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* * * * *
SCIENCE FROM AN EASY CHAIR
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
EXTINCT ANIMALS
THE KINGDOM OF MAN
FROM AN EASY CHAIR
[Illustration: A.—“YELLOW” OR IMMATURE EEL: NOT DESCENDING TO THE SEA
(FEMALE)
B.—“SILVER” OR MATURE EEL IN BRIDAL DRESS DESCENDING TO THE SEA
(FEMALE), A SMALLER INDIVIDUAL THAN “A”
HEAD OF IMMATURE AND MATURE SPECIMENS OF THE COMMON EEL OF THE NATURAL
SIZE.
ORIGINAL WATER-COLOUR DRAWINGS FROM LIVE SPECIMENS]
SCIENCE FROM AN
EASY CHAIR
BY
SIR RAY LANKESTER
K.C.B., F.R.S.
WITH EIGHTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS
SECOND EDITION
METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
_First Published April 14th 1910_
_Second Edition May 1910_
PREFACE
This volume is a collection of some of the papers which I have
contributed to the _Daily Telegraph_ during the years 1908-1909, under
the title “Science from an Easy Chair.” I have revised and corrected the
letterpress, and have added some illustrations. A smaller volume
containing earlier papers was published by Messrs. Constable in 1908,
with the title _From an Easy Chair_. It is my intention now to produce
additional volumes (under the title “Easy Chair Series”) as their
constituent articles accumulate, and I hope to be able to publish a
second and a third instalment at no distant date.
I should like to draw the special attention of the reader to the
Frontispiece (Plate I.), which is very beautifully executed, and is, I
believe, the first coloured drawing yet published showing the difference
between the adult “silver” eel and the more abundant immature “yellow”
eel—sometimes called the “frogmouthed eel.” The original drawings were
prepared for me through the kindness of Dr. Petersen, of Copenhagen, who
is the discoverer of many interesting facts about the common eel, and
is director of the Danish Biological Laboratory.
I also wish to draw the attention of any one who is kind enough to look
at this preface to one or two more of my illustrations, because they
are, I think, of exceptional interest, and should be looked at, at once,
before a decision not to read the book is made. These are the
prehistoric engraving of a horse’s head, with rope-bridle in place, on
page 81; the drawings of the leaves of the American Poison-vine and of
the Virginian Creeper on page 95; of the nettle-sting on page 113; of
the Dragon of the Hesperides on page 122; of the big tadpoles on page
217; of the jumping bean on page 298, and its moth on page 301; of the
ant milking a green-fly for its honey-dew on page 324; and lastly, the
accurate drawing on page 370 of the most ancient human skull yet
discovered, and the other drawings of skulls (all to the scale of
one-third the actual length), and those of prehistoric weapons and
carvings which follow it. These drawings have been made from original
scientific memoirs, or in some cases from actual specimens, for the
present volume.
E. RAY LANKESTER
_February 1910_
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. SCIENCE AND PRACTICE 1
II. UNIVERSITY TRAINING 6
III. DARWIN’S THEORY 12
IV. DARWIN’S DISCOVERIES 18
V. DARWIN’S THEORY UNSHAKEN 27
VI. METCHNIKOFF AND TOLSTOI 38
VII. THE LAND OF AZURE BLUE 46
VIII. FRESH-WATER JELLY-FISHES 58
IX. THE STORY OF THE COMMON EEL 65
X. MODERN HORSES AND THEIR ANCESTORS 77
XI. A RIVAL OF THE FABLED UPAS TREE 91
XII. POISONS AND STINGS OF PLANTS AND ANIMALS 100
XIII. THE DRAGON: A FANCY OR A FACT 114
XIV. OYSTERS 128
XV. MATERNAL CARE AND MOLLUSCS 143
XVI. THE HEART’S BEAT 147
XVII. SLEEP 155
XVIII. THE UNIVERSAL STRUCTURE OF LIVING THINGS 170
XIX. PROTOPLASM, LIFE AND DEATH 180
XX. CHEMISTRY AND PROTOPLASM 187
XXI. THE SIMPLEST LIVING THINGS 193
XXII. TADPOLES AND FROGS 209
XXIII. ABOUT THE STARS 220
XXIV. COMETS 227
XXV. ABOUT CHOLERA 237
XXVI. SEA-BREEZES, MOUNTAIN AIR, AND OZONE 251
XXVII. OXYGEN GAS FOR ATHLETES AND OTHERS 258
XXVIII. SPARROWS, TROUT, AND SELECTIVE BREEDING 266
XXIX. THE FEEBLE-MINDED 271
XXX. DEATH-RATES 283
XXXI. GOSSAMER 287
XXXII. THE JUMPING BEAN 296
XXXIII. PROTECTIVE COLOURING IN ANIMALS 304
