HUXLEY AND DARWIN
Early Ideas on Evolution--Erasmus Darwin--Lamarck--Herbert
Spencer--Difference between Evolution and Natural
Selection--Huxley's Preparation for Evolution--The Novelty of
Natural Selection--The Advantage of Natural Selection as a
Working Hypothesis--Huxley's Unchanged Position with regard to
Evolution and Natural Selection from 1860 to 1894.
From our attempt to place together as much as possible of Huxley's
geological work in the last chapter, it followed that we anticipated
much that falls properly within this chapter. The year 1859, the date
of publication of _The Origin of Species_, is a momentous date in the
history of this century, as it was the year in which there was given
to the world a theory that not only revolutionised scientific opinion,
but altered the trend of almost every branch of thought. To understand
this great change, and the part played in it by Huxley, it is
necessary to be quite clear as to what Darwin did. In the first place,
he did not invent evolution. The idea that all the varied structures
in the world, the divergent forms of rocks and minerals and crystals,
the innumerable trees and herbs that cover the face of the earth like
a mantle, and all the animal host of creatures great and small that
dwell on the land or dart through the air or people the waters,--that
all these had arisen by natural laws from a primitive unformed
material was known to the Greeks, was developed by the Romans, and
even received the approval of early Christian Fathers, who wrote long
before the idea had been invented that the naive legends of the Old
Testament were an authoritative and literal account of the origin of
the world. After a long interval, in which scientific thought was
stifled by theological dogmatism, the theory of evolution,
particularly in its application to animals, began to reappear, long
before Darwin published _The Origin of Species_. Buffon, the great
French naturalist, and Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles, had
expressed in the clearest way the possibility that species had not
been created independently, but had arisen from other species. Lamarck
had worked out a theory of descent in the fullest detail, and regarded
it as the foundation of the whole science of biology. He taught that
the beginning of life consisted only of the simplest and lowest plants
and animals; that the more complex animals and plants arose from
these, and that even man himself had come from ape-like mammals. He
held that the course of development of the earth and of all the
creatures upon it was a slow and continuous change, uninterrupted by
violent revolutions. He summed up the causes of organic evolution in
the following propositions[D]:
"1. Life tends by its inherent forces to increase the volume of
each living body and of all its parts up to a limit determined by
its own needs.
"2. New wants in animals give rise to new movements which
produce organs.
"3. The development of these organs is in proportion to their
employment.
"4. New developments are transmitted to offspring."
He supported especially the last two propositions by a series of
examples as to the effects of use and disuse; and the most famous of
these, the theory that giraffes had produced their long necks by
continually stretching up towards the trees on which they fed, is well
known to everyone. However, the ingenious speculations of Lamarck were
unsupported by a sufficient range of actual knowledge of anatomy, and
lacked experimental proof. He entirely failed to convince his
contemporaries; and Darwin himself, in a letter to Lyell, declared
that he had gained nothing from two readings of Lamarck's book. There
can be little doubt but that several Continental writers, in
particular Haeckel, have exaggerated Lamarck's services to the
development of the idea of evolution. On the other hand, Lyell,
although he strongly opposed the ideas of Lamarck and some curious
notions of progressional creation due to the great Agassiz, had
prepared the way for Darwin by his advocacy of natural causes and slow
changes in opposition to the catastrophic and miraculous views in
vogue. Above all, Herbert Spencer had argued most strenuously in
favour of evolution. Thus, in an important passage quoted by Mr. Clodd
from the _Leader_ of March 20, 1852, Spencer had written as follows:
"Those who cavalierly reject the theory of evolution, as not
adequately supported by facts, seem quite to forget that their
own theory is not supported by facts at all. Like the majority of
men who are born to a given belief, they demand the most rigorous
proof of any adverse belief, but assume that their own needs
none. Here we find, scattered over the globe, vegetable and
animal organisms numbering, of the one kind (according to
Humboldt) some 320,000 species, and of the other, some 2,000,000
species (see Carpenter); and if to these we add the numbers of
animal and vegetable species that have become extinct, we may
safely estimate the number of species that have existed, and are
existing, on the earth, at no less than ten millions. Well, which
is the most rational theory about these ten millions of species?
