MR. WELLS AND THE CREATION OF THE WORLD
Mr. Wells sets out to recite not only History properly so-called, the
known and conscious records of the human race, but also Pre-history,
i.e. our knowledge, little as it is, of life on this earth prior to the
advent of man or his predecessors, and of man himself prior to any
surviving record.
In the department of Pre-history the first task which meets the writer
is that of telling the order in which, according to the geological
record, the rocks composing the earth’s surface were presumably laid
down, and the order in which the vestiges of life appear in these rocks.
This task Mr. Wells has successfully performed. Anyone can put down the
main known facts in their order, for it is a mere matter of reference to
encyclopædias; but Mr. Wells has done so with concision, lucidity and
accuracy: qualities which are apparent here as throughout the work. He
is even careful to modify phrases which might be too absolute. For
instance, he tells us that astronomers “give us reason to believe the
slowing down of the rotation of the earth,” instead of saying, as many
another would, “have proved....” He also acts with sense in giving very
wide limits to the guesswork of modern physicists upon the scale of time
by which we should judge the geological process, though he does not warn
his readers, as he should do, that it is only guesswork, and that the
deductions upon which it depends are taken from first principles, which
are many of them incapable of verification and others mere hypotheses.
It is, perhaps, asking too much of our author to adopt a strictly
scientific attitude: that is, to distinguish between hypothesis and
proved fact. And this is particularly true of a study so full of
hypothesis as geology. Men pretend to vastly more knowledge than they
have in that branch of knowledge—as, for instance, on the rate of
stratification. A man cannot but be influenced by his own time, and Mr.
Wells is influenced by the unscientific loose thinking and
insufficiently supported affirmations of his generation and place.
The chief mark of our time is a decline in the logical faculty, and with
that decline goes an increasing inability to distinguish between what is
proved, what is probable and what is possible only. It is in fields
(such as Pre-history) where very little indeed is known, and where there
is immeasurable room for making things up out of one’s head, that the
distinction between fact and fancy is most easily lost. Only a minority
in Europe have appreciated as yet how small a proportion of what passes
for ascertained fact upon the remote past is really known, and how vast
a proportion is based upon mere analogy or such quite unproved
assumptions. Among our older men dogmatic affirmation of much that is
already disproved, and much that is increasingly doubtful, continues.
Such a profound remark as Ferrero’s “The men of the nineteenth century
thought they knew everything, we know that they knew nothing,” would
shock them to hear.
Allowing, then, for that natural tendency towards repeating in age what
one was dogmatically taught in youth, Mr. Wells’s précis of the
geological process is quite exceptionally good.
He also states clearly our present ignorance upon the origin of life;
our failure, so far, to find a link between organic and inorganic; and
even our inability to affirm—what is presumable upon analogy and was
taken for granted in antiquity and during the Middle Ages—that living
proceeds from dead matter.
All this done, however, Mr. Wells tackles the fundamental question of
Creation—and here, at once, the fundamental weakness of the book
appears: at its very outset on page 11.
The author becomes deeply concerned with a discussion peculiar to his
own local society, and of a sort so childish that a thinking man has
difficulty in taking it seriously: the discussion between the
old-fashioned Protestant who thinks of creation as a sort of conjuring
trick and the new-fashioned one who cannot believe in creation at all
because he has discovered (rather late in the day) that things grow.
The old-fashioned Bible Christian thought that the Hen appeared mature
in a twinkling, out of air, like the mango tree of the Indian jugglers.
His newly enlightened son has discovered that it comes from an egg. Mr.
Wells, upon this page 11, appears in the rôle of the newly enlightened,
and is most earnest to convince his erring and belated fellows that life
can have come into existence as a “natural” process: an idea which he
conceives as repugnant to “religious” minds. It is astonishing that
either of these two back-waters of culture should survive: the
back-water of the Bible Christian enlightened by elementary “science,”
which gets rid of a Creator, and the back-water of the not yet
enlightened Bible Christian, who can’t think of creation except as the
sudden appearance of familiar objects out of surrounding space. We may
wonder with amusement what Mr. Wells would make of such a Catholic
sentence as “God made this oak.” I suppose he would think it a confusion
of acorns with God. He should read St. Thomas.
However, though the philosophy is pitiable, the précis of familiar facts
in this summary of observed origins is very well done, and all these
statements, though they are no more than what you may find in any
popular textbook, are put much better than in most.
So much for Mr. Wells’s brief summary of the geological evidence as
given in all our encyclopædias and books of reference. It is most
readable, and accurately presents the ascending complexity of vegetable
and animal life in the past.
But the man writing upon this process has another and far harder task to
perform than the mere cataloguing of facts set down in textbooks. There
comes a moment when he must try to solve a certain problem: when he must
_think_. He must face a question which is as old as human enquiry, and
which searches the very depths of his own nature and of the world around
him. It is this:—
“Under the action of what Force did this difference between various
kinds of living things come to be? Under what Cause did the organism
differentiate and meet its environment, and develop into its myriad
forms each fulfilling a function? What _mind_ was at work, if any; and
if no _mind_, then what?”
_That_ question is the one capital enigma, the pre-eminent riddle of
life set to the enquiry of man. For centuries upon centuries he has
examined it and has found no reply, save in mystery.
A lifetime ago a group of men, intolerant of fundamental philosophical
enquiry and intolerant of mystery, thought they had found the answer in
a very simple and wholly mechanical method which explained Evolution in
a new way. They called this method “Natural Selection,” and thereby—as
they hoped—all necessity for design in the universe could be eliminated.
What that theory of Natural Selection was, I describe in a moment. It
must suffice here to say that it made Evolution subject to blind
chance—and that to-day it is quite dead.
It is characteristic of Mr. Wells’s work that now, in 1926, he still
gives in all simplicity that exploded answer, which was so fashionable
in the nineties. Mr. Bernard Shaw said the other day, with native
charity, that no one under seventy still believed in Natural Selection.
Page 16 of this new Part I of Mr. Wells’s book shows that Mr. Shaw
estimated too highly the intelligence and culture of his contemporaries.
To trot out Natural Selection at this time of day as the chief agent in
Evolution is almost like trotting out the old dead theory of immutable
and simple elements in a popular chemistry. That is what was taught as
chemistry when Mr. Wells was young, and Natural Selection was what was
taught as the cause of differentiation between living beings when Mr.
Wells was young. The one error is to-day nearly as obsolete as the
other. There is still continuing the remains of an obstinate defence,
urged by the strongest of human motives, religion: for there are still
those who agree with Weissmann that Natural Selection must be maintained
at all costs, and with no matter what fantastic affirmations, because
“It is the only alternative to Design” in the Universe—that is, to God.
But there can be no doubt which way the battle has turned.
When Driesch said, twenty long years ago, “Darwinism is dead,” he was
hardly premature.
To quote him now is to repeat a commonplace.
Let me not be misunderstood. I should not criticize Mr. Wells for
ignorance if he had written thus: “Many explanations have been given of
how Evolution has worked. The Ancients ascribed it to some inherent
power in living things which they called ‘entelechy,’ i.e. the power to
realize an end. The eighteenth century, led by Lamarck, tended at its
close as did the earlier nineteenth to something similar, but emphasized
the will and effort of the organism. In the mid-nineteenth century there
was proposed by Darwin and Wallace a new mechanical explanation which
got rid of design and of ‘an end’ to which organisms worked. Its authors
called it ‘Natural Selection.’ For a short time it was so completely the
fashion that it seemed impregnable. But Criticism soon began, and grew
menacing by the end of the century. With the opening of the twentieth
this Criticism had grown greater by far in volume and force, especially
in America and on the Continent. To-day it seems overwhelming. None the
less, I hold to those who with many modifications still maintain the old
theory.”
