SCHEME OF THE REMAINDER OF THE WORK. HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE THEORY OF
EVOLUTION.
I have long felt that evolution must stand or fall according as it is
made to rest or not on principles which shall give a definite purpose
and direction to the variations whose accumulation results in specific,
and ultimately in generic differences. In other words, according as it
is made to stand upon the ground first clearly marked out for it by Dr.
Erasmus Darwin and afterwards adopted by Lamarck, or on that taken by
Mr. Charles Darwin.
There is some reason to fear that in consequence of the disfavour into
which modern Darwinism is seen to be falling by those who are more
closely watching the course of opinion upon this subject, evolution
itself may be for a time discredited as something inseparable from the
theory that it has come about mainly through "the means" of natural
selection. If people are shown that the arguments by which a somewhat
startling conclusion has been reached will not legitimately lead to that
conclusion, they are very ready to assume that the conclusion must be
altogether unfounded, especially when, as in the present case, there is
a vast mass of vested interests opposed to the conclusion. Few know that
there are other great works upon descent with modification besides Mr.
Darwin's. Not one person in ten thousand has any distinct idea of what
Buffon, Dr. Darwin, and Lamarck propounded. Their names have been
discredited by the very authors who have been most indebted to them;
there is hardly a writer on evolution who does not think it incumbent
upon him to warn Lamarck off the ground which he at any rate made his
own, and to cast a stone at what he will call the "shallow speculations"
or "crude theories" or the "well-known doctrine" of the foremost
exponent of Buffon and Dr. Darwin. Buffon is a great name, Dr. Darwin is
no longer even this, and Lamarck has been so systematically laughed at
that it amounts to little less than philosophical suicide for anyone to
stand up in his behalf. Not one of our scientific elders or chief
priests but would caution a student rather to avoid the three great men
whom I have named than to consult them. It is a perilous task therefore
to try and take evolution from the pedestal on which it now appears to
stand so securely, and to put it back upon the one raised for it by its
propounders; yet this is what I believe will have to be done sooner or
later unless the now general acceptance of evolution is to be shaken
more rudely than some of its upholders may anticipate. I propose
therefore to give a short biographical sketch of the three writers whose
works form new departures in the history of evolution, with a somewhat
full _resume_ of the positions they took in regard to it. I will also
touch briefly upon some other writers who have handled the same subject.
The reader will thus be enabled to follow the development of a great
conception as it has grown up in the minds of successive men of genius,
and by thus growing with it, as it were, through its embryonic stages,
he will make himself more thoroughly master of it in all its bearings.
I will then contrast the older with the newer Darwinism, and will show
why the 'Origin of Species,' though an episode of incalculable value,
cannot, any more than the 'Vestiges of Creation,' take permanent rank in
the literature of evolution.
It will appear that the evolution of evolution has gone through the
following principal stages:--
I. A general conception of the fact that specific types were not always
immutable.
This was common to many writers, both ancient and modern; it has been
occasionally asserted from the times of Anaximander and Lucretius to
those of Bacon and Sir Walter Raleigh.
II. A definite conception that animal and vegetable forms were so
extensively mutable that few (and, if so, perhaps but one) could claim
to be of an original stock; the direct effect of changed conditions
being assigned as the cause of modification, and the important
consequences of the struggle for existence being in many respects fully
recognized. The fact of design or purpose in connection with organism,
as causing habits and thus as underlying all variation, was also
indicated with some clearness, but was not thoroughly understood.
This phase must be identified with the name of Buffon, who, as I will
show reason for believing, would have carried his theory much further if
he had not felt that he had gone as far in the right direction as was
then desirable. Buffon put forward his opinions, with great reserve and
yet with hardly less frankness, in volume after volume from 1749 to
1788, the year of his death, but they do not appear to have taken root
at once in France. They took root in England, and were thence
transplanted back to France.
III. A development in England of the Buffonian system, marked by
glimpses of the unity between offspring and parents, and broad
suggestions to the effect that the former must be considered as capable
of remembering, under certain circumstances, what had happened to it,
and what it did, when it was part of the personality of those from whom
it had descended.
A definite belief, openly expressed, that not only are many species
mutable, but that all living forms, whether animal or vegetable, are
descended from a single, or at any rate from not many, original low
forms of life, and this as the direct consequence of the actions and
requirements of the living forms themselves, and as the indirect
consequence of changed conditions. A definite cause is thus supposed to
underlie variations, and the resulting adaptations become purposive; but
this was not said, nor, I am afraid, seen.
This is the original Darwinism of Dr. Erasmus Darwin. It was put forward
in his 'Zoonomia,' in 1794, and was adopted almost in its entirety by
Lamarck, who, when he had caught the leading idea (probably through a
French translation of the 'Loves of the Plants,' which appeared in
1800), began to expound it in 1801; in 1802, 1803, 1806, and 1809, he
developed it with greater fulness of detail than Dr. Darwin had done,
but perhaps with a somewhat less nice sense of some important points.
Till his death, in 1831, Lamarck, as far as age and blindness would
permit, continued to devote himself to the exposition of the theory of
descent with modification.