Is it most likely that there have been ten millions of special
creations; or is it most likely that by continual modifications,
due to change of circumstances, ten millions of varieties have
been produced, as varieties are being produced still?... Even
could the supporters of the development hypothesis merely shew
that the origination of species by the process of modification is
conceivable, they would be in a better position than their
opponents. But they can do much more than this. They can shew
that the process of modification has effected, and is effecting,
decided changes in all organisms subject to modifying
influences.... They can shew that in successive generations these
changes continue, until ultimately the new conditions become the
natural ones. They can shew that in cultivated plants,
domesticated animals, and in the several races of men, such
alterations have taken place. They can show that the degrees of
difference so produced are often, as in dogs, greater than those
on which distinctions of species have been founded. They can
shew, too, that the changes daily taking place in ourselves--the
facility that attends long practice, and the loss of aptitude
that begins when practice ceases,--the strengthening of the
passions habitually gratified, and the weakening of those
habitually curbed,--the development of every faculty, bodily,
moral, intellectual, according to the use made of it--are all
explicable on this principle. And thus they can shew that
throughout all organic nature there is at work a modifying
influence of the kind they assign as the cause of these specific
differences; an influence which, though slow in its action, does,
in time, if the circumstances demand it, produce marked
changes--an influence which, to all appearance, would produce in
the millions of years, and under the great varieties of condition
which geological records imply, any amount of change."
These and many other instances which might be brought together from
the published writings of the half-century before the publication of
the _Origin_, show conclusively that the idea of evolution was far
from new, and that all through the first part of this century
dissatisfaction with the doctrine of the fixity of species and of
their miraculous creation was growing. The great contribution of
Darwin was this: First, by his theory of natural selection, he brought
together the known facts of variation, of struggle for existence, and
of adaptation to varying conditions, in such a way that they provided
men with a rational and known cause, a cause the operation of which
could be seen, for the origin of species by means of preservation of
favoured races. Next, as to the origin of species, he brought together
not only proofs of the actual operation of natural selection, but a
body of evidence in favour of the fact of evolution that was, beyond
all comparison, more striking than had been adduced by any earlier
philosophical or biological writer. He convinced naturalists that
evolution was by far the most probable way in which the living world
had come to be what it is, and he made them turn to examination of the
animal and vegetable kingdoms with a lively hope that the past history
of the living world was not an insoluble problem. Darwin's doctrine
brought a new life into biological study, and the result of the
incomparably greater bulk of investigation that followed the year 1859
was a continual increase of evidence in favour of the probability of
evolution, until now the whole scientific world, and the majority of
those who are unscientific, are content to accept evolution as the
only reasonable explanation of the living world. It is well to
remember that while Darwin, by bringing forward the theory of struggle
for existence and resulting survival of the fittest, was the actual
cause of the present assured position of evolution as a first
principle of science, it by no means follows that the survival of the
fittest has become similarly a first principle of science. At cross
roads a traveller may choose the right path from a quite
unsatisfactory reason. Darwin himself, in the act of bringing forward
his own theory of natural selection, admitted the possibility of the
co-operation of many other agencies in evolution, and at various times
during the course of his life he was inclined to attach, now more now
less, importance to these additional agencies. Huxley, as we shall
soon come to see, never wavered in his adhesion to the facts of
evolution after 1859; but, from first to last, regarded natural
selection as only the most probable cause of the occurrence of
evolution. Other naturalists, of whom the best-known are Weismann in
Germany, Ray Lankester in England, and W.K. Brooks in America, have
come to attach a continually increasing importance to the purely
Darwinian factor of natural selection; while others again, such as
Herbert Spencer in England, and the late Professor Cope and a large
American school, have advocated more and more strongly the importance
of what may be called the Lamarckian factors of evolution,--the
inherited effects of increased or diminished use of organs, the direct
influence of the environment, and so forth. From the fact that Darwin
has persuaded the world of the truth of evolution, evolution is often
called Darwinism; and in this historically just though scientifically
inaccurate sense of the term, Huxley was a strict Darwinian, a
Darwinian of the Darwinians. From the facts that, although natural
selection had been formulated by several writers before Darwin, and
had been simultaneously elaborated by Wallace and Darwin, the _Origin
of Species_ was the foundation of the modern acceptation of evolution,
and natural selection was the key-note of the origin of species,
natural selection may be called Darwinism with both historical and
scientific accuracy; and in this sense of the term Huxley was a
Darwinian; a convinced but free-thinking and broad-minded Darwinian,
who was far from persuaded that his tenet had a monopoly of truth, and
who delighted in shewing the distinctions between what seemed to him
probable and what was proved, and in absorbing from other doctrines
whatever he thought worthy to be absorbed. The present writer has
thought it so important to distinguish between these two sides of the
word _Darwinism_, that for the sake of clearness he has stated what he
believes to be the truth of Huxley's relation to Darwin before
beginning detailed exposition of it.