But Mr. Wells did not write thus, with an appreciation of the position
as it stands to-day. He set down Natural Selection in all its crudity as
an admitted final truth, a piece of unquestioned modern science, and
left his unfortunate readers under that impression.
To do that is morally inexcusable save on the plea of ignorance of all
that vast bulk of criticism with which the average educated man is
generally acquainted—at least as to its main results. And if he plead
such ignorance as his excuse, then he admits himself quite unfitted to
put forward even the simplest outline of Evolution to-day.
The point is one of first-class importance, for it illustrates at once
the fixity and the weakness of that anti-Catholic—and irrational—spirit
which will support any thesis however blown upon, so it be still of some
service against the Christian Faith.
Let me give as briefly as possible the story of this old-fashioned
theory of Natural Selection—which seemed so convenient for getting rid
of God—and of its breakdown. I will first note the motives under which
it arose during the mid-nineteenth century; next describe the theory
itself; after that, give the arguments by which it was more and more
shown to be untenable. Those arguments have long been familiar to all
educated Europe.
Organic Genetic Evolution, i.e. the theory that one kind of living being
arises from another kind, is as old as human observation and human
thought. Common experience suggests it to everyone, because we know of
no way in which living beings can appear upon earth save as the product
of other living beings.
When, therefore, men first took notice of, say, donkeys and horses, or
tigers and cats, they naturally said to themselves, “These things look
as though they had a common ancestor.” The next step is to suppose that
there would be a common ancestor to more widely different types. It is
even admissible, though not probable, that all life on this earth sprang
from one very simple origin. Our old Pagan forefathers—those of them who
were civilized—discussed all this centuries ago, and the Fathers of the
Christian Church spoke in the same terms.
Though criticism, and instruction in physical science as well, declined
in the Dark Ages, and though popular imagination had then, as ever, a
simple imagery, the idea was not so much contradicted or denied as
neglected.
In the Middle Ages it reappears, very vaguely, under the conception of
Mediate Creation. God is the Creator of every living thing. Yet every
living thing has a parent or parents. That is an example of Mediate
Creation; and it at once suggests the idea that groups as well as
individuals might originate in the same way. Indeed, St. Thomas, the
great teacher of the Middle Ages, by concluding exceptionally that the
creation of Man was _not_ mediate, but direct, implies the possibility
or probability of Mediate Creation for organisms other than Man.
With the growth of Modern Science in the eighteenth century full
discussion of the Idea was revived, and from a hundred and fifty years
ago Evolution was discussed throughout educated Europe. During the
nineteenth century a great mass of evidence was accumulated in its
favour, and to-day it is almost (but not quite) universally held by
specialists who have authority to speak upon such matters.
It is true that the process Organic Evolution may have taken becomes
more and more doubtful as modern research and debate advance.
Have the various species of Plants and Animals branched out from one
original living cell or from many? It is uncertain.
Have the new origins of life appeared in succession and separately at
long intervals of time? It is possible or probable.
Is transformism, that is, the change of one fully-developed mature and
complex type into another, true? For instance, could a Reptile have
changed into a Bird? Half a lifetime ago nearly everybody answered
“Yes.” To-day—especially since the great work of Vialleton—more and more
people are answering “No.”
These and any number of other doubts and criticisms—and some
disproofs—have arisen in our time, though Evolution in the widest sense
of the word—that is, the doctrine that living things are genetically
connected, is still the main doctrine taught and held in Biology.
But Evolution in general is not the point. It involves no fundamental
issue. It clashes with no theology or philosophy, unless we dignify by
those terms an attachment to pictures of ready-made beasts in the family
Bible. It is when men come to discuss _how_ the difference between
varying types arose that we enter at once upon a quarrel between
opposing philosophies, Christian and anti-Christian. No Catholic, nor
indeed any man possessed of a philosophy, would trouble himself much
over the confirmation or disproof of Evolution. Evolution simply means
continuous growth; a tree growing from a seedling is an example of
evolution; growth is the universal phenomenon apparent in ourselves and
all organic life around us, and to discover it generalized is no shock,
but rather an extension of the obvious.
But when we come to ask _how_ and _why_ the vast variety of living
things past and present grew and differentiated as they did: whether a
Spirit is at work or no: whether the process be intended or
motiveless—_then_ the essential quarrel is engaged between those for
whom the Universe is blind and those who see it to be the work of God.
That quarrel, which had long been acute in the general field of
philosophy, became acute in the particular field of Biology in the late
middle of the nineteenth century—over sixty years ago.
Darwin and Wallace and their school belonged to a generation—lived in a
place and a time—to which the mysterious action of Will upon the
Universe—and, indeed, any mystery—was incomprehensible. Mystery in any
form the typical nineteenth-century “Liberal”—as he was called
abroad—rejected; and it has been well said that his very politics were
founded on the idea that even human life was not mysterious.
We must remember that they had but just escaped—most of their
fellow-citizens were still plunged in—the base Puritan superstitions of
the seventeenth century. The Vision, the Shrine, the Miracle, the
Supernatural in Sacred Place and Thing, they had become too dull to
grasp. It was inevitable that such particular rejections of mystery
should lead at last to the more general rejection of Divine Action. At
the same time they were in reaction against the old Puritan Bibliolatry,
which, in their ignorance of Catholic truth, they thought of as
“orthodoxy.”
It occurred to them, after doing a great deal of work upon the evidence
for transformism—that is, for the change of one living type into
another—that the (to them) impossible idea of Design could be
eliminated; and it was under the more or less conscious action of a
prejudice against Design that they propounded this theory of Natural
Selection.
The process of their prejudice against Design moved as follows:
“We must never have recourse to Mind in order to explain the Universe;
that would be ‘unscientific’; for to be ‘scientific’ is to allow for
nothing but material causes. Therefore the appearance of separate kinds
of living beings must come from blind chance, or at least
_mechanically_. At all costs we must get rid of the idea of Design; of a
desired End conceived and maintained in a Creative Will. Here is a
theory which will make the whole process entirely mechanical and dead.”
Incidentally, it made it possible to get rid of the necessity for a
Creator. It was upon that aspect and use of the theory that the enemies
of religion immediately seized, and it is precisely because it is
supposed to get rid of God the Creator (and Judge) that some defence for
Natural Selection is still being kept up, especially (in part from
Patriotism) among Darwin’s fellow-citizens, but also abroad.
Darwin thought (and so did Wallace, who was a man of exactly the same
type, belonging to the same generation and surroundings) that since the
mysterious action of Will in the Universe was out of tune with his own
mood, the evident order and purpose of organic life must be explained in
another way, by the action of dead, unintelligent forces.
Whether God could create, did He choose, by the action of blind chance,
trained theologians may decide. But it is obvious that if a system of
blind chance were demonstrably true, those great modern intellects who
say in their hearts “There is No God” have a powerful weapon, in the
Theory of Natural Selection. They seized that weapon with gusto; and
they are still desperately clinging to the handle though the business
part of the instrument has long been battered shapeless by their
conquering opponents.
