The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 Part 24

But the effects of the lumniaries depend upon their distances from the earth, for when they are less distant their effects are greater and when more distant their effects are less, and that in the triplicate proportion of their apparent diameters. Therefore it is that the sun in winter time, being then in its perigee, has a greater effect, whether added to or subtracted from that of the moon, than in the summer season, and every month the moon, while in the perigee raiseth higher tides than at the distance of fifteen days before or after when it is in its apogee.

The fixed stars being at such vast distances from one another, can neither attract each other sensibly nor be attracted by our sun.

_Comets_

There are three hypotheses about comets. For some will have it that they are generated and perish as often as they appear and vanish; others that they come from the regions of the fixed stars, and are near by us in their pa.s.sage through the sytem of our planets; and, lastly, others that they are bodies perpetually revolving about the sun in very eccentric orbits.

In the first case, the comets, according to their different velocities, will move in conic sections of all sorts; in the second they will describe hyperbolas; and in either of the two will frequent indifferently all quarters of the heavens, as well those about the poles as those towards the ecliptic; in the third their motions will be performed in eclipses very eccentric and very nearly approaching to parabolas. But (if the law of the planets is observed) their orbits will not much decline from the plane of the ecliptic; and, so far as I could hitherto observe, the third case obtains; for the comets do indeed chiefly frequent the zodiac, and scarcely ever attain to a heliocentric lat.i.tude of 40 degrees. And that they move in orbits very nearly parabolical, I infer from their velocity; for the velocity with which a parabola is described is everywhere to the velocity with which a comet or planet may be revolved about the sun in a circle at the same distance in the subduplicate ratio of 2 to 1; and, by my computation, the velocity of comets is found to be much about the same. I examined the thing by inferring nearly the velocities from the distances, and the distances both from the parallaxes and the phenomena of the tails, and never found the errors of excess or defect in the velocities greater than what might have arisen from the errors in the distances collected after that manner.

SIR RICHARD OWEN

Anatomy of Vertebrates

Sir Richard Owen, the great naturalist, was born July 20, 1804, at Lancaster, England, and received his early education at the grammar school of that town. Thence he went to Edinburgh University. In 1826 he was admitted a member of the English College of Surgeons, and in 1829 was lecturing at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London, where he had completed his studies. His "Memoir on the Pearly Nautillus," published in 1832, placed him, says Huxley, "at a bound in the front rank of anatomical monographers," and for sixty-two years the flow of his contributions to scientific literature never ceased. In 1856 he was appointed to take charge of the natural history departments of the British Museum, and before long set forth views as to the inadequacy of the existing accommodation, which led ultimately to the foundation of the buildings now devoted to this purpose in South Kensington. Owen died on December 18, 1892. His great book, "Comparative Anatomy and Physiology of the Vertebrates," was completed in 1868, and since Cuvier's "Comparative Anatomy," is the most monumental treatise on the subject by any one man. Although much of the cla.s.sification adopted by Owen has not been accepted by other zoologists, yet the work contains an immense amount of information, most of which was gained from Owen's own personal observations and dissections.

_I.--Biological Questions of 1830_

At the close of my studies at the Jardin des Plantes, Paris, in 1831, I returned strongly moved to lines of research bearing upon the then prevailing phases of thought on some biological questions.

The great master in whose dissecting rooms I was privileged to work held that species were not permanent as a fact established inductively on a wide basis of observation, by which comparative osteology had been created. Camper and Hunter suspected the species might be transitory; but Cuvier, in defining the characters of his anaplotherium and palaeotherium, etc., proved the fact. Of the relation of past to present species, Cuvier had not an adequate basis for a decided opinion.

Observation of changes in the relative position of land and sea suggested to him one condition of the advent of new species on an island or continent where old species had died out. This view he ill.u.s.trates by a hypothetical case of such succession, but expressly states: "I do not a.s.sert that a new creation was necessary to produce the species now existing, but only that they did not exist in the same regions, and must have come from elsewhere." Geoffrey Saint Hilaire opposed to Cuvier's inductive treatment of the question the following expression of belief: "I have no doubt that existing animals are directly descended from the animals of the antediluvian world," but added, "it is my belief that the season has not yet arrived for a really satisfying knowledge of geology."

The main collateral questions argued in their debates appeared to me to be the following:

Unity of plan or final purpose, as a governing condition of organic development?

Series of species, uninterrupted or broken by intervals?

Extinction, cataclysmal or regulated?

Development, by epigenesis or evolution?

Primary life, by miracle or secondary law?

