The Coming of Evolution Part 9

There is a tendency, when a great man has pa.s.sed from our midst, to estimate his merits and labours with undiscriminating, and often perhaps exaggerated, admiration; and this excessive praise is too often followed by a reaction, as the result of which the idol of one generation becomes almost commonplace to the next. A still further period is required before the proper position of mental perspective is reached by us, and a just judgment can be formed of the man's real place in history. The reputations of both Lyell and Darwin have, I think, pa.s.sed through both these two earlier phases of thought, and we may have arrived at the third stage.

There was one respect in which both Lyell and Darwin failed to satisfy many both of their contemporaries and successors. Lyell, like Hutton, always deprecated attempts to go back to a 'beginning,' while Darwin, who strongly supported Lyell in his geological views, was equally averse to speculations concerning the 'origin of life on the globe.'

Scrope[146], and also Huxley[147] in his earlier days, held the opinion that it was legitimate to a.s.sume or imagine a beginning, from which, with ever diminishing energy, the existing 'comparatively quiet conditions,' thought to characterise the present order of the world, would be reached. Both Lyell and Darwin insisted that geology is a historical science, and must be treated as such quite distinct from Cosmogony. And in the end, Huxley accepted the same view[148].

'Geology,' he a.s.serted, 'is as much a historical science as archaeology.'

The sober historian has always had to contend against the traditional belief that 'there were giants on the earth in those days!' The love of the marvellous has always led to the ascription of past events to the work of demiG.o.ds who were not of like powers and pa.s.sions with ourselves. Hence the invention of those 'catastrophies'--in which the reputations of deities as well as of men and women have often suffered.

It is the same tendency in the human mind which makes it so difficult to conceive of all the changes in the earth's surface-features and its inhabitants being due to similar operations to those still going on around us.

Lyell's views have constantly been misrepresented by the belief being ascribed to him that 'the forces operating on the globe have never acted with greater intensity than at the present day.' But his real position in this matter was a frankly 'agnostic' one. 'Bring me evidence,' he would have said, 'that changes have taken place on the globe, which cannot be accounted for by agencies still at work _when operating through sufficiently long periods of time_, and I will abandon my position.' But such evidence was not forthcoming in his day, and I do not think has ever been discovered since. Professor Sollas has very justly said, 'Geology has no need to return to the catastrophism of its youth; in becoming evolutional it does not cease to remain essentially uniformitarian[149].'

Alfred Russel Wallace, who has always been as stout a defender of the views of Lyell as he has of those of Darwin, has given me his permission to quote from a letter he wrote me in 1888. After referring to what he regards as the weak and mistaken attacks on Lyell's teachings, 'which have of late years been so general among geologists,' he says:--

'I have always been surprised when men have advanced the view that volcanic action _must_ have been greater when the earth was hotter, and entirely ignore the numerous indications that both subterranean and meteorological forces, even in Palaeozoic times, were of the same order of magnitude as they are now--and this I have always believed is what Lyell's teaching implies.'

I believe that Mr Wallace's expression, adopted from the mathematicians, 'the same order of magnitude,' would have met with Lyell's complete acquiescence. He was not so unwise as to suppose that, in the limited periods of human history, we must necessarily have had experience--even at Krakatoa or 'Skaptar Jokull'--of nature's greatest possible convulsions, but he fought tenaciously against any admission of 'cataclysms' that would belong to a totally different category to those of the present day.

Apart from theological objections, the most formidable obstacle to the reception of evolutionary ideas had always been the prejudice against the admission of vast duration of past geological time. It was unfortunate that, even when rational historical criticism had to a great extent neutralised the effect of Archbishop Usher's chronology, the mathematicians and physicists, a.s.suming certain sources of heat in the earth and sun could have been the only possible ones, tried to set a limit to the time at the disposal of the geologist and biologist.

Happily the discovery of radio-activity and the new sources of heat opened up by that discovery, have removed those objections, which were like a nightmare to both Geology and Biology.