Here I must pause to make an important point. I have said that the
motives which made the first theorizers incline to an atheist solution
were not consciously atheist. Indeed, it was characteristic of their
generation that they could not define their own first principles.
Further, they lived at a time when Christian principles were still
powerful around them in the Protestant middle classes of England, and
probably they honestly desired to combine incompatibles.
I want to make this point quite clear, because it is one upon which
there has been a great deal of misunderstanding.
Neither Darwin nor Wallace, nor a host of other lesser known people who
were all theorizing in much the same way a lifetime ago, were
philosophic atheists after the type of the great Lucretius.[1] They were
not of that calibre. None of them could think out a consistent
philosophical theory, true or false. Most of them would have told you,
in a muddle-headed sort of way, that they reverently believed in a
Creator, while actively preaching the crudely mechanical and accidental
processes which alone they could grasp.
Footnote 1:
It is more accurate to say of Lucretius that he did not deny the Gods:
only their action on our affairs. But the great Epicurean philosophy
of Antiquity was essentially Atheist, though in a form far nobler than
the vulgar “No Goddism” of yesterday.
But though these men characteristically confused themselves about what
they did and did not ultimately believe (or rather feel) in
religion—i.e. what their ultimate philosophy really was—any modern
reader, especially any reader with the clear intelligence of the
Catholic, can see what was running through their emotional brains. The
idea of Design was intolerable to them. It was inextricably connected in
their minds with what _they_ thought the word “Creation” meant. They had
been taught in their childhood that “Creation” meant millions and
millions of quite separate, mature, complicated things appearing
suddenly, unconnected one with the other: magic full-grown oak trees
without acorns to grow from.
To get rid of this folly they took refuge in another, and produced that
theory of “Natural Selection” which seemed to them to account for the
different types of living beings without having to admit a conscious and
permanent Divine Intention. It seemed to them to solve, in a simple
fashion any child could understand, the awful and ancient riddle which
has perplexed Europe for certainly three thousand years, and perhaps
much more. To the question, “How did differentiation among living
organisms come to be”? they thought they had got the answer on what was
virtually an atheist basis—a getting rid of intelligence from the
Universe. They would not admit a Divine Plan of the oak tree and an
inherent power, tending towards that end, implanted in the acorn. They
called a profound view of this sort “mysticism,” using that word as a
term of abuse—and using it, of course, in a totally wrong meaning. No,
they would get their oak and elm out of some general parent tree without
an Idea being at work, without Fiat, without an underlying Spirit.
So they propounded the theory of Natural Selection.
The theory of Natural Selection was this:
No living thing can possibly be _exactly_ like its parent: for every
organism is individual. The difference may be very slight, but it is
always present.
Now, it is also obviously true, from experience, that the conditions
under which organic beings live—what is called their environment, i.e.
their surroundings—change unceasingly. That again is necessarily true if
the material Universe be, as it is, under the condition of Motion. These
surroundings are perpetually changing slightly; sometimes they change
suddenly and catastrophically, as, for instance, when there is a flood.
Now, some particular change—as, for instance, the climate getting
gradually colder or wetter or dryer—will suit some particular small
variation apparent in a certain proportion of any given set of organic
beings. For instance, out of a million sheep-like animals, ten thousand
must in different degrees have very slightly woollier coats than the
common run, and, if the climate is slowly getting colder, this minority
of woollier sheep are better suited to the change.
All organisms die; but those better suited to a particular surrounding
condition have a greater chance of survival than those less suited.
(This dreadfully self-evident truth was solemnly set down in an academic
formula: it was called “Survival of the Fittest,” or, more clumsily,
“Survival of the Fitter”!) Bit by bit, therefore, through the mechanical
process of the slightly less fit specimens dying off more rapidly, and
leaving presumably less progeny, while a small number of slightly more
fit lived longer and presumably left more progeny inheriting their
advantages, the type of animal could be, and was, by the blind action of
matter and with no necessity for its own or any other will, and with no
design in the process at all, adapted to the changing condition. Since
conditions are always changing, organic types (i.e. living things,
vegetable and animal) were perpetually conforming to their environment
by this process of “Survival of the Fittest,” wherein a _mechanical_
process _inevitably_ and _blindly_ picked out—_selected_—(whence the
term “Natural Selection”) those who were to survive and form a new type.
In this fashion all organic things came to be what they are at any
particular moment _and also to change perpetually into new things_.
This doctrine of Natural Selection was thus made to explain the
diversity and the unity of the living world.
Let us see how some simple organism, living on the tidal belt of the
sea-shore (between high and low water-mark), and able both to exist in
the air and under water will, according to the doctrine of Natural
Selection, differentiate out and produce a land animal. Out of a million
of these organisms there are, perhaps, ten thousand in which you can
discover some slight superiority, present in varying degrees among them,
for standing a long dry spell. There are another ten thousand who show
in varying degrees some tiny, almost imperceptible, superiority of
standing a long spell without air under water. Raising of the land or
the set of winds gives a season of abnormally low high tides. The
animals just on the upper edge of the tidal belt die out for lack of
their regular tidal supply of water, except some few who can, having the
slight differential advantage apparent among them, stand the strain of
living so long in the air. The progeny of these, again, will tend to
survive according to the degree in which they can stand the lack of
water about them. The less fit for air-life are gradually sifted out by
this natural process; the more fit for air-life survive.
There is the theory of “Natural Selection” in its broadest outline. It
was excellently adapted to the generation for which it was produced. It
looked as simple as the old theory of Free Trade did in economics, or
the old theory of Universal Suffrage in politics, or any other of the
old crude mechanical conceptions born of the denial of mystery. It
accounted for everything straightforwardly and at a blow. If you used
its loose phraseology repeatedly, without ever gripping the full
implication of the terms, without the capacity for holding a theory down
hard and examining it closely, it seemed perfectly sufficient—and the
old riddle was solved.
“Natural Selection,” “the Survival of the Fittest,” the very gradual and
quite blind, purposeless, undesigned forcing of the living organism into
correspondence with its material environment, the formation of the
living thing by the pressure of the nonliving—of death—was sufficiently
proved. All the old ideas of Design, the looking for mysterious forces
at work in the world, and for a Mind behind it all in order to explain
the suitability of each organ to its function, could be scrapped. There
was no creative God required. Those who wanted to be rid of Him could
(and did) say that men had only imagined such a Being from an ignorant
projection of themselves on to the Universe. It was not life that
transformed itself to meet and master matter, but (as Delage admirably
put it in his refutation of Darwinism) matter which, through death,
ordered life.
Such was the theory of Natural Selection.
Now, as we are about to examine why this theory of Natural Selection is
untenable, and to discover why it burst after so very short a
fashionable run, we must, by way of preliminary, clearly understand its
implications. We must understand—what its original promoters did not—the
things which, whether you know it or not, you are accepting when you
accept Natural Selection. After that we can understand the arguments
which have destroyed it.
Put as I have just put it, and as it used to be put in all the
old-fashioned textbooks of Mr. Wells’s youth, it sounds not only simple,
but convincing It is when one looks into what it implies that the old
Darwinian theory of Natural Selection gets shaky.
THE IMPLICATIONS OF NATURAL SELECTION
(1) In the first place, note that, according to this theory, _there can
be no stable type; there can be no fixity of species_. All is in flux.