XXXIV. HOP-BLIGHT 314
XXXV. GREEN-FLIES, PLANT-LICE, AND PARTHENOGENESIS 322
XXXVI. THE DEADLY PHYLLOXERA 334
XXXVII. CLOTHES MOTHS 339
XXXVIII. STONE AND WOOD BORERS 346
XXXIX. CHRISTMAS FARE 356
XL. THE ORIGIN OF OPIUM 363
XLI. THE MOST ANCIENT MEN 371
XLII. THE CAVE-MEN’S SKULLS 391
XLIII. MORE ABOUT THE NEANDER MEN 402
INDEX 413
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
DIAGRAMS IN THE TEXT
FIG. PAGE
1. THE LITTLE GREEN TREE-FROG OR “RAINETTE” OF THE RIVIERA
(_HYLA ARBOREA_) 51
2. THE COMMON JELLY-FISH (_AURELIA AURITA_) 59
3. THE FRESH-WATER JELLY-FISH (_LIMNOCODIUM_) 60
4. FOUR JELLY-FISH-PRODUCING POLYPS ADHERING TO A ROOT-FIBRE
OF A WATER-PLANT 61
5. THE AFRICAN FRESH-WATER JELLY-FISH (_LIMNOCNIDA_) 62
6. YOUNG STAGES OF THE COMMON EEL 72
7. DRAWING OF AN IVORY CARVING OF A FEMALE HEAD 80
8. DRAWING OF A FULLY ROUNDED CARVING IN REINDEER’S ANTLER
OF THE HEAD OF A NEIGHING HORSE 80
9. DRAWING OF A FLAT CARVING IN SHOULDER-BONE OF A HORSE’S HEAD,
SHOWING TWISTED ROPE-BRIDLE AND TRAPPINGS 81
10. FORE-FOOT OF THE HORSE-ANCESTOR, HIPPARION 84
11. SKULLS OF HORSES AND OF DEER 86
12. FORE AND HIND LEGS OF HORSE AND ASS 88
13. DIAGRAM OF THE UNDER SURFACE OF THE FOOT IN THE DOG, TAPIR,
AND HORSE 89
14. DRAWINGS OF THE LEAVES OF THE COMMON QUINQUEFOLIATE VIRGINIAN
CREEPER, OF THE ADHERENT “AMPELOPSIS VEITCHII,” AND OF THE
POISON-VINE (_RHUS TOXICODENDRON_) 95
15. DRAWING FROM LIFE OF THE DESERT SCORPION (_BUTHUS AUSTRALIS_, LIN.),
FROM BISKRA, NORTH AFRICA 109
15 _BIS_. HIGHLY MAGNIFIED DRAWING OF A STINGING HAIR OF THE COMMON
NETTLE 113
16. THE HERALDIC DRAGON 115
17. THE HERALDIC GRIFFIN 116
18. HERCULES DESTROYING THE HYDRA 116
19. THE HERALDIC WYVERN 117
20. THE HERALDIC BASILISK, ALSO CALLED THE AMPHYSIAN COCKATRICE 117
21. THE CHINESE IMPERIAL DRAGON 121
22. A FLYING SNAKE WITH TWO PAIRS OF WINGS 121
23. THE “DRAGON” GUARDING THE TREE IN THE GARDEN OF THE HESPERIDES 122
24. A VOTIVE TABLET 124
25. ANCIENT ROMAN PAINTING OF A SO-CALLED MARINE SERPENT 124
26. EGYPTIAN FOUR-WINGED SERPENT 125
27. TWO-WINGED SERPENT 125
28. AN OYSTER WITH THE RIGHT-SIDE SHELL REMOVED 130
29. PART OF A ROW OF THE LASHING HAIRS OR “CILIA” WHICH COVER THE
GILLS OF THE OYSTER 131
30. THE ANIMAL OF AN OYSTER REMOVED FROM THE SHELL 132
31. THE EGGS OF THE OYSTER 133
32. THE SPERMS OR SPERMATOZOA OF A RIPE OYSTER 134
33. DEVELOPMENT OF THE EGG OF THE COMMON OYSTER 135
34. FREE-SWIMMING YOUNG OYSTER OR OYSTER LARVA 136
35. YOUNG OF THE POND-MUSSEL AFTER ESCAPING FROM THE MATERNAL
GILL-POUCH 145
36. SIMPLE “CELLS,” CONSISTING OF NAKED PROTOPLASM, CHANGING SHAPE
AND TAKING IN SOLID FOOD PARTICLES 171
37. CELLS FORMING TISSUES 172
38. COPY OF PART OF ROBERT HOOK’S DRAWING OF A MAGNIFIED PIECE
OF CORK 173
39. A PIECE OF CARTILAGE 174
40. THREE KINDS OF CELLS 175
41. TWO SPECIMENS OF A BELL-ANIMALCULE (_VORTICELLA_) 196
42. SIX SUCCESSIVE STAGES IN THE DIVISION OF A “CELL” 201
43. STAGES IN THE GROWTH FROM THE EGG OF THE COMMON FROG 210
44. OUTLINE DRAWINGS OF THREE EUROPEAN TADPOLES 217
45. THE COMET SHOWN IN THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY 232
46. THE CHOLERA SPIRILLUM, OR COMMA-BACILLUS OF KOCH 241
47. A YOUNG SPIDER 288
48. VIEW OF THE LOWER SURFACE OF THE HEAD AND BODY OF A LARGE
BURMESE SPIDER 290
49. SECTION THROUGH THE BODY OF A SPIDER TO SHOW THE SPINNING ORGANS 291
50. ONE OF THE TWO MIDDLE SPINNERETS OF THE COMMON GARDEN SPIDER
(_EPEIRA DIADEMA_) 292
51. THE COMMON GARDEN SPIDER, CORRECTLY CALLED THE WHITE-CROSS
SPIDER (_EPEIRA DIADEMA_) 293
52. ON THE RIGHT TWO JUMPING BEANS: ON THE LEFT THE CATERPILLAR
REMOVED FROM THE JUMPING BEAN 299
53. THE CATERPILLAR OF THE MOTH (_CARPOCAPSA SALTITANS_) REMOVED
FROM THE JUMPING BEAN 300
54. THE MOTH (_CARPOCAPSA SALTITANS_) 301
55. EARLY WINGED FEMALE HOP-LOUSE 316
56. MALE HOP-LOUSE 317
57. ORDINARY WINGLESS FEMALE HOP-LOUSE 318
58. FOUNDRESS OR STOCK-MOTHER OF THE HOP-LOUSE 323
59. SIDE VIEW OF WINGED VIVIPAROUS FEMALE OF THE HOP-LOUSE 323
60. AN ANT “MILKING” A “PLANT-LOUSE” OR “GREEN-FLY” FOR HONEY-DEW 324
61. SINGLE EGG-TUBE OR OVARIAN TUBE OF AN INSECT 329
62. THE DEATH-WATCH BEETLE (_XESTOBIUM TESSELLATUM_) 350