In consideration of Huxley's position before 1859, the most
interesting feature of his zoölogical work is the gradual preparation
that it was making in his mind for the doctrine of the _Origin_. He
was like an engineer boring a tunnel through a mountain, but ignorant
of how near he was to the pleasant valley on the other side; and,
above all, ignorant how rapidly he was being met by a much more mighty
excavation from the other side. To use what is perhaps a more exact
simile: he was like a child with half the pieces of a puzzle-map,
slowly linking them together as far as they would fit, and quite
ignorant that presently the remaining half would suddenly be given
him, and with almost no trouble would at once fit into the gaps he had
necessarily left, and transform a meaningless pattern into a perfect
and intelligible whole. Let us consider some of these map pieces. The
ultimate picture was the conception of the whole world of life, past
and present, as a single family tree growing up from the simplest
possible roots, and gradually spreading out first into the two main
branches of animals and plants, and then into the endless series of
complicated ramifications that make up living and extinct animals and
plants. Huxley was piecing together the scattered fragments, and
gradually learning to see here and there whole branches, as yet
separate at their lower ends, but in themselves shapely, and showing a
general resemblance to one another in the gradual progression from
simple to complex. The greatest of these branches that he had pieced
together was the group of Medusæ and their allies, now known as
Coelenterates. He had formed similar branches for the Molluscs and
minor branches for the Salps and Ascidians, and, in his general
lectures on the whole animal kingdom, he had shadowed out the broad
arrangement of the main divisions, or, as he called them, _types_. He
had seen in each particular branch the clearest evidence of the laws
of growth which had directed its development, and had realised that
these laws of growth, consisting of gradual modifications of common
typical structures, were identical in the different branches. He had
taken clear hold of Von Baer's conception that the younger stages of
different types were more alike than the adult stages, and here and
there he had made comparisons between the younger stages or simplest
forms of his different branches, and had shown that, without
completely realising it, he was ready for the idea that just as the
separate pieces could be arranged to form orderly branches, so the
separate branches might come to be arranged as a single tree. And
finally, in his lectures on "Protoplasm and Cells," and on the
"Common Structure of the Animal and Plant Kingdoms," he had reached
the conclusion that the two main divisions of the living world were
formed of the same stuff, displayed in identical fashion the
elementary functions of life, and were creatures of the same order.