Environment is never exactly the same, even for two days at a time, let
alone for two successive thousand years. Very long slow changes in
climate, or any other factor of environment, would necessarily involve
long, unceasing, slight transformation, never halting. The theory
_necessarily_ demands a living world in a state of slow but _incessant_
transformation, with no fixed mature results at the end of development.
It is only by the loosest sort of thinking, and by substituting
imagination for close reasoning, that the ideas of Natural Selection and
permanent stable types can be reconciled.
Thus some have said that the Seal was “sifted out” by Natural Selection,
got more and more suited to its habitat by “survival of the fittest,”
until it had no further need for adaptation: it was at last perfectly
adapted to the purposes of its life.
Well, one of the most pressing needs of the seal under the conditions of
its life is to scramble on to the icefloes in order to escape from its
most deadly enemy. It does so most clumsily and ineffectually by the
help of its flappers. For countless generations Natural Selection has
had time to work if it were capable of bettering that state of affairs
by producing flappers more serviceable. It has not done so. Why? Not
because the seal is “in equilibrium,” but because, however it may have
evolved, it is now a fixed type: mature: it is what is and can now no
longer change its fundamental structure.
It is true that Darwin and others talk vaguely of the process “reaching
equilibrium,” but that, according to his own theory, is a contradiction
in terms. Under Natural Selection there can be none such.
Darwin, Wallace, and the rest did not think clearly enough to see that
this was so, but so it is. If a hare runs fast because it has developed
its speed through an immense series of faster and faster hares who
“survived” because their speed made them “fitter” to escape enemies,
then the process demands that the speed shall continually increase. Your
hare of 1925 that can cover the measured mile in three and a half must
develop into your hare of A.D. 20,000 who can cover it in three: for
there is no doubt whatsoever that an increase of speed has survival
value. And he must be developing all the time. There is no escape from
that conclusion, if the theory of Natural Selection held water: which it
doesn’t.
That is the first necessary result of Natural Selection. If the theory
of Natural Selection is true there are not now, and cannot have been in
the past, _fixed types_ recognizable by marked and permanent characters.
(2) Next, observe that the theory of Natural Selection also demands a
_regular_ progression, and _a very slow one_. It involves, for instance,
the development of a land animal out of a water animal by an immense
accumulation of exceedingly slight differences in each generation,
favourable to a water animal’s longer and longer bouts of staying out of
water. These exceedingly slight differences in each generation are
presupposed to be only such as we always observe between parent and
child. Darwinian Natural Selection as a prime cause can admit no rapid,
startling changes.
For it presupposes a purely blind, unintentional, “sieve-like” action,
not merely as killing off the unfit—which is obvious—but as producing
gradually increasing fitness, with no inherent power in the organism for
adaptation. According to Darwinian Natural Selection, what works the
change is a vast number of successive tiny differences such as always
appear between parent and progeny.
To turn out, for instance, the white bear of the Arctic from the general
undifferentiated type of subfusc beardom you must have hardly
perceptible steps beginning with the slightly lighter hue of a few
bears, and proceeding gradually for æons and æons until only the pure
white survived (though however one could get at _pure_ white by such a
process it would have puzzled them to say!)
Natural Selection, then, imperatively demands for each species a slow
ascension, a regular, inclined plane, produced over a prodigious space
of time, in which the animal is getting whiter and whiter, or fleeter
and fleeter, or what not, by infinitesimal degrees.
The theory of Natural Selection necessitates the presence, in all
fossils, and even during any considerable historical period, of
increasing progressive slight differences in type.
It is no good saying that Natural Selection might apply to new highly
suitable variations coming at exactly the right moment to benefit the
animal. Such variations indicate Design of some sort and Will. If the
climate gets colder and very woolly types of an animal immediately begin
to appear, that is not Natural Selection; that is a startling but
obvious adaptation, due to some other cause, of organism to environment.
It is the very negation of a blind, causeless, undefined, unwilled
process which the theory of Natural Selection was intended to bolster
up.
(3) Again, Natural Selection implies advance by the killing off of the
organism not possessed of a specific advantage. How is it then that
organisms not possessed of the advantage survive—as they certainly
do—side by side with the advantaged and in the same environment? The
Elephant’s trunk grew longer because the short-trunkites were killed
off. What of the Tapir?
(4) Again, Natural Selection cannot allow itself to be ousted by any
rival aid to development.
This is a very important point. The whole point of Natural Selection as
the explanation of the difference between living beings is that it is
mechanical. The moment you have to prop it up by saying “Animals with
similar variations will tend to mate one with the other,” or “Striking
change in environment will tend to produce corresponding variations,”
you are abandoning Natural Selection, and covering up your retreat with
mere verbiage. Why “tend”?
The theory of Natural Selection is a jealous god and it will admit no
rival, nor even any support. You must make it your mainstay or give it
up: for the whole point of it is that it permits you, if you will, to
eliminate Will and Mind from the Universe. The moment you have to prop
it up with some theory involving Will and Mind the essence of it
disappears. Therefore does Weissmann, the most famous of its later
defenders, ascribe to it “All-might” (to make a barbaric translation of
his term) and desperately add that we “must” accept Natural Selection
because the only alternative is design—that is God; the Inadmissible:
the Dogmatically Denied.
Suppose a man to say, “No one threw that stone: it hit my window by the
force of gravity.” Another then points out that a stone, merely falling,
would have gone past the window, and that the stone, from the course it
took, striking the window, must have been thrown by someone to take the
glass at the angle it did. To this the man replies: “Well, yes, perhaps;
but gravity influenced its course.” Clearly he has abandoned his case.
He was arguing that the stone merely fell: that no Will or Design caused
it to take the path it did. When he admits a thrower of the stone and
merely brings in gravity as affecting the course of the stone he
abandons his position altogether.
That is exactly parallel to the old-fashioned advocate of Natural
Selection who reluctantly admits, on modern evidence—and mainly through
the work of De Vries—great and rapid changes adapting animals to a new
environment, but adds, “Anyhow, those that _don’t_ change will be killed
off.” Of course they will! But that isn’t the point. The point is that
the killing off of the unfit is proved _not_ to be the _agent_ of
change. The climate gets colder. Much thicker fleeces begin to appear.
Such animals as don’t show the new thick fleeces begin to die out.
Obviously!—But that doesn’t explain why the thicker fleeces began to
appear. If you admit Mutation (the name for rapid change) or Saltatory
Evolution (Evolution by jumps) poor old Natural Selection goes by the
board.
In the same way Natural Selection does not mean that, upon a change of
environment, things unsuitable to the new condition tend to disappear.
Of course they do.
If there is a flood, fishes survive, cattle are drowned. The fishes are
fitter to survive the flood than the cattle. And if the flood lasted
long enough, there would at the end of it be plenty of fish and no
cattle. But to talk of that as “Natural Selection” is to use the same
word in two different senses.
The theory of Natural Selection as the _agent_ of Evolution does not
mean that floods drown cattle and don’t drown fish. We all know that.
The theory means that successive floods turn cattle into fish—and that
is a very different proposition!
The theory of Natural Selection does not mean that things die out when
they cannot live; if it only meant that it would not be worth stating.
It means that the chance of survival, through exceedingly small and
inevitable slight differences between Parent and offspring, is the great
cause producing the marvels in adaption and beauty and special action in
a million forms which make up the life of this world. Its chief use has
been to back up the denial of God, and now it has broken down the
opponents of Design in the Universe must seek for a new reply.
