Selection," above referred to), to regard "natural selection" as in some way accounting for variation, just as the use of the dangerous word "spontaneous,"-- though he is so often on his guard against it, and so frequently prefaces it with the words "so-called,"--would seem to have led him into very serious confusion of thought in the pa.s.sage quoted at the beginning of this paragraph.

For after saying that he had underrated "the frequency and importance of modifications due to spontaneous variability," he continues, "but it is impossible to attribute to this cause the innumerable structures which are so well adapted to the habits of life of each species." That is to say, it is impossible to attribute these innumerable structures to spontaneous variability.

What IS spontaneous variability?

Clearly, from his preceding paragraph, Mr. Darwin means only "so- called spontaneous variations," such as "the appearance of a moss- rose on a common rose, or of a nectarine on a peach-tree," which he gives as good examples of so-called spontaneous variation.

And these variations are, after all, due to causes, but to unknown causes; spontaneous variation being, in fact, but another name for variation due to causes which we know nothing about, but in no possible sense a CAUSE OF VARIATION. So that when we come to put clearly before our minds exactly what the sentence we are considering amounts to, it comes to this: that it is impossible to attribute the innumerable structures which are so well adapted to the habits of life of each species to UNKNOWN CAUSES.

"I can no more believe in THIS," continues Mr. Darwin, "than that the well-adapted form of a race-horse or greyhound, which, before the principle of selection by man was well understood, excited so much surprise in the minds of the older naturalists, can THUS be explained" ("Natural Selection," p. 171, ed. 1876).

Or, in other words, "I can no more believe that the well-adapted structures of species are due to unknown causes, than I can believe that the well-adapted form of a race-horse can be explained by being attributed to unknown causes.

I have puzzled over this paragraph for several hours with the sincerest desire to get at the precise idea which underlies it, but the more I have studied it the more convinced I am that it does not contain, or at any rate convey, any clear or definite idea at all.

If I thought it was a mere slip, I should not call attention to it; this book will probably have slips enough of its own without introducing those of a great man unnecessarily; but I submit that it is necessary to call attention to it here, inasmuch as it is impossible to believe that after years of reflection upon his subject, Mr. Darwin should have written as above, especially in such a place, if his mind was really clear about his own position.

Immediately after the admission of a certain amount of miscalculation, there comes a more or less exculpatory sentence which sounds so right that ninety-nine people out of a hundred would walk through it, unless led by some exigency of their own position to examine it closely but which yet upon examination proves to be as nearly meaningless as a sentence can be.

The weak point in Mr. Darwin's theory would seem to be a deficiency, so to speak, of motive power to originate and direct the variations which time is to acc.u.mulate. It deals admirably with the acc.u.mulation of variations in creatures already varying, but it does not provide a sufficient number of sufficiently important variations to be acc.u.mulated. Given the motive power which Lamarck suggested, and Mr. Darwin's mechanism would appear (with the help of memory, as bearing upon reproduction, of continued personality, and hence of inherited habit, and of the vanishing tendency of consciousness) to work with perfect ease. Mr. Darwin has made us all feel that in some way or other variations ARE ACc.u.mULATED, and that evolution is the true solution of the present widely different structures around us, whereas, before he wrote, hardly any one believed this. However we may differ from him in detail, the present general acceptance of evolution must remain as his work, and a more valuable work can hardly be imagined. Nevertheless, I cannot think that "natural selection," working upon small, fortuitous, indefinite, unintelligent variations, would produce the results we see around us. One wants something that will give a more definite aim to variations, and hence, at times, cause bolder leaps in advance. One cannot but doubt whether so many plants and animals would be being so continually saved "by the skin of their teeth," as must be so saved if the variations from which genera ultimately arise are as small in their commencement and at each successive stage as Mr. Darwin seems to believe. G.o.d--to use the language of the Bible--is not extreme to mark what is done amiss, whether with plant or beast or man; on the other hand, when towers of Siloam fall, they fall on the just as well as the unjust.

One feels, on considering Mr. Darwin's position, that if it be admitted that there is in the lowest creature a power to vary, no matter how small, one has got in this power as near the "origin of species" as one can ever hope to get. For no one professes to account for the origin of life; but if a creature with a power to vary reproduces itself at all, it must reproduce another creature WHICH SHALL ALSO HAVE THE POWER TO VARY; so that, given time and s.p.a.ce enough, there is no knowing where such a creature could or would stop.

If the primordial cell had been only capable of reproducing itself once, there would have followed a single line of descendants, the chain of which might at any moment have been broken by casualty.

Doubtless the millionth repet.i.tion would have differed very materially from the original--as widely, perhaps, as we differ from the primordial cell; but it would only have differed by addition, and could no more in any generation resume its latest development without having pa.s.sed through the initial stage of being what its first forefather was, and doing what its first forefather did, and without going through all or a sufficient number of the steps whereby it had reached its latest differentiation, than water can rise above its own level.

The very idea, then, of reproduction involves, unless I am mistaken, that, no matter how much the creature reproducing itself may gain in power and versatility, it must still always begin WITH ITSELF AGAIN in each generation. The primordial cell being capable of reproducing itself not only once, but many times over, each of the creatures which it produces must be similarly gifted; hence the geometrical ratio of increase and the existing divergence of type. In each generation it will pa.s.s rapidly and unconsciously through all the earlier stages of which there has been infinite experience, and for which the conditions are reproduced with sufficient similarity to cause no failure of memory or hesitation; but in each generation, when it comes to the part in which the course is not so clear, it will become conscious; still, however, where the course is plain, as in breathing, digesting, &c., retaining unconsciousness. Thus organs which present all the appearance of being designed--as, for example, the tip for its beak prepared by the embryo chicken--would be prepared in the end, as it were, by rote, and without sense of design, though none the less owing their origin to design.

The question is not concerning evolution, but as to the main cause which has led to evolution in such and such shapes. To me it seems that the "Origin of Variation," whatever it is, is the only true "Origin of Species," and that this must, as Lamarck insisted, be looked for in the needs and experiences of the creatures varying.

Unless we can explain the origin of variations, we are met by the unexplained AT EVERY STEP in the progress of a creature from its original h.o.m.ogeneous condition to its differentiation, we will say, as an elephant; so that to say that an elephant has become an elephant through the acc.u.mulation of a vast number of small, fortuitous, but unexplained, variations in some lower creatures, is really to say that it has become an elephant owing to a series of causes about which we know nothing whatever, or, in other words, that one does not know how it came to be an elephant. But to say that an elephant has become an elephant owing to a series of variations, nine-tenths of which were caused by the wishes of the creature or creatures from which the elephant is descended--this is to offer a reason, and definitely put the insoluble one step further back. The question will then turn upon the sufficiency of the reason--that is to say, whether the hypothesis is borne out by facts.