But, notwithstanding this close approach to modern conceptions, he was
not an evolutionist. When, in public, he expressed deliberate
convictions, these convictions were against the general idea of
evolution, until very shortly before 1859. In this opposition he was
supported partly by the critical scepticism of his mind, which in all
things made him singularly unwilling to accept any theories of any
kind, but chiefly from the fact that the books of the two chief
supporters of evolutionary conceptions impressed him very
unfavourably. Huxley writes:
"I had studied Lamarck attentively, and I had read the _Vestiges_
with due care; but neither of them afforded me any good ground
for changing my negative and critical attitude. As for the
_Vestiges_, I confess that the book simply irritated me by the
prodigious ignorance and thoroughly unscientific habit of mind
manifested by the writer. If it had any influence on me at all,
it set me against evolution; and the only review I ever have
qualms of conscience about, on the ground of needless savagery is
one I wrote on the _Vestiges_ while under that influence. With
respect to the _Philosophie Zoologique_, it is no reproach to
Lamarck to say that the discussion of the species question in
that work, whatever might be said for it in 1809, was miserably
below the level of the knowledge of half a century later. In that
interval of time, the elucidation of the structure of the lower
animals and plants had given rise to wholly new conceptions of
their relations; histology and embryology, in the modern sense,
had been created; physiology had been reconstituted; the facts of
distribution, geological and geographical, had been prodigiously
multiplied and reduced to order. To any biologist whose studies
had carried him beyond mere species-mongering, in 1850 one-half
of Lamarck's arguments were obsolete, and the other half
erroneous or defective, in virtue of omitting to deal with the
various classes of evidence which had been brought to light since
his time. Moreover his one suggestion as to the cause of the
gradual modification of species--effort excited by change of
conditions--was, on the face of it, inapplicable to the whole
vegetable world. I do not think that any impartial judge who
reads the _Philosophie Zoologique_ now, and who afterwards takes
up Lyell's trenchant and effective criticism (published as far
back as 1830) will be disposed to allot to Lamarck a much higher
place in the establishment of biological evolution than that
which Bacon assigns to himself in relation to physical science
generally--_buccinator tantum_".
On the other hand, Huxley's friendship with Darwin and with Lyell
began to make him less certain about the fixity of species. He tells
us that during his first interview with Darwin, which occurred soon
after his return from the _Rattlesnake_, he
"expressed his belief in the sharpness of the lines of
demarcation between natural groups and in the absence of
transitional forms, with all the confidence of youth and
imperfect knowledge. I was not aware at that time that he had
been many years brooding over the species question; and the
humorous smile which accompanied his gentle answer, that such was
not altogether his view, long haunted and puzzled me."
An elaborate study of Lyell's works helped largely in destroying this
youthful confidence, and a letter written by Lyell and quoted by
Huxley in the chapter he communicated to Darwin's _Life and Letters_,
states that in April, 1856, "when Huxley, Hooker, and Wollaston were
at Darwin's last week they (all four of them) ran a tilt against
species; further I believe, than they are prepared to go." Another
quotation from Huxley's essay on _The Reception of the Origin of
Species_ will make it plain beyond all doubt that he was not a
Darwinian before Darwin.
[Illustration: SIR JOSEPH DALTON HOOKER]
"Thus, looking hack into the past, it seems to me that my own
position of critical expectancy was just and reasonable, and must
have been taken up, on the same grounds, by many other persons.
If Agassiz had told me that the forms of life which had
successively tenanted the globe were the incarnations of
successive thoughts of the Deity; and that He had wiped out one
set of these embodiments by an appalling geological catastrophe
as soon as His ideas took a more advanced shape, I found myself
not only unable to admit the accuracy of the deductions from the
facts of palæontology, upon which this astounding hypothesis was
founded, but I had to confess my want of means of testing the
correctness of his explanation of them. And besides that, I could
by no means see what the explanation explained. Neither did it
help me to be told by an eminent anatomist that species had
succeeded one another in time, in virtue of a 'continuously
operative creational law'. That seemed to me to be no more than
saying that species had succeeded one another in the form of a
vote-catching resolution, with 'law' to please the man of science
and 'creational' to draw the orthodox. So I took refuge in that
_thätige Skepsis_ which Goethe has so well defined; and,
reversing the apostolic precept to be all things to all men, I
usually defended the tenability of the received doctrines when I
had to do with the transmutationists, and stood up for the
possibility of transmutation among the orthodox--thereby, no
doubt, increasing an already current, but quite undeserved,
reputation for needless combativeness."