IV. A more distinct perception of the unity of parents and offspring,
with a bolder reference of the facts of heredity (whether of structure
or instinct), to memory pure and simple; a clearer perception of the
consequences that follow from the survival of the fittest, and a just
view of the relation in which those consequences stand to "the
circumstance-suiting" power of animals and plants; a reference of the
variations whose accumulation results in species, to the volition of the
animal or plant which varies, and perhaps a dawning perception that all
adaptations of structure to need must therefore be considered as
"purposive."
This must be connected with Mr. Matthew's work on 'Naval Timber and
Arboriculture,' which appeared in 1831. The remarks which it contains in
reference to evolution are confined to an appendix, but when brought
together, as by Mr. Matthew himself, in the 'Gardeners' Chronicle' for
April 7, 1860, they form one of the most perfect yet succinct
expositions of the theory of evolution that I have ever seen. I shall
therefore give them in full.[28] This book was well received, and was
reviewed in the 'Quarterly Review,'[29] but seems to have been valued
rather for its views on naval timber than on evolution. Mr. Matthew's
merit lies in a just appreciation of the importance of each one of the
principal ideas which must be present in combination before we can have
a correct conception of evolution, and of their bearings upon one
another. In his scheme of evolution I find each part kept in due
subordination to the others, so that the whole theory becomes more
coherent and better articulated than I have elsewhere found it; but I do
not detect any important addition to the ideas which Dr. Darwin and
Lamarck had insisted upon.
I pass over the 'Vestiges of Creation,' which should be mentioned only
as having, as Mr. Charles Darwin truly says, "done excellent service in
this country, in calling attention to this subject, in removing
prejudice, and in thus preparing the ground for the reception of
analogous views."[30] The work neither made any addition to ideas which
had been long familiar, nor arranged old ones in a satisfactory manner.
Such as it is, it is Dr. Darwin and Lamarck, but Dr. Darwin and Lamarck
spoiled. The first edition appeared in 1844.
I also pass over Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire's 'Natural History,' which
appeared 1854-62, and the position of which is best described by calling
it intermediate between the one which Buffon thought fit to pretend to
take, and that actually taken by Lamarck. The same may be said also of
Etienne Geoffroy. I will, however, just touch upon these writers later
on.
A short notice, again, will suffice for the opinions of Goethe,
Treviranus, and Oken, none of whom can I discover as having originated
any important new idea; but knowing no German, I have taken this
opinion from the resume of each of these writers, given by Professor
Haeckel in his 'History of Creation.'
V. A time of retrogression, during which we find but little apparent
appreciation of the unity between parents and offspring; no reference to
memory in connection with heredity, whether of instinct or structure; an
exaggerated view of the consequences which may be deduced from the fact
that the fittest commonly survive in the struggle for existence; the
denial of any known principle as underlying variations; comparatively
little appreciation of the circumstance-suiting power of plants and
animals, and a rejection of purposiveness. By far the most important
exponent of this phase of opinion concerning evolution is Mr. Charles
Darwin, to whom, however, we are more deeply indebted than to any other
living writer for the general acceptance of evolution in one shape or
another. The 'Origin of Species' appeared in 1859, the same year, that
is to say, as the second volume of Isidore Geoffroy's 'Histoire
Naturelle Generale.'
VI. A reaction against modern Darwinism, with a demand for definite
purpose and design as underlying variations. The best known writers who
have taken this line are the Rev. J. J. Murphy and Professor Mivart,
whose 'Habit and intelligence' and 'Genesis of Species' appeared in 1869
and 1871 respectively. In Germany Professor Hering has revived the idea
of memory as explaining the phenomena of heredity satisfactorily,
without probably having been more aware that it had been advanced
already than I was myself when I put it forward recently in 'Life and
Habit.' I have never seen the lecture in which Professor Hering has
referred the phenomena of heredity to memory, but will give an extract
from it which appeared in the 'Athenaeum,' as translated by Professor Ray
Lankester.[31] The only new feature which I believe I may claim to have
added to received ideas concerning evolution, is a perception of the
fact that the unconsciousness with which we go through our embryonic and
infantile stages, and with which we discharge the greater number and
more important of our natural functions, is of a piece with what we
observe concerning all habitual actions, as well as concerning memory;
an explanation of the phenomena of old age; and of the main principle
which underlies longevity. I may, perhaps, claim also to have more fully
explained the passage of reason into instinct than I yet know of its
having been explained elsewhere.[32]
FOOTNOTES:
[28] See ch. xviii. of this volume.
[29] Vol. xlix. p. 125.
[30] 'Origin of Species,' Hist. Sketch, xvii.
[31] See page 199 of this volume.
[32] Apropos of this, a friend has kindly sent me the following extract
from Balzac:--"Historiquement, les paysans sont encore au lendemain de
la Jacquerie, leur defaite est restee inscrite dans leur cervelle. _Ils
ne se souviennent plus du fait, il est passe a l'etat d'idee
instinctive._"--Balzac, 'Les Paysans,' v.