They are still seeking it.
(5) Next note that the theory of Natural Selection implies a _continual
accumulation of fresh advantages_; although for this there is no sort of
necessity and, on a theory of blind chance, no possibility of such a
thing. It is a mere gratuitous assumption with no reason behind it and
all actual experiment against it. This is the point which Morgan
(Professor of Experimental Zoology at Columbia University) so powerfully
emphasizes in his critique of the Theory of Evolution which came out
just after the war.
To apply the theory to that simple case of the animal on the tidal
beach. Those with minute advantages over the average in the way of
standing slightly longer immersion have survival-value over those who
are only on or below the average. But why—by the mere blind selection of
death—should the advantage _accumulate_ from generation to generation?
Why should _new_ advantageous exceptions, each better than the last,
appear in unbroken succession generation after generation?
(6) Lastly, there is the exceedingly important, the essential, point
that, according to the theory of Natural Selection, _each slight
successive change in the whole series must give its possessor a
survival-value_. Not only must a fully formed flapper be an advantage
(to a whale) over a leg, by the time it has become aquatic, but a
half-formed flapper must be an advantage to the whale while it still
uses the land. Clearly it was nothing of the kind. If transformism be
true (which is not certain) then Design explains the leg into a flapper
in spite of the intermediate disadvantages. If there is Design behind
the transformation, if there is special protection for the heavily
handicapped intermediate form, one can understand the possibility of it.
Under Natural Selection it is impossible.
So much for the Implications of the Theory. I hope I have put them as
clearly as may be, and accurately; not a very hard task, for it was an
extremely crude and simple theory during its short life, and could be
grasped (and refuted) by anyone.
Let me summarize these Implications.
(1) First, _Change must be continual and types must be always in a state
of flux_. Stability of Type and Natural Selection form a contradiction
in terms. You can have one or the other—but you cannot have both.
(2) Second, _Natural Selection inevitably implies that, on searching the
records of Evolution, we shall find only gradual change_, proceeding
continually, so that the ascending organisms follow, as it were, regular
inclined planes showing no steps. The whole of Evolution should, under
Natural Selection, prove to be of this kind. Thus you would have, say,
tigers as they are now, gradually developing out of some tiger-like
ancestor in the past by a regular and uninterrupted process, never
achieving a fixed type but perpetually changing as time went on; and
that perpetual change would be still going on to-day. The world about us
would not show (as it does) a vast number of strongly separate types but
a confused jumble of forms all melting one into the other.
(3) _Third_, Natural Selection presupposes Evolution through the killing
off of individuals lacking certain advantages, _how then do other types
continue still to be with us in spite of lacking these advantages?_
(4) Fourth, _Natural Selection must stand or fall of itself_. If you try
to prop it up with Will or Design, inherent in the organism, or acting
in any other fashion, you destroy its whole thesis. If you say, for
instance, “the country becoming dryer, animals which _adapted
themselves_ to the new conditions survived, and those that could not
adapt themselves died out,” that is no example of Natural Selection _as
an agent of Evolution_. For when you say “_Animals which adapted
themselves_ to the new conditions,” you are presupposing some inherent
power in the animal to adapt itself: you are presupposing a form of Will
and Design, and thereby denying the purely mechanical action, the
unintelligent “sieve,” of Natural Selection as an agent.
(5) Fifth, _Natural Selection presupposes, quite gratuitously, that new
survival values will be perpetually and progressively appearing_. That
sheep woollier than the average of a flock have survival value as the
winters get colder is obvious: too obvious to need stating. But why
should the next generation, under mere chance, produce a number of new
still woollier variations, and the one after that yet another even
woollier set; and so on indefinitely?
(6) Sixth, _Natural Selection presupposes that in every stage of the
slow process of development by infinitesimal differences_, each
_successive difference is more advantageous than the last and has a
special survival value_.
A bird with fully formed wings has a survival value through being able
to fly away from land enemies. But if it evolved from a reptile by
Natural Selection, then each stage between the useful Reptilian fore-leg
and the useful wing must have had a special advantage over the stage
immediately preceding it. There must have been an advantage in the
fore-leg getting stumpy, then in its getting stumpier, then its getting
so stumpy that the beast couldn’t use it at all. And this must be true
of every change in all the millions of tiny evolutionary changes
proceeding through æons of time. All the way along, from the first signs
of something which _later on_ will be an advantage to the mature type,
through myriads of generations, from the first origins when the organ
was as yet rudimentary to the last when it was perfected, every step
must have had a survival value over the last. And this must apply not
only to broad cases, such as the reptile’s fore-leg turning into the
bird’s wing, but to every one of innumerable organs and to every part of
each organ. Otherwise the theory breaks down.
The implications then of Natural Selection as the blind agent of
development, “give one furiously to think.” Merely stated roughly as I
have done here, they shake the ordinary man’s confidence in it. But when
we come to ordered proofs against it, we shall find those proofs
conclusive.
To these I now turn.
THE ARGUMENTS AGAINST NATURAL SELECTION
When one has to examine any proposition and see whether it be true or
no, two radically distinct forms of reasoning present themselves to the
mind.
(A) You may find the thing asserted to be in itself impossible, granted
certain self-evident principles of thought. For instance, a man who died
on the 16th of the month cannot have died of poison taken on the 20th of
the month. Or again, the sum of certain payments cannot be less than
some one of those payments. This method is called the _a priori_ method.
(B) The other approach made by reason to see whether a theory is true or
false is the experimental one, that of positive evidence. You test, by
the positive evidence at your disposal, whether the thing affirmed has
really taken place or not. Sometimes the first of these methods is
conclusive, in which case one has no reason to go any further.
Sometimes, and more usually, the second is conclusive, and there is no
opportunity or occasion to apply the first. For instance, if we are told
that John Jones forged the will of a man who was born after John Jones’s
death we know _a priori_ that the story is nonsense. But if John Jones
is said to have forged the will of a man who died while John Jones was
still alive, then we must go into the evidence of handwriting and all
the rest of it.
The reason that people rightly and necessarily supplement _a priori_
reason in practical affairs by the experimental method is that _a
priori_ conclusions depend for their value on the rigid certitude of
their premises. E.g. a man who died on the 16th cannot have died of
poison bought on the 20th. But are we sure that the 16th is really the
date of his death? To test that we require actual evidence.
One can conclude absolutely against a false theory by either of these
two methods of reasoning. But when they concur, when you find the theory
to be false both _a priori_ and from the available evidence as well,
then certitude could not be more certain: the combination of both
methods of proof is overwhelming.
Now we shall see that this is exactly what happens in the case of this
false theory of Evolution called Natural Selection. There are four
crushing _a priori_ arguments disposing of it, and, after that, there is
overwhelming positive evidence against it, of which the main divisions
are three in number.
The four conclusive _a priori_ arguments are these:—
(1) Variations in nearly every case must continue to accumulate.
Variations more and more advantageous must appear successively,
Generation after Generation. This is not logically essential in every
conceivable case, e.g. particoloured animals could grow whiter against
snow. But in the vast majority of cases such accumulation is essential:
e.g. to produce a taller type or to produce horns or to lengthen a tail.
Now the chances of such a regular series appearing by accident even in
one case, let alone in millions, clearly approximate to zero.