What transformed Huxley's views and the views of his contemporaries
who accepted Darwinism was not so much the evidence in favour of
evolution contained in the _Origin_, as the illuminating doctrine of
natural selection which for the first time supplied naturalists with a
reasonable explanation of how evolution might have come about, both in
the animal and vegetable kingdoms. As soon as this reason was
provided them, they turned to the store of facts within their own
knowledge, and rapidly arranged the evidence which had been lurking
only partly visible in favour of the fact of evolution. It cannot be
disputed that here and there earlier writers than Darwin and Wallace
had suggested the possibility of natural selection acting upon
existing variations so as to cause survival of the fittest.
MacGillivray, the Scots naturalist, and the father of Huxley's
companion on the _Rattlesnake_, had published suggestions which came
exceedingly near to Darwin's theory. In 1831 Mr. Patrick Matthew had
published a work on _Naval Architecture and Timber_, and in it had
stated the essential principle of the Darwinian doctrine of struggle
and survival. Still earlier, in 1813, a Dr. W.C. Wells, in a paper to
the Royal Society on "A White Female, Part of whose Skin Resembles
that of a Negro," had, as Darwin himself freely admitted, distinctly
recognised the principle of natural selection--but applied it only to
the races of man, and to certain characters alone. Finally, long
before either of these, Aristotle himself had written, in _Physics_,
ii., 8: "Why are not the things which seem the result of design,
merely spontaneous variations, which, being useful, have been
preserved, while others are continually eliminated as unsuitable?"
None of these foreshadowings were supported by lengthy evidence, nor
worked out into an elaborate theory; and it was not until Darwin had
done this that we can say the birth of natural selection really took
place. Huxley writes:
"The suggestion that new species may result from the selective
action of external conditions upon the variations from their
specific type which individuals present,--and which we call
'spontaneous,' because we are ignorant of their causation,--is
as wholly unknown to the historian of scientific ideas as it was
to biological specialists before 1858."
But that suggestion is the central idea of the origin of species, and
contains the quintessence of Darwinism.
Some weeks before the _Origin_ was published, Darwin wrote to Huxley,
sending him a copy of the work, and asking him for the names of
eminent foreigners to whom it should be sent. In the course of his
letter he wrote: "I shall be intensely curious to hear what effect the
book produces on you," and it was clear that he had no very confident
expectation of a favourable opinion. Huxley replied the day before the
_Origin_ was published, saying that he had finished the volume, and
stating that it had completely convinced him of the fact of evolution,
and that he fully accepted natural selection as a "true cause for the
production of species." Darwin, in a letter to Wallace, telling of his
doubts and fears concerning the reception of his book, had added the
postscript: "I think I told you before that Hooker is a complete
convert. If I can convert Huxley, I shall be content." When he
received Huxley's letter he replied at once:
"Like a good Catholic who has received extreme unction, I can now
sing _Nunc Dimittis_. I should have been more than contented with
one quarter of what you have said. Exactly fifteen months ago,
when I first put pen to paper for this volume, I had awful
misgivings, and thought perhaps I had deluded myself, like so
many have done; and I then fixed in my mind three judges, on
whose decision I determined mentally to abide. The judges were
Lyell, Hooker, and yourself. It was this which made me so
excessively anxious for your verdict. I am now contented, and can
sing my _Nunc Dimittis_."
The effect of the new theory on Huxley's mind has been expressed most
fully and clearly by himself:
"I imagine that most of my contemporaries who thought seriously
about the matter were very much in my own state of mind--inclined
to say to Mosaists and Evolutionists, 'a plague on both your
houses!' and disposed to turn aside from an interminable and
apparently fruitless discussion to labour in the fertile fields
of ascertainable fact. And I may, therefore, further suppose that
the publication of the Darwin and Wallace papers in 1858, and
still more that of the _Origin_ in 1859, had the effect upon them
of that of a flash of light which, to a man who has lost himself
in a dark night, suddenly reveals a road which, whether it takes
him straight home or not, certainly goes his way. That which we
were looking for and could not find, was a hypothesis respecting
the origin of known organic forms, which assumed the operation of
no causes but such as could be proved to be actually at work. We
wanted, not to pin our faith to that or any other speculation,
but to get hold of clear and definite conceptions which could be
brought face to face with facts and have their validity tested.
The _Origin_ provided us with the working hypothesis we sought.