63. THE SILVER-FISH INSECT (_LEPISMA SACCHARINA_) 353
64. THE BOOK-LOUSE, OR _ATROPOS DIVINATORIA_ 354
65. THE HUMAN SKULL FROM THE CHAPELLE-AUX-SAINTS 370
66. AN UNPOLISHED BUT BEAUTIFULLY CHIPPED FLINT KNIFE OF THE
NEOLITHIC AGE 374
67. A POLISHED FLINT AXE-HEAD OF THE NEOLITHIC AGE 375
68. HARPOONS OF THE PALÆOLITHIC PERIOD 379
69. A PIECE OF MAMMOTH IVORY CARVED WITH SPIRALS AND SCROLLS 380
70. CARVING ON AN ANTLER OF A GROUP OF THREE RED DEER AND
FOUR FISHES 381
71. PAINTING OF A BISON 382
72. BACK AND FRONT VIEW OF A FLINT IMPLEMENT OF THE MOUSTIER TYPE 384
73. FLINT PICK FROM THE LOWER PLEISTOCENE OF THE THAMES VALLEY 387
74. A ROUGH TYPE OF FLINT IMPLEMENT FROM THE LOWER PLEISTOCENE
OF THE SOMME VALLEY 388
75. A PROFILE AND A FRONT VIEW OF THE SKULL AND LOWER JAW OF A MAN
OF THE CROMAGNARD RACE OR REINDEER MEN 389
76. THREE VIEWS OF THE SKULL-TOP FROM NEAR DUSSELDORF ON THE RHINE,
KNOWN AS THE NEANDERTHAL SKULL 392
77. THE GIBRALTAR SKULL FROM A CAVE IN GIBRALTAR 394
78. THE SKULL-TOP OF THE PRIMITIVE KIND OF MAN FROM PLEISTOCENE
SANDS IN JAVA, CALLED _PITHECANTHROPUS_ 400
79. DRAWING OF THE LEFT SIDE OF THE LOWER JAW OF A MODERN EUROPEAN 404
80. OUTLINE OF THE SKULL OF THE NEANDER MAN FROM THE
CHAPELLE-AUX-SAINTS 404
81. THE SKULL OF A MALE CHIMPANZEE 405
82. THE HEIDELBERG JAW 405
PLATES
I. IMMATURE AND MATURE SPECIMENS OF THE COMMON EEL OF THE NATURAL SIZE
_Frontispiece_
II. REAL DRAGONS. THE EXTINCT FLYING REPTILES KNOWN AS PTERODACTYLES
_Facing p._ 118
SCIENCE FROM AN EASY CHAIR
I
SCIENCE AND PRACTICE
The delight which is experienced by those who discover new things in the
various branches of science is, no doubt, very great. To reveal to other
men processes, properties, existences in the natural world hitherto
unsuspected, or, if suspected, yet eluding the grasp of man, is to do
something which gives to him who does it a sense that he is of value in
the world—a sense which will uphold him and enable him to endure
adversity, and even persecution, with equanimity. But there is, perhaps,
a greater and more vivid satisfaction for those who do or make great and
splendid things which all men can see, and for which all men are
grateful. The great artist—poet, painter, builder, or musician—has
this satisfaction, and so also has the man who, by a combination of
personal energy and clearness of intellectual vision, applies scientific
knowledge to the accomplishment of great public works, and to the
acquirement of that control by mankind of the natural conditions hostile
to human progress which we may call, as did Lord Bacon, “the
establishing of the kingdom of man.”
The men who have expelled yellow fever from Cuba and Panama have not
merely done a piece of sanitary cleaning up; they have first imagined
and then created, by the force of human will, directed and maintained by
conviction of the reality of science, a new thing—the tropics without
deadly fever, the tropics as a healthy and welcome home for the white
man. That is comparable to the work of a great artist in the directness
of its appeal; it is in its actual detail the result of the combination
of the skill of the engineer with the foresight and absolute domination
of his human agents of a military genius.
For this magnificent work the highest credit is due to the United States
chief sanitary officer, Colonel Gorgas. It is well known how the
American Medical Commission in Cuba proved six years ago that yellow
fever is conveyed from man to man solely and entirely by a gnat common
in Central America, known as _Stegomyia_, and further, how by carrying
out measures for preventing the entrance of these gnats into
dwelling-houses, and especially by keeping them away from yellow fever
patients so that they fail to obtain and carry the yellow fever germ,
even if they do bite healthy men, Colonel Gorgas and his associates
practically eradicated yellow fever in Cuba. The bite of the _Stegomyia
gnat_ is the only way in which a man can acquire yellow fever, and the
gnat which bites him must have taken up the germs of yellow fever from
another man—twelve days (no less) previously.