Cuvier held the work of organisation to be guided and governed by final purpose or adaptation. Geoffrey denied the evidence of design and contended for the principle which he called "unity of composition," as the law of organisation. Most of his ill.u.s.trations were open to the demonstration of inaccuracy; and the language by which disciples of the kindred school of Sch.e.l.ling ill.u.s.trated in the animal structure the transcendental idea of the whole in every part seemed little better than mystical jargon. With Cuvier, answerable parts occurred in the zoological scale because they had to perform similar functions.

As, however, my observations and comparisons acc.u.mulated, they enforced a reconsideration of Cuvier's conclusions. To demonstrate the evidence of the community of organisation I found the artifice of an archetype vertebrate animal essential; and from the demonstration of its principle, which I then satisfied myself was a.s.sociated with and dominated by that of "adaptation to purpose," the step was inevitable to the conception of the operation of a secondary cause of the entire series of species, such cause being the servant of predetermining intelligent will.

But besides "derivation" or "filiation" another principle influencing organisation became recognisable, to which I gave the name of "irrelative repet.i.tion," or "vegetative repet.i.tion." The demonstrated const.i.tution of the vertebrate endoskeleton as a series of essentially similar segments appeared to me to ill.u.s.trate the law of irrelative repet.i.tion.

These results of inductive research swayed me in rejecting direct or miraculous creation, and in recognising a "natural law or secondary cause" as operative in the production of species "in orderly succession and progression."

_II.--Succession of Species, Broken or Linked?_

To the hypothesis that existing are modifications of extinct species, Cuvier replied that traces of modification were due from the fossil world. "You ought," he said, "to be able to show the intermediate forms between the palaeotherium and existing hoofed quadrupeds."

The progress of palaeontology since 1830 has brought to light many missing links unknown to the founder of the science. The discovery of the remains of the hipparion supplied one of the links required by Cuvier, and it is significant that the remains of such three-toed horses are found only in deposits of that tertiary period which intervene between the older palaeotherian one and the newer strata in which the modern horse first appears to have lost its lateral hooflets.

The molar series of the horse includes six large complex grinders individually recognisable by developmental characters. The representative of the first premolar is minute and soon shod. Its h.o.m.ologue in palaeotherium is functionally developed and retained, that type-dent.i.tion being adhered to. In hipparion this tooth is smaller than in palaeotherium, but functional and permanent. The transitory and singularly small and simple denticle in the horse exemplifies the rudiment of an ancestral structure in the same degree as do the hoofless splint-bones; just as the spurious hoofs dangling therefrom in hipparion are retained rudiments of the functionally developed lateral hoofs in the broader foot of palaeotherium.

Other missing links of this series of species have also been supplied.

How then is the origin of these intermediate gradations to be interpreted? If the alternative--species by miracle or by law--be applied to palaeotherium, paloplotherium, anchitherium, hipparion, equus, I accept the latter without misgiving, and recognise such law as continuously operative throughout tertiary time.

In respect to its law of operation we may suppose Lamarck to say, "as the surface of the earth consolidated, the larger and more produced mid-hoof of the old three-toed pachyderius took a greater share in sustaining the animal's weight; and more blood being required to meet the greater demand of the more active mid-toe, it grew; whilst, the side-toes, losing their share of nourishment and becoming more and more withdrawn from use, shrank"--and so on. Mr. Darwin, I conceive, would modify this by saying that some individuals of palaeotherium happening to be born with a larger and longer middle toe, and with shorter and smaller side-toes, such variety was better adapted to prevailing altered conditions of the earth's surface than the parental form; and so on, until finally the extreme equine modifications of foot came to be "naturally selected." But the hypothesis of appetency and volition, as of natural selection, are less applicable, less intelligible, in connection with the changes in the teeth.

I must further observe that to say the palaeotherium has graduated into equus by "natural selection" is an explanation of the process of the same kind and value as that by which the secretion of bile was attributed to the "appetency" of the liver for the elements of bile.

One's surprise is that such explanatory devices should not have died out with the "archeus faber," the "nisus formations," and other self-deceiving, world-beguiling simulacra of science, with the last century; and that a resuscitation should have had any success in the present.

What, then, are the facts on which any reasonable or intelligible conception can be formed of the mode of operation of the derivative law exemplified in the series linking on palaeotherium to equus? A very significant one is the following. A modern horse occasionally comes into the world with the supplementary ancestral hoofs. From Valerius Maximus, who attributes the variety to Bucephalus downwards, such "polydactyle"

horses have been noted as monsters and marvels. In one of the latest examples, the inner splint-bone, answering to the second metacarpal of the pentadactyle foot, supported phalanges and a terminal hoof resembling the corresponding one in hipparion. And the pairing of horses with the meterpodials bearing, according to type, phalanges and hoofs might restore the race of hipparions.