Moreover, it did us the immense service of freeing us for ever
from the dilemma--refuse to accept the creation hypothesis, and
what have you to propose that can be accepted by any cautious
reasoner? In 1857 I had no answer ready, and I do not think that
anyone else had. A year later, we reproached ourselves with
dulness for being perplexed by such an enquiry. My reflection,
when I first made myself master of the central idea of the
_Origin_ was, 'how exceedingly stupid not to have thought of
that.' I suppose that Columbus's companions said much the same
when he made the egg to stand on end. The facts of variability,
of the struggle for existence, of adaptation to conditions, were
notorious enough; but none of us had suspected that the road to
the heart of the species problem lay through them, until Darwin
and Wallace dispelled the darkness, and the beacon-fire of the
_Origin_ guided the benighted.
"Whether the particular shape which the doctrine of evolution,
as applied to the organic world, took in Darwin's hands, would
prove to be final or not, was, to me, a matter of indifference.
In my earliest criticisms of the _Origin_ I ventured to point out
that its logical foundation was insecure so long as experiments
in selective breeding had not produced varieties which were more
or less infertile; and that insecurity remains up to the present
time. But, with any and every critical doubt which my sceptical
ingenuity could suggest, the Darwinian hypothesis remained
incomparably more probable than the creation hypothesis. And if
we had none of us been able to discern the paramount significance
of some of the most patent and notorious of natural facts, until
they were, so to speak, thrust under our noses, what force
remained in the dilemma--creation or nothing? It was obvious
that, hereafter, the probability would be immensely greater that
the links of natural causation were hidden from our purblind
eyes, than that natural causation should be unable to produce all
the phenomena of nature. The only rational course for those who
had no other object than the attainment of truth, was to accept
'Darwinism' as a working hypothesis, and see what could be made
of it. Either it would prove its capacity to elucidate the fact
of organic life, or it would break down under the strain. This
was surely the dictate of common sense, and for once common-sense
carried the day. The result has been that complete _volte-face_
of the whole scientific world which must seem so surprising to
the present generation. I do not mean to say that all the leaders
of biological science have avowed themselves Darwinians; but I do
not think that there is a single zoölogist, or botanist, or
palæontologist, among the multitude of active workers of this
generation, who is other than an evolutionist profoundly
influenced by Darwin's views. Whatever may be the ultimate fate
of the particular theory put forth by Darwin, I venture to affirm
that, so far as my knowledge goes, all the ingenuity and all the
learning of hostile critics has not enabled them to adduce a
solitary fact of which it can be said that it is irreconcilable
with the Darwinian theory. In the prodigious variety and
complexity of organic nature, there are multitudes of phenomena
which are not deducible from any generalisation we have yet
reached. But the same may be said of every other class of natural
objects. I believe that astronomers cannot yet get the moon's
motions into perfect accordance with the theory of gravitation."