The application of this knowledge and the methods devised to give it
effect is what has now rendered the construction of the Panama Canal by
the United States Government possible. The French Canal Company employed
an army of labourers, numbering from 15,000 to 18,000 men. They lost,
almost entirely by death from yellow fever and malaria, so many of their
workmen that others refused to undertake the deadly job, and there was a
general panic. The death-rate was in 1884 over 60 per 1000. In 1885 it
was over 70 per 1000. The work was abandoned. In May 1904 Colonel Gorgas
and his forces took possession of the canal zone. This is a zone of
territory running fifty miles north and south, with a good-sized
town—Colon—at one end of it and another—Panama—at the other end of
it. Many hundreds of men were at once organised and set to work to
destroy in both the towns the _Stegomyia gnat_. This was effected by
doing away with all the breeding-places of the gnat, that is, screening
and covering every water receptacle in the town, so that the gnats or
mosquitoes cannot breed. Then a fumigating process was carried out in
all houses and buildings, great and small, to destroy such gnats as were
still alive. No less than 200,000 lb. of pyrethrum and 400,000 lb. of
sulphur were used in this fumigation. In December 1905 the last case of
yellow fever occurred. It took sixteen months of the work just described
to effect this.
In a different way the _Anopheles gnat_ or mosquito, which carries the
germ of malaria from man to man, was got rid of. This gnat breeds in
clean water, where grass and weeds grow; it belongs chiefly to country
districts. As it rarely flies more than 200 yards it was sufficient to
destroy the breeding pools within that distance of the workmen’s houses,
camps, and villages. All the windows and doors of all houses were fitted
with wire-gauze screens, which prevent the entrance of the gnats, and
the population was furnished with quinin, a dose of 3 grs. a day being
ordered to bring the men into such condition that the malaria parasite
would not thrive in the blood even if introduced.
The object with which Colonel Gorgas and his associates started was
accomplished in less than two years. The control of yellow fever and
malaria has become even more complete in the two years which have
followed. It is two years since yellow fever disappeared from the
entire zone, including the two towns. Malaria has not been so completely
destroyed. The employés of the Canal Commission and Panama Railway now
number 45,000. The death-rate of this entire force, including both black
(33,000) and white (12,000) employés, was, in the month of December 1907
only 18 per 1000 per annum—less than that of the city of Liverpool,
which was 20, or that of Salford, which was over 19. Of all the white
employés the death-rate was only 13 per 1000 per annum. In the year 1906
(whole year), among the 6000 white employés who had come from the United
States, including some 1200 women and children, their families, the
death-rate from disease was only 4 per 1000. Pneumonia has been a chief
cause of death among the negro labourers, but seldom affects the whites.
Malaria caused, in the whole army of labourers, only six deaths in
December 1907, as against thirteen in the smaller army at work in the
same month in 1906. There were 800 cases of malaria in the whole army of
45,000 employés in December 1907.
It is thus apparent that Colonel Gorgas has converted this deadly zone
from which negroes and white men hurried in a panic of fear twenty years
ago into a region as healthy—that is to say, with as low a
death-rate—as an ordinary North American or English city. No doubt
allowance must be made in the comparison for the special nature of the
population brought together on the canal zone. This is favourable to a
low death-rate, in so far as it consists of strong adults, excluding old
people and very young children, but unfavourable in so far as it
consists of negroes and mean whites, who are even less amenable to
sanitary regulations and precautions than the population of an English
city. Colonel Gorgas writes that now that it is shown that any
population coming into the tropics can protect itself against yellow
fever and malaria by measures which are both simple and inexpensive,
the Anglo-Saxon will find life in the tropics more healthful than in the
temperate zones, and tropical countries which offer a much greater
return for man’s labour than do those of the chilly temperate zone, will
be in the course of the next two or three centuries occupied and
populated by the white races. Such an unpleasantly cold spring as that
which all Europe endured last year makes one wish that the tropics
generally were already arranged by Colonel Gorgas for our reception, and
provided with a sanitated white-faced population. We could go and live
there, warm and comfortable, all the year round, enjoying the rich
luxuriance of tropical nature without fear of either chill or fever.
II
UNIVERSITY TRAINING
At Manchester last year, when they installed Lord Morley, the Secretary
of State for India, as Chancellor of the University, the Right Hon.
Arthur Balfour delivered a very interesting address, in which he
declared himself a believer in the gospel of “Science the Master.” Mr.
Balfour’s speech did not imply any disregard for the pursuit of
historical knowledge and a training in literature and the use of
language, but it was a clear recognition of the fact that when the great
purpose for which universities exist is considered it must be asserted
in no hesitating terms that the discovery of new knowledge is the most
important activity which a university can foster. To train men (and
women, too) to use their faculties not merely to acquire knowledge of
what has been discovered by others in the past, but to discover new
things and to gain further control over the conditions in which we live,
and to secure further understanding not only of nature but of man—that
is the great business of the university.