Now, the fact suggesting such possibility teaches that the change would be sudden and considerable; it opposes the idea that species are trans.m.u.ted by minute and slow degrees. It also shows that a species might originate independently of the operation of any external influence; that change of structure would precede that of use and habit; that appetency, impulse, ambient medium, fortuitous fitness of surrounding circ.u.mstances, or a personified "selecting nature" would have had no share in the trans.m.u.tative act.

Thus I have been led to recognise species as exemplifying the continuous operation of natural law, or secondary cause; and that not only successively but progressively; "from the first embodiment of the vertebrate idea under its old ichthyic vestment until it became arrayed in the glorious garb of the human form."

_III.--Extinction--Cataclysmal or Regulated_

If the species of palaeothere, paloplothere, anchithere, hipparion, and horse be severally deemed due to remotely and successively repeated acts of creation; the successive going out of such species must have been as miraculous as their coming in. Accordingly, in Cuvier's "Discourse on Revolutions of the Earth's Surface" we have a section of "Proofs that these revolutions have been numerous," and another of "Proofs that these revolutions have been sudden." But as the discoveries of palaeontologists have supplied the links between the species held to have perished by the cataclysms, so each successive parcel of geological truth has tended to dissipate the belief in the unusually sudden and violent nature of the changes recognisable in the earth's surface. In specially directing my attention to this moot point, whilst engaged in investigations of fossil remains, I was led to recognise one cause of extinction as being due to defeat in the contest which the individual of each species had to maintain against the surrounding agencies which might militate against its existence. This principle has received a large and most instructive accession of ill.u.s.trations from the labours of Charles Darwin; but he aims to apply it not only to the extinction but to the origin of species.

Although I fail to recognise proof of the latter bearing of the battle of life, the concurrence of so much evidence in favour of extinction by law is, in like measure, corroborative of the truth of the ascription of the origin of species to a secondary cause.

What spectacle can be more beautiful than that of the inhabitants of the calm expanse of water of an atoll encircled by its ring of coral rock!

Leaving locomotive frequenters of the calcarious basin out of the question, we may ask, Was direct creation after the dying out of its result as a "rugose coral" repeated to const.i.tute the succeeding and superseding "tabulate coral"? Must we also invoke the miraculous power to initiate every distinct species of both rugosa and tabulata? These grand old groups have had their day and are utterly gone. When we endeavour to conceive or realise such mode of origin, not of them only but of their manifold successors, the miracle, by the very multiplication of its manifestations, becomes incredible--inconsistent with any worthy conception of an all-seeing, all-provident Omnipotence.

Being unable to accept the volitional hypothesis (of Lamarck) or the selective force exerted by outward circ.u.mstances (Darwin), I deem an innate tendency to deviate from parental type, operating through periods of adequate duration, to be the most probable way of operation of the secondary law whereby species have been derived one from another.

According to my derivative hypothesis a change takes place first in the structure of the animal, and this, when sufficiently advanced, may lead to modifications of habits. But species owe as little to the accidental concurrence of environing circ.u.mstances as kosmos depends upon a fortuitous concourse of atoms. A purposive route of development and change of correlation and inter-dependence, manifesting intelligent will, is as determinable in the succession of races as in the development and organisation of the individual.

Derivation holds that every species changes in time, by virtue of inherent tendencies thereto. Natural selection holds that no such change can take place without the influence of altered external circ.u.mstances educing or eliciting such change.

Derivation sees among the effects of the innate tendency to change, irrespective of altered surrounding circ.u.mstances, a manifestation of creative power in the variety and beauty of the results; and, in the ultimate forthcoming of a being susceptible of appreciating such beauty, evidence of the preordaining of such relation of power to the appreciation. Natural selection acknowledges that if power or beauty, in itself, should be a purpose in creation, it would be absolutely fatal to it as a hypothesis.

Natural selection sees grandeur in the "view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one." Derivation sees, therein, a narrow invocation of a special miracle and an unworthy limitation of creative power, the grandeur of which is manifested daily, hourly, in calling into life many forms, by conversion of physical and chemical into vital modes of force, under as many diversified conditions of the requisite elements to be so combined.

Natural selection leaves the subsequent origin and succession of species to the fortuitous concurrence of outward conditions; derivation recognises a purpose in the defined and preordained course, due to innate capacity or power of change, by which h.o.m.ogeneously-created protozoa have risen to the higher forms of plants and animals.

The hypothesis of derivation rests upon conclusions from four great series of inductively established facts, together with a probable result of facts of a fifth cla.s.s; the hypothesis of natural selection totters on the extension of a conjectural condition explanatory of extinction to the origination of species, inapplicable in that extension to the majority of organisms, and not known or observed to apply to the origin of any species.

_IV.--Epigenesis or Evolution?_