(2) The advantageous differences making for survival are not of one kind
in any particular case, but of an indefinitely large number (e.g.
climate getting colder needs not only warmer coat, but power to digest
new food, protective colouring so as not to show dark against snow, etc.
An indefinitely large number of qualities). Now the chance of _all_
being combined (and co-ordinated) in a single individual, _without
design, accidentally_—let alone of their thus appearing in many
individuals _accidentally and without design_—approximates to zero. On
the same line of reasoning the chances of co-ordination between all the
vastly numerous parts of one complex creature by accident approximate to
zero.
(3) The chances of _each_ very slight change being an advantageous one
over the last in a series indefinitely prolonged of myriads or millions
approximate to zero.
(4) Where more than one specially favoured progenitor is necessary to
the production of an organism (e.g. among mammals, two, a male and
female: with many plants three, a male and female and an insect
go-between) the chance combination of such favoured progenitors
_accidentally and without design_ diminishes with each generation in
geometrical ratio and rapidly approximates to zero.
The decisive character of these _a priori_ arithmetical arguments will
appear later.
Now for the arguments from evidence.
The arguments from evidence against Natural Selection come under three
main heads:—
(1) Within humanly recorded historical experience no trace of such
permanent progressive action is observable. There is no doubt of
individual differences; there is also plenty of proof of slight changes
swinging round the normal. There is manifest to every one
differentiation of type: Negroes and Mongols among men for instance. But
the main types are fixed. Negro and Mongol are both men. Man and other
mature types are, within historical record, fixed. They are not on their
way to becoming something else.
It is true that humanly recorded historical experience covers but a very
brief fraction of the total time allowed for even the shortest estimates
of the past of this world. None the less, it is sufficient to prove that
types once achieved are permanent. Call it five thousand years (perhaps
man-made prehistoric pictures may extend that limit), even that short
period is enough to prove the existence of stable types. For if during
five million years some animal form existing at the moment has been
forever slowly changing by a process such that its present apparent
fixity is an illusion, and is still proceeding to further slow changes
indefinitely, then five thousand years ought to show a perceptible
fraction of the movement; only a thousandth of it, no doubt, but one in
a thousand is measurable: tiny, but measurable. Yet no fundamental
change, still less any progressive change, is apparent. During all the
_historical_ epoch fixity of type is invariable.
(2) The geological record, so far from showing types perpetually in a
state of flux, presents us with Fixed Types and Nothing but Fixed Types.
A Fixed Type does not mean a Type which had no other Type for its
ancestors; nor one which never passed through immature stages before
reaching maturity. Nor does it mean a type without collaterals. It means
a type which, when mature, is repeated indefinitely.
(3) The geological record does not as a fact show gradually progressive
change by imperceptible degrees like an inclined plane, but on the
contrary, a series of leaps, like a number of steps.
There, in brief summary, is a table of the main arguments which have
undermined the old theory of Natural Selection.
I will now take them one by one:
(1) The first _a priori_ argument against Natural Selection, that it
presupposes quite arbitrarily that variations will accumulate, I have
already dealt with.
(2) _The second_ a priori _argument against Natural Selection_:
_Natural Selection involves accidental survival-value not in one single
feature but in many complex co-ordinated features all simultaneous and
yet accidental. This without Design is mathematically impossible._
Natural Selection is usually spoken of by those who still put it forward
for popular consumption in terms of _one_ advantageous difference: for
instance, slightly greater speed, slightly better protective colouring,
etc. This escape from the difficulty is duly repeated here by Mr. Wells.
He gives us, as an example of the way in which Natural Selection would
work, the climate becoming more snowy and, of a number of whity-brown
animals, the whiter tending to survive in each generation, and the
quality of whiteness tending, therefore, to increase. No better instance
could be found of the way in which this book merely follows (and
repeats) the mistakes of a generation ago. For that instance of the
whity-brown animal is the regular old tag which always cropped up
whenever this theory of Natural Selection was advanced.
It should surely have been evident, even to the originators of the idea
(as it is now at last evident to everybody worth counting), that what
you need in order to adapt (_a._) an animal to new circumstances, (_b._)
any developing function of a particular species, (_c._) the development
of many co-ordinated functions within one organism, is not one simple
advantage, but _an indefinitely large number of advantages, all of which
have to be co-ordinated if survival-value is to be obtained_.
When the climate gets colder, there will probably be more snow. But this
is not the only thing that will happen. There will also be a change in
the methods of progression over the surface of the earth. Paws
advantageous for speed when there was no frost or snow may be
disadvantageous when there is. There will also be a change in the things
present for an animal to eat; many of the grasses and fruits present in
the warmer time will presumably disappear and others better suited to
the new, cold climate will increase. Again, a change of this kind does
not take place in isolated fashion; it will be accompanied perhaps by
longer nights in winter; probably by more cloudy skies, and by sudden
floods in spring, and so on. Change of environment will nearly always
mean not one, but a very great number of concomitant changes.
Change, then, in environment is always complex. But the organism which
has to meet it is also complex, only because it _is_ an organism. Every
living organism is highly complex. It is its very complexity, that is,
the vast number of its parts and the mysterious co-ordination between
them, which makes it a living organism, and distinguishes it from dead
matter. Even the simplest organic cell is chemically of a highly complex
nature, and its principle of continuity is so different from a simple
mechanical process that no one has ever been able to lay down a formula
for it. In plain words, the very nature of a living organism escapes us
on account of its complexity.
Here, then, you have a complex organism, consisting of an indefinitely
large number of parts, all of which must be co-ordinated to the changed
environment; and you have also an environment which, when it changes,
changes not in one, but in a very large number of respects.
Now observe the inevitable, mathematical necessity of this relation. The
environment changes not in one respect, or fifty, or a hundred, or a
thousand, but in as many as you like to catalogue. The living animal
consists not in one function, or a hundred, or a thousand, but in as
many more as you care to examine. To every change of climate, or what
not, there are an indefinitely large number of consequences. The
organism has to be adapted to meet _all_ the changes. But that living
thing also must, in order to have a special survival-value, discover,
somehow, a corresponding change in all its own innumerable functions.
When such and such a proportion of the organisms shows _one_ particular
slight advantage for meeting _one_ aspect of the change, such an
advantage helps this favoured proportion, _in that point only_, to
survive. But, in order to have special survival-value, the organism must
also show advantages in every other respect. The chance of _all_ these
advantages coinciding in any one organism and _accidentally_
corresponding to the very numerous changes in environment, is
mathematically indistinguishable from zero. The animals with whiter
coats than the average are not (if the matter be left to chance) the
same as those with paws slightly better suited for snow than the
average; nor are either of these the same as those with slight survival
advantage over the average in digesting changed food—and so on with any
number of conditions. Left to chance the combination could not arise.
Yet it does arise.
It is equally true that the adaptations of function to function within
each organism are vast in number and could never have arisen from blind
accident.
This is the unanswerable point brought out half a lifetime ago and
increasingly emphasized ever since.
Wolff put it admirably in his attack on Darwinism as early as 1898: “One
might possibly imagine the adaptation between one muscle cell and one
nerve-end, through Selection among innumerable chance-made variations,
but that such shall take place in a 1000 cases in one organism is
inconceivable.” And another great biologist has well said: “What is the
survival value of horns without the structure to support them and
muscles to use them?” Strange that Mr. Wells should never have heard of
all this!