It was fortunate that Mr. Balfour was present and able to strike this
note, for Lord Morley, the new Chancellor, had not expressed any such
conception of the aims of a university. He declared that, so long as the
Greeks have anything to teach us we should not cease to study the
Greeks. But, whilst we may agree to this, it is well to remember that,
though pleasure can still be obtained from Greek poetry and prose by
those who have thoroughly mastered the Greek language, yet almost all,
if not quite all, that the Greeks have to teach us has been by this time
translated and dealt with by our own writers. Consequently, although we
may cordially approve of the study of ancient civilisations and ancient
literatures and languages, both Greek and barbarian, as part of the
enterprise of a university, it is somewhat excessive, not to say
belated, to set up the study of Greek or of any other historic language
and civilisation as the chief and distinctive boon which universities
can offer to their scholars. The matter has, indeed, been thrashed out,
and Greek, together with what is called the “study of literature” (but
is usually an ineffective dabbling in it), has been put into its proper
subordinate place in all the universities of Europe and in most of those
of Great Britain. The illusion that flowers of speech and mastery of
phrase (though all very well if honestly used) are an indication of any
knowledge or capacity which can be of service to the community, has
been, in late years, to a very large extent, dispelled.
The concluding words of Mr. Balfour’s speech were: “The great
advancement of mankind is to be looked for in our ever-increasing
knowledge of the secrets of nature—secrets, however, which are not to
be unlocked by the men who pursue them for purely material ends, but
secrets which are open in their fulness only to men who pursue them in a
disinterested spirit. The motive power which is really going to change
the external surface of civilisation, which is going to add to the
well-being of mankind, which is going to stimulate the imagination of
all those who are interested in the universe in which our lot is
cast—that lies after all with science. I would rather be known as
having added to the sum of our knowledge of the truth of nature than
anything else I can imagine. Unfortunately for me, my opportunities have
lain in different directions.”
That is a splendid confession of faith. I do not remember that any
German statesman of like authority and standing has ever given
expression to so full and ample a belief in the value of science. Yet
German statesmen have acted, though they have not spoken. They have
arranged for, and continually are arranging for, a far larger
expenditure of public money upon scientific training and investigation
than is assigned to such purposes in this country. Every department of
government in Germany has its thoroughly trained, well-taught, well-paid
body of scientific experts and investigators, and, moreover, the whole
official world, from the Emperor downwards, has a real understanding of
what science is, of the folly of attempting to proceed without it, or
allowing persons who are ignorant of it to act as administrators. The
need for science is not merely recognised in words, but steps are taken,
and have been taken now for many years, actually to secure in German
public offices and public administration the predominance of that
scientific knowledge which the German statesmen, as well as Mr. Balfour,
consider so necessary. Is it too much to hope that in this country those
who recognise the value and importance of scientific knowledge will also
take steps to re-arrange our Government departments so as to give them
the advantage of guidance by men trained in the knowledge of nature,
rather than by men ignorant of the very existence of such knowledge?
The universities hold the central position in this matter, and it is
their influence and wealth which the State should insist on directing
towards the extension and diffusion of science. Those who address the
public on this subject not infrequently take what seems to me to be a
disastrous line at the start. They speak of the new universities as the
universities of the people, and hand over Oxford and Cambridge, with
their enormous endowments, their history and tradition, to the wealthy
class. Such usurpation cannot be tolerated. It is monstrous that the
endowments of the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, which were
thoroughly popular and democratic in their foundation, should be, even
for a moment, regarded as the peculiar property of the wealthy. It is
also monstrous to suppose that it is anything less than disastrous to
consign the well-to-do classes in any community to an empty sham of
ancient “culture” rather than to imbue them with the real and inspiring
culture of the modern renaissance. It is because this notion is allowed
to gain ground that the enormous funds of the colleges and universities
of Oxford and Cambridge, amounting to more than three-quarters of a
million pounds annually, are to a large extent, though not exclusively,
employed in keeping up a couple of huge boarding-schools, which are shut
for six months in the year.
It is owing to this that it is the rarest thing to find in Oxford or in
Cambridge a great teacher who lectures or demonstrates to an eager
following of disciples. An overwhelming majority of the young men who go
as students to these universities have no intention of studying
anything. They are sent there in order to be submitted to college
discipline and to have, subject to that safeguard, a good time. A large
number are handsomely paid by scholarships in order to induce them to go
there—and would not go there at all unless they were so paid. They do
not find such teachers there and such an effective occupation of their
student years as would induce them, if unpaid, to seek the university,
or to pay fees out of their own pockets for the opportunities of
seriously pursuing any branch of learning or science within its walls.
The inefficiency of the old universities is to a large extent the cause
of the neglect and ignorance of science in the well-to-do class, who
furnish the men who become Government officials of all kinds and members
of professions which influence public opinion. But this inefficiency of
the old universities is not due to their devotion to literary studies
and to abstract science, nor to their objection to the pursuit of
practical and commercial studies. That excuse is sometimes put forward
for them, though at this moment they are, in fact, setting up
laboratories and lecture-rooms for engineering, agriculture, forestry,
mining, and such applications of science. Nor is it money which is
really wanting at either Oxford or Cambridge, although they are both
begging for it from the public. What Oxford and Cambridge want is not
money but men; men as teachers—“professors” is the usual title given to
them in a university—who must be the ablest, each in his own line, in
the whole world. If such professors existed in either Oxford or
Cambridge, and were allowed to teach, the town (if not the colleges!)
would be full to overflowing of students—eager to pay their fees and to
spend, not three short terms of seven weeks in each year, but the whole
year, and many years, in the laboratories and lecture-rooms of those
commanding men.