These quotations make plain the historical fact that Huxley was
convinced of evolution because Darwin, by his theory of natural
selection, brought forward an actual cause that could be seen in
operation, and that was competent to produce new species. As soon as the
"flash of light" came, it revealed to Huxley the vast store of evidence
that he had unconsciously accumulated, and it set him at once to work
collecting more evidence. If we bear in mind the distinction between
evolution and natural selection, the well-known subsequent history of
the relations between Huxley and what was known popularly as Darwinism
becomes clear and intelligible. From first to last he accepted
evolution; from first to last he accepted natural selection as by far
the most reasonable hypothesis that had been brought forward, and as
infinitely more in accordance with the observed facts of nature than any
theory of the immediate action of supernatural creative power. As time
went on, and the influence of Darwin's theory made evolution acceptable
to a wider and wider range of people, until it passed into the common
knowledge of the world, that confusion of which we have spoken arose
between evolution and Darwin's particular theory. And as knowledge grew,
and the number of biologists increased in the striking fashion of this
last half-century, while the evidence for evolution continued to
increase with an unexpected rapidity, every detail of the purely
Darwinian theory became more and more subjected to rigid scrutiny. Most
educated people, unless their education has been largely in an
experimental science, find difficulty in understanding the relation in
the minds of naturalists between "authority" and "knowledge." We do not
_know_, for instance, that the structure of the Medusæ consists
essentially of two foundation-membranes, because Huxley, one of the
greatest authorities in anatomy that the world has seen, told us that it
was so. We know it because, Huxley having told us that it was so, we are
able at any time with a microscope and dissecting needles to observe the
fact for ourselves. It is true, that unless we are making a special
study of the Medusæ we do not repeat the observation in the case of so
many different forms of Medusæ as Huxley studied; but it is part of our
training to observe for ourselves in a sufficient number of cases to
test the correspondence between statement and fact before we accept the
generalisation of any authority. And we learn, or at least have the
opportunity of learning, in the whole habit of our lives as naturalists,
to distinguish carefully between knowledge of which personal observation
is an essential part, and opinion or belief which may or may not be
based upon authority, but which in any case is devoid of the
corroboration of personal observation. When a piece of new anatomical or
physiological work is published in a technical journal, it is read by a
large number of anatomists and physiologists, and if the work is
apparently of an important kind, bearing on the general problems that
even specialists have to follow, they all at once set to work in their
laboratories to make corroborative dissections or experiments, and it is
part of every modern account of a biological discovery to tell exactly
the methods by which results were got, in order that this process of
corroboration may be set about easily. The question as to whether or no
natural selection were the sole or chief cause, or indeed a cause at
all, of evolution is not yet, and perhaps never will be, a matter of
knowledge in the scientific sense. At the most, we can see for ourselves
only that selection does bring about changes at least as great as the
differences between natural species. The evidence for this we have
before our eyes, if we choose to see, on a stock farm; in the breeding
yards of any keeper of "fancy" animals; or in the nursery gardens of any
florist. So far, Huxley accepted the Darwinian principle as a definite
contribution to knowledge; and so far the whole body of biologists has
followed him. Beyond this the truth of the Darwinian principle is a
matter of inference or judgment; of balancing probabilities and
improbabilities. In multitude of counsellors there is said to be wisdom,
and what we learn from the counsellors of biology all over the world is
that some maintain that natural selection is the only probable agency in
effecting evolution, and that it is competent to account for all the
changes which we know to have taken place; others hold that its probable
influence has been over-rated; and others, again, think that it has been
one of the many causes that have brought about the kaleidoscopic variety
of organic nature. Huxley remained to the last among those who
distinguished in the clearest way between natural selection as an
exceedingly ingenious and probable hypothesis, and a proved cause; and
he was always careful, especially when he was writing for or speaking in
the presence of those who like himself accepted the fact of evolution as
proven, to distinguish between this provisional hypothesis as to how
evolution had come about, and definite knowledge that it had come about
in this way. Two passages from Huxley's writings, one written in 1860 in
the _Westminster Review_, and the second written in 1893, in the preface
to the volume of his collected essays which contained a reprint of the
_Westminster_ article, will make plain the continuity of Huxley's
attitude:
"There is no fault to be found with Mr. Darwin's method, then;
but it is another question whether he has fulfilled all the
conditions imposed by that method. Is it satisfactorily proved,
in fact, that species may be originated by selection? That there
is such a thing as natural selection? That none of the phenomena
exhibited by species are inconsistent with the origin of species
in this way? If these questions can be answered in the
affirmative, Mr. Darwin's view steps out of the rank of
hypotheses into those of proved theories; but, so long as the
evidence at present adduced falls short of enforcing that
affirmation, so long, to our minds, must the new doctrine be
content to remain among the former--an extremely valuable, and in
the highest degree probable, doctrine; indeed, the only extant
hypothesis which is worth anything in a scientific point of view;
but still a hypothesis, and not yet the theory of species.