Animals _are_ adapted, we know. They _do_ co-ordinate an indefinitely
large number of internal conditions to meet a whole complicated bundle
of external conditions. They also have a myriad adaptions within
themselves necessary to their existence as organisms quite apart from
external change. But this could not possibly happen from blind chance.
The mathematical chances are millions and millions to one against the
possibility of such a thing. Grant Design moulding all nature—that is,
God,—and this process is explicable. Grant even an inherent power
possessed by the living thing to attempt its own adaptation, and the
process is explicable. Leave it to the mechanical explanation of Natural
Selection, and it is impossible.
(3) _The third_ a priori _proof against Natural Selection_:
_Natural Selection presupposes that each new infinitesimal stage in
development out of millions in each type, is, by blind chance, an
advantage over the last. This is mathematically impossible._
This third _a priori_ proof that Natural Selection is a false theory
lies in the simple consideration that it demands _each stage_ in
millions of stages in millions of types to show a survival-value. The
chances against this being possible are many, many more millions than
the number of stages multiplied by the number of types. The chance of a
penny coming down heads a hundred times in succession is vastly less
than one in a hundred; and when it comes to myriads of times, the chance
is approximately zero. The chance of a hundred pennies chucked by a
hundred men in unison doing this is far less. In other words, it can’t
happen by chance.
Let me return to the case of the bird. A bird has wings with which it
can escape its enemies. If it began as a reptile without wings—when,
presumably, it had armour or some other aid to survival—what of the
interval? Natural Selection sets out to explain _how_ the evolutionary
process changes a reptile’s leg into a bird’s wing. It does so by making
the leg less and less of a leg for countless ages.
By the very nature of the theory _each stage_ in all these millions is
an advantage over the last towards survival! The thing has only to be
stated for its absurdity to appear. Compare the “get away” chances of a
lizard at one end of the process or a sparrow at the other with some
poor beast that had to try and skurry off on half-wings! or to fly with
half-legs! The change took place?—No doubt. Some of our greatest
Biologists say it didn’t and couldn’t. Most say it did. The hypothesis
has much in its favour. But the change could not possibly have taken
place by successive advantages any more than the turning of an egg into
a full-grown hen takes place by successive survivals, or of a chrysalis
into a moth.
Postulate a Design, say “Here was something in the making,” and the
process is explicable, especially if fairly rapid so as to bridge over
the dangerously weak stages of imperfection. Postulate Natural
Selection, and it is manifestly impossible. Now Natural Selection wants
that to happen not only with every kind of bird, but with every kind of
living creature.
(4) _The fourth_ a priori _argument against Natural Selection_:
When two or more progenital agents are required, _Natural Selection,
acting by blind chance alone, loses effect in geometrical proportion
with each generation._
This argument is rather more difficult to follow than the first two, but
it is worth understanding, because it is particularly strong, and
because it was among the first rude blows against the Darwinian theory.
Nägeli brought it out with crushing force as long ago as 1884—it is a
commonplace with everyone—except Mr. Wells, who imagines (a great
compliment!) that I made it up.
Where two or more progenitors are necessary, rare accidental advantages
rapidly disappear in a few generations _if the process be left to
chance_, as Natural Selection demands.
Suppose two progenitors required—as is the case with all animals—there
are, of course, many cases in which the total number of factors
necessary for the production of progeny is more than two and the
argument far stronger, e.g. the pollen of one flower, the pistil of
another flower, and the insect which acts as go-between. Take any
proportion you like of slightly favoured specimens. Suppose out of a
hundred individual males ten show in varying degrees the slight
differentiation which gives them a survival-value under changing
conditions of environment. It will not be anything like ten out of a
hundred, and we have already seen that a _single_ advantage is useless.
But we can afford to give this nonsense every advantage in argument, so
we will consider only _one_ clear advantage and allow one-tenth of the
males to have it. Now, suppose a similar number of females showing in
varying degrees this slight valuable differentiation. _Upon the
mechanical theory of Natural Selection_, the chances in favour of
progeny inheriting that differentiation in the next generation are not
one-tenth, but only one-tenth of one-tenth, i.e. one-hundredth. The
chances of favoured progeny in the third generation are not
one-hundredth, but one in ten thousand. In the fourth, the chances are
already only one in a hundred million—which we may call zero.
The reason is clear. Here are a hundred male land birds compelled by
change of environment to take to the water. Ten of them show an
infinitesimal rudimentary webbing between the toes of their feet, and
that is a first infinitesimal advantage in swimming. Ten hens are of the
same kind. _Left to mere chance_ there is no reason why a season’s
mating should allocate the web-footed male to the web-footed female.
Each one of the ten males has nine chances to one of paring with a
non-advantaged mate, and only one chance of mating with a hen similar to
himself and possessing, as he does, this infinitesimal advantageous
differentiation. On the average you would have only one couple in each
hundred handing on in full even that first tiny advantage to their
progeny with a corresponding tiny survival-value. In the case of
eighteen others it would be halved, and in the case of a hundred and
eighty-one, it would be absent. It is so with each generation. Each
little infinitesimal advantage can only be _fully_ handed on to a
fraction which is the square of the last, and in even _diminished_ form
to a fraction smaller in proportion to the flock in the third generation
than in the second. Long before you got anything like an even
rudimentary webbed foot the tiny advantage would have been absorbed. The
advantage, left to chance, sinks into the common stock.
There is no getting away from this conclusion by saying, “Oh! we’re not
talking of individuals, we’re talking of great masses.” The masses are
made up of individuals, and the mathematical argument is exactly the
same whether you are dealing with a hundred or ten million.
These four _a priori_ arguments against the theory of Natural Selection
as the agent of differentiation in species are as conclusive as
arithmetic can make them, and there is really no need for any
others—though many others have been urged—e.g. the mathematical chances
against one special advantageous variation appearing by pure accident at
exactly the time it was needed.
But, as I have said, apart from these _a priori_ and sufficient
arguments, there are conclusive arguments drawn from actual evidence,
and all this evidence is in favour of this _Fixed Type_. A fixed type
would be an impossibility under Natural Selection: it goes with a
Creator and with Design; and certainly it is true of the real world.
Natural Selection, if it had been the agent of Evolution, would have
prevented the formation of fixed types.
In the old materialist days when Natural Selection was triumphing, its
supporters used to say, as we have seen, that it acted “until
equilibrium was reached by the organism conforming to its environment.”
That was typical of their hiding the weakness of their case under vague
phrases which, closely analysed, proved self-contradictory.
_If Natural Selection be the Agent of Evolution stability can_ never _be
reached_. There is always some slight proportion of beings rather more
suited to survive than the mass of its fellows, and that fact should
cause a perpetual change rendering stability impossible.
A water-mammal has not “reached stability” when it can stay under water
ten minutes, or an hour, or two hours. According to Natural Selection,
it ought to progress unceasingly to longer and longer capacities of
submersion. A swallow has not “reached stability” by Natural Selection
when it flies sixty miles an hour; it ought to fly faster and faster
with the process of time. It may well have reached stability in the
sense that it is suited to its lot and makes no further effort. It may
well have reached stability in the sense that its end has been achieved,
its design completed. But if it got its fast flight only because a
slightly faster minority of swallows always outlive and outbreed their
slower rivals, by an assumed perpetual accumulation of little additions
of speed, why should the process stop at the bird’s present capacity? Of
course the series is a diminishing one. Each increment of speed is at a
higher cost than the last. But no fast-flying bird has nearly reached a
theoretical limit of speed—nor shows any tendency to reach it. Granted
Design then an End,—a Fixed Type—a Normal to which individuals are
planned and to which freak types tend to return—is explicable. Those who
cannot bear the idea of Design, that is of a Creator implanting inherent
powers, must try to invent some new theory which will allow of Fixed
Types without Design. But if Fixed Types exist they cannot be due to
Natural Selection, for Natural Selection and Fixed Types are
contradictory terms.