Lyell used to relate the story of a man, who, from a condition of dire poverty, suddenly became the possessor of vast wealth, and when remonstrated with by friends on the inadequacy of a subscription he had offered, the poor fellow exclaimed sadly, 'Ah! you don't know how hard it is to get the chill of poverty out of one's bones.'

Geologists and biologists alike have long been the victims of this 'chill of poverty,' with respect to past time. So long as physicists insisted that one hundred millions, or forty millions, or even ten millions of years, must be the limit of geological time, it was not possible to avoid the conclusion stated by Lord Salisbury in 1894, 'Of course, if the mathematicians are right the biologists cannot have what they demand[150].' But now geologists and biologists may alike feel that the liberty with respect to _s.p.a.ce_, which is granted ungrudgingly to the astronomer, is no longer withheld from them in regard to _time_.

We can say with old Lamarck:--

'For Nature, Time is nothing. It is never a difficulty, she always has it at her disposal; and it is for her the means by which she has accomplished the greatest as well as the least results. For all the evolution of the earth and of living beings, Nature needs but three elements--s.p.a.ce, Time and Matter[151].'

Darwin, equally with Lyell, has suffered from a reaction following on extravagant and uninformed praise of his work. The fields in which he laboured single-handed, have yielded to hundreds of workers in many lands an abundant harvest. New doctrines and improved methods of enquiry have arisen--Mutationism, Mendelism, Weismannism, Neo-Lamarckism, Biometrics, Eugenics and what not--are being diligently exploited. But all of these vigorous growths have their real roots in Darwinism. If we study Darwin's correspondence, and the successive essays in which he embodied his views at different periods, we shall find, variation by mutation (or _per saltum_), the influence of environment, the question of the inheritance of acquired characters and similar problems were constantly present to Darwin's ever open mind, his views upon them changing from time to time, as fresh facts were gathered.

No one could sympathise more fully than would Darwin, were he still with us, in these various departures. He was compelled, from want of evidence, to regard variations as spontaneous, but would have heartily welcomed every attempt to discover the laws which govern them; and equally would he have delighted in researches directed to the investigation of the determining factors, controlling conditions and limits of inheritance. The man who so carefully counted and weighed his seeds in botanical experiments, could not but rejoice in the refined mathematical methods now being applied to biological problems.

Let us not 'in looking at the trees, lose sight of the wood.' Underlying all the problems, some of them very hotly discussed at the present day, there is the great central principle of Natural Selection--which if not the sole factor in evolution, is undoubtedly a very important and potent one. It is only necessary to compare the present position of the Natural History sciences with that which existed immediately before the publication of the _Origin of Species_, to realise the greatness of Darwin's achievement.

The fame of both Lyell and Darwin will endure, and their names will remain as closely linked as were the two men in their lives, the two devoted friends, whose remains found a meet resting-place, almost side by side, in the Abbey of Westminster. Very touching indeed was it to witness the marks of affection between these two great men; an affection which remained undiminished to the end. Lyell was twelve years senior to Darwin, and died seven years before his friend. During the last year of Lyell's life, I spent the summer with him at his home in Forfarshire.

How well do I recollect the keenness with which--in spite of a near-sightedness that had increased with age almost to blindness--he still devoted himself to geological work. The 264 note-books, all carefully indexed, were in constant use, and visits were made to all the haunts of his youth, with the frequent pathetic appeal to me, 'You must lend me your eyes.' In spite of age and weakness, he would insist on clambering up the steepest hills to show me where he had found glacial markings, and would eagerly listen to my report on them. But the _great_ delight of those days was the arrival of a letter from Darwin! Lyell was the recipient of many honours, and he declined many more, when he feared that they might interfere with the work to which he had devoted his life, but the distinction he prized most of all was that conferred on him by his life-long friend, who used to address him as 'My dear old Master,' and subscribe himself 'Your affectionate pupil.'

During the seven years that elapsed after the death of Lyell, I saw Darwin from time to time, for he loved to hear 'what was doing' in his 'favourite science.' On board the _Beagle_, before he had met the man whose life and work were to be so closely linked with his own, he was in the habit of specially treasuring up any 'facts that would interest Mr Lyell'; in middle life he declared that 'when seeing a thing never seen by Lyell, one yet saw it partially through his eyes[152]'; and never, I think, did we meet after the friend was gone, without the oft repeated query, 'What would Lyell have said to that?'