To obtain such men—to set the machinery at work—you must pay them
handsomely, and give them authority and the means of work. Once they
were at work, the mere fees of the students would furnish a splendid
revenue. There is plenty of money at Oxford and at Cambridge—a
superabundance, in fact—which could and should be applied to this
purpose, namely, that of securing and establishing there the greatest
teachers in the world. The money is at present administered by the
colleges according to the directions given in recent Acts of Parliament,
and by no means in any blind obedience to the original intentions of the
founders of the colleges. It is to a large extent wasted. That portion
of it paid out as “scholarships” is for the most part wasted in bringing
students to a place where they cannot get the best opportunities of
study, and the rest is unwisely applied (not so much by the tenants for
life or administrators of college funds as by rigid Act of Parliament)
to providing an excessive number of totally inadequate salaries by which
a corresponding number of young men are induced to enter upon the career
of teachers as underpaid college Fellows.
III
DARWIN’S THEORY
On Wednesday, the 1st of July 1908, half a century had passed since
Darwin’s Theory of the Origin of Species was made known to the world.
Fifty years have now been completed since that immortal book, _The
Origin of Species_, was published, and a hundred years since Charles
Darwin was born.
It is not every one who is in a position to understand how great and
momentous was the occasion when Sir Charles Lyell and Dr. Joseph Hooker
communicated to the Linnean Society of London, on the 1st of July 1858,
two papers, one by Charles Darwin, the other by Alfred Russel Wallace,
under the common title, “On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties:
and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural means of
Selection.” The reason for this conjoint communication to the Linnean
Society was that Darwin, who had been working for years at the subject,
and had already, in 1842, drawn up a statement of his theory, not for
publication, but for the consideration and criticism of his friend
Hooker—unexpectedly received from Alfred Russel Wallace, who was, and
had been for some years, away in the Malay Archipelago—a manuscript of
an essay on the origin of species, containing views identical with his
own, and even phrases similar to those he had himself found it
necessary to invent. Thus Wallace speaks of the “struggle for
existence,” whilst Darwin had used the term “struggle for life.” Darwin
had been urged by his friends before this to publish an abstract or
statement of his conclusions, but now that he had received Wallace’s
manuscript, he declared in a letter to Hooker, “I would far rather burn
my whole book than that he or any other man should think that I had
behaved in a paltry spirit.” And so Lyell and Hooker took the matter in
hand, and communicated to the Linnean Society, accompanied by an
explanatory statement, the two independent papers, setting forth, as
they say, “the results of the investigations of the indefatigable
naturalists, Mr. Charles Darwin and Mr. Alfred Wallace.” Such loyalty
and regard to each other as Darwin and Wallace showed then and ever
after form a delightful feature in the history of this great discovery.
A wonderful thing is that Hooker, now Sir Joseph Hooker, the greatest
botanist of the past century, the constant friend and comrade of Darwin,
is still alive, and that Alfred Russel Wallace, too, is still with us.
They both were present when the Linnean Society celebrated the meeting
of fifty years ago.
The views of Darwin and Wallace have now become the established doctrine
of science. They have led to the universal recognition of “the origin of
species by descent with modification.” That is a statement, in other
words, to the effect that all the various kinds of living things have
been gradually produced by natural birth from predecessors which differ
from them only slightly in the later stages of time, but become simpler
and less like their descendants as we go further back, until we reach
the simplest living things. It has led to the conviction that there has
been no exceptional or “miraculous” suspension of the order of Nature in
this process, but that all has come about in due and regular course, in
virtue of the properties of natural things, which we know as the laws
of physics and chemistry. Most important and dominating of all these
results is the inevitable one that man himself has come from animal
ancestors, in the same way, and—(this is the greatest and most
far-reaching conclusion of all)—that he is still subject to those
natural processes of change and development by which he has reached his
present phase; that he must completely understand them and control them
(so far as such control is possible) in order to maintain a healthy,
happy, and improving race of men on the face of the globe. This great
possession—the earth and all that lives on it—is, as Lord Bacon
phrased it three hundred years ago—the Kingdom of Man. Man has but to
use his intelligence in order to take control of it. The knowledge of
his own relation to it, and of the ways in which the human race is
affected for good and for ill, through the operation of the self-same
processes which affect the breeding, the improvement, the health, the
disease, the destruction, and the perfecting of other living things, has
once and for all been placed within man’s reach by the discoveries of
Darwin and Wallace.
Before Darwin—that is, before 1st July 1858—the origin of the
different species of animals and plants was called by great thinkers
like Sir John Herschel, the astronomer, “the mystery of mysteries.” The
word “species” was defined as “an animal or plant which in a state of
nature is distinguished by certain peculiarities of form, size, colour,
or other circumstance from any other animal or plant, and propagates
after its kind individuals perfectly resembling the parent, its
peculiarities being therefore permanent.” So wrote a great naturalist in
the days before Darwin. This definition may be illustrated by two common
English birds—the rook and the crow. They differ from each other in
slight peculiarities of form, structure, and habits, and, moreover,
rooks always produce rooks, and crows always produce crows, and they do
not interbreed. Therefore it was held that all the rooks in the world
had descended from a single pair of rooks, and all the crows in like
manner from a single pair of crows, while it was considered impossible
that crows could have descended from rooks, or rooks from crows. The
“origin” of the first pair of each kind was a mystery, and by many
persons was held to have been due to a miraculous and sudden act of
“creation.” But besides our crow and rook, there are about thirty other
birds in various parts of the world so much like our crow and rook that
they are commonly called crows, and are all regarded as “species” of the
genus crow (or _Corvus_). It was held before Darwin that all the
individuals of each of these “species” were descended from an ancestral
pair of crows of that species. There would have been thirty different
original kinds, the “origin” of which was unknown, and by naturalists
was regarded as a mystery. Now, on the contrary, it is held that all the
thirty living species are descended from one, not from thirty, ancestral
species, and have been gradually modified to their present character in
different parts of the world; and, further, that this ancestral species
was itself derived by slow process of change and natural birth from
preceding crow-like birds no longer existing.
As Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace has said in his most readable and
delightful book, _Darwinism_—where he gives all the credit and glory to
his great fellow-worker: “Darwin wrote for a generation which had not
accepted evolution—a generation which poured contempt on those who
upheld the derivation of species from species by any natural law of
descent. He did his work so well that ‘descent with modification’ is now
universally accepted as the order of nature in the organic world, and
the rising generation of naturalists can hardly realise the novelty of
this idea, or that their fathers considered it a scientific heresy to be
condemned rather than seriously discussed.”
For those who are not naturalists or men of science it is an
object-lesson of the highest importance, that the speculations and
observations which have led to the general acceptance of a new view as
to the origin of the species of birds, butterflies, and flowers—in
itself apparently a matter of no consequence to human life and
progress—should have necessarily led to a new epoch in philosophy, and
in the higher state-craft; in fact, to the establishment of the
scientific knowledge of life as the one sure guide and determining
factor of civilisation. How to breed a healthy, capable race of men, how
to preserve such a race, how to educate and to train it, so that its
best qualities of mind and body may be brought to activity and
perfection—this is what Darwinism can teach us, and will teach us when
the great subjects of inheritance and of variation are more fully
investigated by the aid of public funds, and when the human mind has
been as carefully examined and its laws as well ascertained, as are
those of the human body. There is no reason for delay; no excuse for it.
For two thousand years the learned men of Europe debated as to whether
this or that place was the site of ancient Troy, or whether there ever
was such a place at all. At last (only twenty-five years ago) a retired
man of business, named Schliemann, had a “happy thought”—it was not the
thought of a learned pedant, but of a scientific investigator. He said,
“Let us go and see.” And at the expense of a few thousand pounds he went
and found Troy and Mycenæ, and revealed—“dis-covered”—the whole
matter. That was the most tremendous and picturesque triumph of the
scientific method over mere talk and pretended historical learning which
has ever been seen since human record has existed. It ought to be told
to every boy and girl, for it is the greatest and most obvious proof of
the overwhelming power of the investigation of tangible things and the
futility of chatter, which has ever been seen. It is enough to inspire
hope and belief in experiment even in the breast of a Member of
Parliament, or of a Minister of the Crown.
IV
DARWIN’S DISCOVERIES
A large proportion of the public are not aware of the amount of
experiment and observation carried out by the great naturalist whose
memory was honoured by a splendid ceremony at the University of
Cambridge in the summer of 1909. There are, I am sure, not a few who are
under the impression that Darwin, sitting in his study or walking round
his garden, had “a happy thought,” namely, that man is only a modified
and improved monkey, and proceeded to write an argumentative essay,
setting forth the conclusion that mankind are the descendants of some
remote ancestral apes. Of course there is an increasing number of more
careful and inquiring men and women who take advantage of the small
price at which Mr. Darwin’s wonderful book, _The Origin of Species_, is
now to be bought, and have read that and some of his other writings, and
accordingly know how far he was from being the hasty and fanciful
theorist they previously imagined him to be. It is the great distinction
of Darwin that he spent more than twenty years of his life in
accumulating the records of an enormous series of facts and observations
tending to show that the species or “kinds” of animals and plants in
nature can and do change slowly, and that there is, owing to the fact
that every pair produces a great number of offspring (sometimes many
thousand), of which only a single pair, on the average, survive, a
necessary selection of those which are to survive and breed, accompanied
by a rejection and destruction of the rest. This “natural selection” or
survival of favoured varieties, he was able to show, must operate like
the selection made by breeders, fanciers, and horticulturists, and has
in all probability (for in a history extending over hundreds of
thousands of years we must necessarily deal with “probabilities,” and
not with direct demonstration) produced new forms, new kinds, better
adapted to their surroundings than the parental forms from which they
are derived.
It was necessary, in order that Darwin should persuade other naturalists
that his views were correct, that he should show by putting examples “on
the table” that variations occur naturally and in great diversity;
further, that there is great pressure in the conditions of life, and a
consequent survival of the best-suited varieties; further, that there is
in reproduction a transmission of the peculiar favouring character or
quality which enables a variety to survive, and thus a tendency to
perpetuate the new quality. It was not enough for Darwin to “imagine”
that these things might be so, or to make the notion that they are so
plausible by arguments drawn from existing knowledge. He had to do that:
but also he had to make new inquiries and discover new things about
animals and plants which fitted in with his theory and would not fit in
either with the notion that all plants and animals were created—as the
poet Milton supposed—out of lumps of earth and muddy water, suddenly,
in the likeness of their present-day descendants, nor with some other
notions, such as that of the able and gifted French naturalist Lamarck.
And he spent the later twenty years of his life in doing so, just as he
had spent the previous twenty years in collecting a first series of
facts and observations justifying his theory before he announced it to
the world.
A great difference between Lamarck and Darwin exists, not only in their
two theories as to the mode of origin of the vast diversified series of
kinds or species of plants and animals, but in their way of stating and
dealing with the theory which each thought out and gave to the world.
