The electric organs of fishes offer another case of special
difficulty: It is impossible to conceive by what steps these wondrous
organs have been produced; but, as Owen and others have remarked,
their intimate structure closely resembles that of common muscle; and
as it has lately been shown that rays have an organ closely analogous
to the electric apparatus, and yet do not, as Matteucci asserts,
discharge any electricity, we must own that we are far too ignorant to
argue that _no transition of any kind is possible._--pp. 192-3.
Sometimes Mr. Darwin seems for a moment to recoil himself from this
extravagant liberty of speculation, as when he says, concerning the
eye,--
To suppose that the eye, with its inimitable contrivances for
adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different
amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic
aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I
freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.--p. 186.
But he soon returns to his new wantonness of conjecture, and, without
the shadow of a fact, contents himself with saying that--
he _suspects_ that any sensitive nerve may be rendered sensitive to
light, and likewise to those coarser vibrations of the air which
produce sound.--p-187.
And in the following passage he carries this extravagance to the highest
pitch, requiring a licence for advancing as true any theory which cannot
be demonstrated to be actually impossible:--
If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, _which
could not possibly_ have been formed by numerous, successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find
no such case.--p. 189.
Another of these assumptions is not a little remarkable. It suits his
argument to deduce all our known varieties of pigeons from the
rock-pigeon (the Columba livia), and this parentage is traced out,
though not, we think, to demonstration, yet with great ingenuity and
patience. But another branch of the argument would be greatly
strengthened by establishing the descent of our various breeds of dogs
with their perfect power of fertile inter-breeding from different
natural species. And accordingly, though every fact as to the canine
race is parallel to the facts which have been used before to establish
the common parentage of the pigeons in Columba livia, all these are
thrown over in a moment, and Mr. Darwin, first assuming, without the
shadow of proof, that our domestic breeds are descended from different
species, proceeds calmly to argue from this, as though it were a
demonstrated certainty.
It _seems to me unlikely_ in the case of the dog-genus, which is
distributed in a wild state throughout the world, that since man first
appeared one species alone should have been domesticated.--p. 18.
In some cases _I do not doubt_ that the intercrossing of species
aboriginally distinct has played an important part in the origin of
our domestic productions.--p. 43.
What new words are these for a loyal disciple of the true Baconian
philosophy?--"I can conceive"--"It is not incredible"--"I do not doubt"
--"It is conceivable."
For myself, _I venture confidently_ to look back thousands on
thousands of generations, and I see an animal striped like a zebra,
but perhaps otherwise very differently constructed, the common parent
of our domestic horse, whether or not it be descended from one or more
wild stocks of the ass, hemionous, quagga, or zebra.--p. 167.
In the name of all true philosophy we protest against such a mode of
dealing with nature, as utterly dishonourable to all natural science, as
reducing it from its present lofty level of being one of the noblest
trainers of man's intellect and instructors of his mind, to being a mere
idle play of the fancy, without the basis of fact or the discipline of
observation. In the "Arabian Nights" we are not offended as at an
impossibility when Amina sprinkles her husband with water and transforms
him into a dog, but we cannot open the august doors of the venerable
temple of scientific truth to the genii and magicians of romance. We
plead guilty to Mr. Darwin's imputation that
the chief cause of our natural unwillingness to admit that one species
has given birth to other and distinct species is that we are always
slow in admitting any great change of which we do not see the
intermediate steps.--p. 481.
In this tardiness to admit great changes suggested by the imagination,
but the steps of which we cannot see, is the true spirit of philosophy.
Analysis, says Professor Sedgwick, consists in making experiments and
observations, and in drawing general conclusions from them by
induction, and admitting of no objections against the conclusions but
such as are taken from experiments or other certain truths; for
_hypotheses are not to be regarded in experimental philosophy._[1]
[1] "A Discourse on the Studies of the University," by A. Sedgwick, p.
102.
The other solvent which Mr. Darwin most freely and, we think,
unphilosophically employs to get rid of difficulties, is his use of
time. This he shortens or prolongs at will by the mere wave of his
magician's rod. Thus the duration of whole epochs, during which certain
forms of animal life prevailed, is gathered up into a point, whilst an
unlimited expanse of years, "impressing his mind with a sense of
eternity," is suddenly interposed between that and the next series,
though geology proclaims the transition to have been one of gentle and,
it may be, swift accomplishment. All this too is made the more startling
because it is used to meet the objections drawn from facts. "We see none
of your works," says the observer of nature; "we see no beginnings of
the portentous change; we see plainly beings of another order in
creation, but we find amongst them no tendencies to these altered
organisms." "True," says the great magician, with a calmness no
difficulty derived from the obstinacy of facts can disturb; "true, but
remember the effect of time. Throw in a few hundreds of millions of
years more or less, and why should not all these changes be possible,
and, if possible, why may I not assume them to be real?"
Together with this large licence of assumption we notice in this book
several instances of receiving as facts whatever seems to bear out the
theory upon the slightest evidence, and rejecting summarily others,
merely because they are fatal to it. We grieve to charge upon Mr. Darwin
this freedom in handling facts, but truth extorts it from us. That the
loose statements and unfounded speculations of this book should come
from the author of the monograms on Cirripedes, and the writer, in the
natural history of the Voyage of the "Beagle," of the paper on the Coral
Reefs, is indeed a sad warning how far the love of a theory may seduce
even a first-rate naturalist from the very articles of his creed.
This treatment of facts is followed up by another favourite line of
argument, namely, that by this hypothesis difficulties otherwise
inextricable are solved. Such passages abound. Take a few, selected
almost at random, to illustrate what we mean:--
How inexplicable are these facts on the ordinary view of creation!--p.
436.
Such facts as the presence of peculiar species of bats and the absence
of other mammals on oceanic islands are utterly inexplicable on the
theory of independent acts of creation.--pp. 477-8.
It must be admitted that these facts receive no explanation on the
theory of creation.--p. 478.
The inhabitants of the Cape de Verde Islands are related to those of
Africa, like those of the Galapagos to America. I believe this grand
fact can receive no sort of explanation on the ordinary view of
independent creation.--pp. 398-9.
Now what can be more simply reconcilable with that theory than Mr.
Darwin's own account of the mode in which the migration of animal life
from one distant region to another is continually accomplished?