"After much consideration, and assuredly with no bias against
Mr. Darwin's views, it is our clear conviction that, as the
evidence stands, it is not absolutely proven that a group of
animals having all the characters exhibited by species in nature,
has ever been originated by selection, whether natural or
artificial. Groups having the morphological character of species,
distinct and permanent races, in fact, have been so produced over
and over again; but there is no positive evidence at present that
any group of animals has, by variation and selective breeding,
given rise to another group which was in the least degree
infertile with the first. Mr. Darwin is perfectly aware of this
weak point, and brings forward a multitude of ingenious and
important arguments to diminish the force of the objection. We
admit the value of these arguments to the fullest extent; nay, we
will go so far as to express our belief that experiments,
conducted by a skilful physiologist, would very probably obtain
the desired production of mutually more or less infertile breeds
from a common stock in a comparatively few years; but still, as
the case stands at present, this little 'rift within the lute' is
not to be disguised or overlooked."--(_Westminster Review_,
1860.)
"We should leave a very wrong impression on the reader's mind if
we permitted him to suppose that the value of Darwin's work
depends wholly on the ultimate justification of the theoretical
views which it contains. On the contrary, if they were disproved
to-morrow, the book would still be the best of its kind--the most
compendious statement of well-sifted facts bearing on the
doctrine of species that has ever appeared. The chapters on
variation, on the struggle for existence, on instinct, on
hybridism, on the imperfection of the geological record, on
geographical distribution, have not only no equals, but, so far
as our knowledge goes, no competitors, within the range of
biological literature. And viewed as a whole, we do not believe
that, since the publication of Von Baer's _Researches on
Development_, thirty years ago, any work has appeared calculated
to exert so large an influence, not only on the future of
biology, but in extending the domination of science over regions
of thought into which she has, as yet, hardly
penetrated."--(_Ibid._)
"Those who take the trouble to read the essays published in 1859
and 1860, will, I think, do me the justice to admit that my zeal
to secure fair play for Mr. Darwin did not drive me into the
position of a mere advocate; and that, while doing justice to the
greatness of the argument, I did not fail to indicate its weak
points. I have never seen any reason for departing from the
position which I took up in these two essays; and the assertion
which I sometimes meet with nowadays that I have 'recanted' or
changed my opinions about Mr. Darwin's views is quite
unintelligible to me.
"As I have said in the seventh essay, the fact of evolution is
to my mind sufficiently evidenced by palæontology; and I remain
of the opinion expressed in the second, that until selective
breeding is definitely proved to give rise to varieties infertile
with one another, the logical foundation of the theory of natural
selection is quite incomplete. We still remain very much in the
dark about the causes of variation; the apparent inheritance of
acquired characters in some cases; and the struggle for existence
within the organism, which probably lies at the bottom of both
these phenomena."--(1893, _Preface_.)
Finally, when he was awarded the Darwin Medal of the Royal Society, on
November 30, 1894, in the course of an address at the anniversary
dinner of the Society, he said, as reported in the _Times_ next day:
"I am as much convinced now as I was thirty-four years ago that
the theory propounded by Mr. Darwin, I mean that which he
propounded--not that which has been reported to be his by too
many ill-instructed, both friends and foes--has never yet been
shewn to be inconsistent with any positive observations, and if I
may use a phrase which I know has been objected to, and which I
use in a totally different sense from that in which it was first
proposed by its first propounder, I do believe that on all
grounds of pure science it 'holds the field' as the only
hypothesis at present before us which has a sound scientific
foundation.... I am sincerely of opinion that the views which
were propounded by Mr. Darwin thirty-four years ago may be
understood hereafter as constituting an epoch in the intellectual
history of the human race. They will modify the whole system of
our thought and opinion, our most intimate convictions. But I do
not know, I do not think anybody knows, whether the particular
views he held will be hereafter fortified by the experience of
the ages which come after us.... Whether the particular form in
which he has put before us the Darwinian doctrines may be such as
to be destined to survive or not, is more, I venture to think,
than anybody is capable at this present moment of saying."
Further details of Huxley's relation to natural selection may be
gained from an interesting chapter in Professor Poulton's volume on
_Charles Darwin_ (Cassell and Co., London, 1896).
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote D: See E. Clodd's _Pioneers of Evolution_, London, 1897, and
Osborn's _From the Greeks to Darwin_, New York, 1896.]