Lamarck had a great knowledge of the species of plants and animals,
partly through having collected specimens himself when he was an officer
in the French Republican army which was employed on the Mediterranean
shores of France and Italy more than a hundred years ago, and partly
through his later official position in the great natural history museum
at Paris, where large collections passed through his hands. He was a man
of very keen insight and excellent method, and did more to plan out a
natural and satisfactory “classification” of animals than any one
between his own day and that of Linnæus. His theory of the origin of
species was essentially an opposition to the then popular view that the
species of living things have been made by the Creator so as to fit the
conditions in which they live. Lamarck contradicted this view, and said
in so many words that the real fact is that the peculiar specific
characters of animals or of plants have not been created for their
conditions, but, on the contrary, that the conditions in which they live
have created the peculiarities of living things. In so far his
conception was the same as Darwin’s. But Lamarck then said to himself:
How do the conditions create the peculiarities of different living
things? And he answered this question by an ingenious guess, which he
published to the world in a book called _Philosophical Zoology_, without
taking any steps to test the truth of his guess.
That is where Lamarck’s method and attitude as a scientific man is so
greatly inferior to that of Darwin. Lamarck, sitting in his study, said
animals (and plants too) must be affected by the conditions around them,
so that an individual as it lives and grows becomes to a certain degree
slightly changed by and adapted to those conditions. This, he said, we
all see in human beings and familiar animals and plants. Now, he said,
we have only to admit that the changes so acquired are (especially when
both parents have been similarly changed) transmitted to the young in
the process of generation, and to some degree “intensified,” in order to
recognise that of necessity there is in nature a constant change and
progression of living forms, consisting in a more and more elaborate
“adaptation” to the conditions of life, which will be varied and lead to
new adaptations as the living things spread over the earth or as
geological changes occur. He cited the long neck of the giraffe as an
example of what he meant. In regions where there was frequent and
extensive drought, a deer-like creature would eat the lower leaves of
trees when the grass was dried up and dead. It would strain and stretch
its neck in reaching after the higher leaves, and the individuals thus
straining and stretching would become an inch or two longer in the neck
in consequence. These individuals would, said Lamarck, transmit their
increased length of neck to their offspring, who again would strain and
stretch after higher leaves, and get a further increase of neck-length,
and so it would go on, little by little, over many thousand generations,
until the neck-stretchers had become well marked and distinguished by
their long necks from such of their ancestral stock as survived in other
regions where, the grass being good, there was no inducement to
straining and stretching the neck.
Now the great difference between Lamarck and Darwin is that Lamarck was
quite content to state the ingenious supposition illustrated by the
imaginary history of the giraffe, and to declare that this was the law
of Nature and is actually going on every day, without, so to speak,
getting out of his chair. He never attempted to show by observation or
experiment that such a change of form as the stretching of the neck by
straining after food could and did occur, or that if it did that it
could be transmitted by a parent or couple of parents to their
offspring. And consequently for many years no one attached much value to
Lamarck’s notions on the subject. When, fifty years later, Darwin’s very
different theory became widely received, based on the demonstrable fact
that congenital variations (not stretchings and warpings acquired in the
lifetime of a parent, but variations which are inborn, and occur in some
but not other individuals living under one and the same set of
conditions) are transmitted to offspring, and that those among these
variations which are favourable to success in life will enable their
possessor to survive and to produce young inheriting those favourable
variations—then it occurred to those naturalists who were inclined to
believe in Lamarck’s suggestion to inquire into the solid facts in
regard to that also, and to see whether his bare statement was true.
From that day to this, it has never been shown that it is true. It is,
indeed, to begin with, a rare thing to find instances of either wild
animals or wild plants which, growing up in unusual conditions, have
their structure altered and “adapted” so as to be more serviceable in
those unusual conditions than their usual structure would be; and in
those cases where such adaptive alterations have been produced, every
experimenter is agreed in stating that he has found that when (even
after several generations in the changed conditions) the young are
restored to their original conditions, they simply grow up into the
original forms: no permanent change in the stock or race has been
effected. Every attempt to show by experiment that a new character can
be acquired by the stock in this way, and show itself by heredity
alone—when the modifying adapting conditions are removed—has
completely failed.
On the other hand, Darwin himself and his followers have made almost
endless experiments and observations on plants and animals, establishing
facts as to structure and the relation of special kinds of living things
to their surroundings which can only be explained on the supposition
that Darwin’s theory is true in detail; that is to say, not merely that
the kinds of animals and plants have arisen from previous kinds by
natural descent—that supposition is much older than either Darwin or
Lamarck—but that the method by which the transformation has been
brought about is (_a_) the occurrence in every generation of every
animal and plant of minute variations in every, or nearly every, part,
and (_b_) the continual selection in the severe struggle for existence
of those individuals to grow to maturity and reproduce, which happen to
present favourable variations, which variations are accordingly
transmitted to the next generation, and may be intensified, so far as
intensification is of value, in each succeeding generation.
A book full of observations and reflections about the structure, habits,
and mode of occurrence and geography of a great number of plants and
animals is Darwin’s _Journal of Researches_, published in 1845, and now
republished as _A Naturalist’s Voyage_. In order to know very minutely
the differences and resemblances between all the kinds or species of one
group of living things Darwin studied for eight years the “cirrhipedes,”
the name given to the sea-acorns and ships’ barnacles which occur in all
parts of the world, some living on rocks, some on the backs of turtles,
others on whales, on the feet of birds, on bits of floating wood or of
pumice-stone, and some on one another! They are all hermaphrodites, but
Darwin found in several a most singular thing, namely, the existence of
minute males, complemental to and parasitic on the hermaphrodites. His
discovery was doubted and denied, but he had the pleasure of seeing it
at last fully confirmed thirty years after his book on cirrhipedes was
published.