These reminiscences of the past, in which I have ventured to indulge, may not inappropriately conclude with a reference to the last interview I was privileged to have with him, who was 'the n.o.blest Roman of them all!' On the occasion of his last visit to London, in December, 1881, Charles Darwin wrote asking me to take lunch with him at his daughter's house, and to have 'a little talk' on geology. Greatly was I surprised at the vigour which he showed on that afternoon, for, contrary to his usual practice, he did not interrupt the conversation to retire and rest for a time, though I suggested the desirability of his doing so, and offered to stay. His brightness and animation, which were perhaps a little forced, struck me as so unusual that I laughingly suggested that he was 'renewing his youth.' Then a slight shade pa.s.sed over his countenance--but only for a moment--as he told me that he had 'received his warning.' The attack, to which his son has alluded, as being the prelude to the end[153], had occurred during this visit to town; and he intimated to me that he knew his heart was seriously affected. Never shall I forget how, seeing my concern, he insisted on accompanying me to the door, and how, with the ever kindly smile on his countenance, he held my hand in a prolonged grasp, that I sadly felt might perhaps be the last. And so it proved.

And now all the world is united in the conviction which Darwin so modestly expressed concerning his own career, 'I believe that I have acted rightly in steadily following and devoting myself to science!'

For has not that _devotion_ resulted in a complete reform of the Natural-History Sciences! The doctrine of the 'immutability of species'--like that of 'Catastrophism' in the inorganic world--has been eliminated from the Biological sciences by Darwin, through his _steadily following_ the clues found by him during his South American travels; and continuity is now as much the accepted creed of botanists and zoologists as it is of geologists. As a result of the labours of Darwin, new lines of thought have been opened out, fresh fields of investigation discovered, and the infinite variety among living things has acquired a grander aspect and a special significance. Very justly, then, has Darwin been universally acclaimed as 'the Newton of Natural History.'

NOTES

In the following references, L.L.L. indicates the "Life and Letters of Sir Charles Lyell" by Mrs K. Lyell (1881), D.L.L. the "Life and Letters of Charles Darwin" by F. Darwin (1887), M.L.D. "More Letters of Charles Darwin" edited by F. Darwin and A. C. Seward (1903), and H.C.E. Huxley's "Collected Essays."

[1] The Darwin-Wallace Celebration, Linn. Soc. (1908), p. 10.

[2] Darwin and Modern Science (1909), pp. 152-170.

[3] Pope, Essay on Man, Ep. I. lines 111-2.

[4] Genesis, Chap. x.x.x. verses 31-43.

[5] Brit. a.s.soc. Rep. 1900 (Bradford), pp. 916-920.

[6] _Ibid._ 1909 (Winnipeg), pp. 491-493.

[7] L.L.L. Vol. I. p. 468.

[8] Origin of Species, Chap. XV. end.

[9] Milton, Paradise Lost, Bk. VII. lines 454-466.

[10] Edinb. Rev. LXIX. (July 1839), pp. 446-465.

[11] Principles of Geology, Vol. I. (1830), p. 61.

[12] Zittel, Hist. of Geol. &c. Eng. transl. p. 72.

[13] Quart. Rev. Vol. XLVIII. (March 1832), p. 126.

[14] Brit. a.s.soc. Rep. 1866 (Nottingham).

[15] H.C.E. Vol. VIII. p. 315.

[16] _Ibid._ p. 190.

[17] D.L.L. Vol. II. pp. 179-204.

[18] H.C.E. Vol. V. p. 101.

[19] D.L.L. Vol. II. p. 190.

[20] Edinb. Rev. Vol. LXIX. (July 1839), p. 455 _note_.

[21] 'Theory of the Earth,' Vol. II. p. 67.

[22] L.L.L. Vol. I. p. 272.

[23] Brit. a.s.soc. Rep. 1833 (Cambridge), pp. 365-414.

[24] Outlines of the Geology of England and Wales, p. xliv.