If Natural Selection be true, then what we call a pig is but a fleeting
vision; all the past he has been becoming a pig, and all the future he
will spend evolving out of pigdom, and pig is but a moment’s phase in
the eternal flux, while, all around us should be quarter-pigs,
half-pigs, near-pigs, all-but-pigs, slightly super-pigs, just
beginning—and so on. But there aren’t. There are just pigs. In other
words, the evidence is all in favour of Fixed Types and all against a
ceaseless process of change.
(1) We have the evidence of our senses that we are surrounded by Fixed
Types, and are Fixed Types ourselves. We have all about us species,
including man, which remain distinct species during all our experience
and as far back as historical record can carry us.
(2) If that were not sufficient we have Fixed Types, and nothing but
Fixed Types, in thousands and thousands (and continuing for what seem to
be immense stretches of time) in the geological record.
(3) That same geological record shows us, not a gradual turning of one
type into another, not a gradual ascent like an inclined plane—which
Natural Selection would demand—but a series of steps with _sharp_
divisions between.
These three arguments from experience are conclusive.
1. _The First Argument from Evidence against Natural Selection:_
_The Fixed Type is apparent in all recorded human experience._
This is the argument based on human experience during the period of
humanly recorded History, of which argument not nearly enough has been
made.
For certainly 5000 years of this record types are fixed. That is not to
say that maturity is not reached by growth, nor is it to say that a type
cannot disappear. But it _is_ an affirmation that the conceptions of
ceaseless flux, of the absence of form, of no maturity in
characteristics and nature, are baseless. As, indeed, the mere evidence
of our senses and of common sense acting on that evidence, must convince
anyone who prefers reality to print. Tell the plain man that there is no
such thing as a fox or a salmon or a human being, and he will laugh in
your face. And he will be quite right.
We are told that the 5000 years or so of recorded History (if we count
prehistoric relics the period is probably longer) are so brief that they
are a mere flash, and that we cannot observe in that tiny section of an
immensely long period the slight process of change over which Natural
Selection has been at work. We are under the illusion that types are
fixed because the few thousand years over which we can compare them are
as nothing compared with the whole period of development. Types only
_seem_ fixed to us in the same way as a revolving wheel _seems_ at rest
when discovered by a flash of lightning: the period of vision is too
brief for the motion to be appreciated.
But people who talk like that have not made the very simple calculation
of dividing the total period of a particular development by the few
thousand years over which our direct experience stretches.
Take, for instance, the theory of Natural Selection as applied to
ourselves. We know that over all these 5000 years the human body has not
progressively changed. There have been various sorts of men, of course,
and variations also round the normal. But the norm is set. Now even
those who have indulged in the wildest guesswork to allow for
development do not give true man more than 50,000 years.[2] Now,
one-tenth is a very sufficient fraction by which to measure any
movement. If so highly differentiated and co-ordinated an organism as
man has been subject to unceasing slow transformation during 50,000
years, and will go on changing slowly through the next 50,000, then
certainly in one-tenth of that period some considerable change should be
marked. None is so marked. Man, throughout those 5000 years, at least,
is a certainly Fixed Type, as his own records and portraiture show.
Footnote 2:
Not to burden the text, I give in this footnote a few of the main
guesses. Sollas 15,000 from the beginning of the Magdalenian.
Waldmeyer 15,000 to 20,000 for true man. Boulay 10,000. Mainage (a
very high authority) 15,000 from the Chellean. Holst, less than 7,000.
2. _The Second Argument from Evidence:_
_Geological record is entirely in favour of Fixed Types._
The geological record also shows us nothing but Fixed Types. Each _may_
have come by a transition more or less rapid out of some other—but at
any rate fixed they are, and the longer the time demanded by the modern
geologist for his periods, the longer the Fixed Type can be proved to
exist. Some few survive to-day from the very early days of life on this
earth. It was hoped, when the theory of Natural Selection was first
broached, that evidence would appear for continuous change. None has so
appeared. On the contrary, the more fossil evidence we acquire the more
definitely does it appear that the Fixed Type is the normal—indeed the
only—recorded thing. Of connected transitional changes (perhaps because
they were too rapid to affect the fragmentary record of the rocks)
_none_ has been discovered. There are plenty of intermediary forms:
there is not one connected series of changing forms passing one into the
other.
All this evidence is no argument against transition. But it is damning
evidence against the (a) very slow, (b) infinitesimally graduated, (c)
continuous and unceasing transition or flux which Darwinian Natural
Selection demands.
3. _The Third Argument from Evidence:_
_The geological record shows not a gradual unceasing development such as
Natural Selection demands, but sharp steps._
If Darwinian Natural Selection were the means by which simple ascended
to complex forms, this ascent would necessarily have been a regular,
very slow and uninterrupted process, continually at work.
The lines of ascent would have appeared in the geological record as so
many inclined planes. They appear, in point of fact, as so many
steps—each composed of very, very long flats separated, each from the
one below, by a clean gap or break.
This character in the geological record does not get weaker as we come
to know more and more of that record. On the contrary, it becomes
increasingly emphasized.
There is evidence suggesting development of one type from another, but
no evidence at all for the extremely gradual and continuous change of
one type into another. On the contrary, each step noted in the process
is a Fixed Type. What proportion the (presumably) rapid periods of
transition and change may have borne to the immensely long periods of
stable type, we cannot tell; but we do know that stable type is the
rule, and that the process of change from one type into another must,
compared with the long periods of fixity, have been the brief exception.
Yet, in the face of evidence so considerable and so widely known, the
talk of Natural Selection still survives in these popular manuals. As
Dwight (Professor of Anatomy at Harvard) very well put it fifteen years
ago, “Just at the time when the uneducated are prating about the triumph
of Darwinism it is fast losing caste among men of Science.”
But if it be asked why so patently false a theory was so tenaciously
defended for some years by serious authorities—is still defended by a
diminishing few—the answer is that the defenders of Natural Selection
were so preoccupied with a totally different discussion (to wit, the
defence of Evolution in general) that they confounded the two.
In England and North America, more than anywhere else, there were many
people a lifetime ago who, from some inherited superstition, did not
want to admit the idea of growth, though growth was going on all about
them. They did not want to admit that two kinds of tree might have come
from an original common type of tree; still less that one kind of animal
could come from another apparently different; although they had before
their eyes the oak tree coming out of an acorn, and the frog out of a
tadpole. They seemed to be unaware of the age-long controversy upon the
matter; they had never heard, apparently, of the modern founders of the
evolutionary hypothesis, especially Lamarck and Buffon: the former of
whom had a much more rational theory than Darwin’s, and put it forward
before Darwin was born. Still less had they heard of the theory of
Evolution among the Ancients and the Fathers of the Church.
Therefore, when patient observers of the middle of the nineteenth
century (of whom the best known was Darwin) accumulated a great quantity
of evidence in favour of Evolution, quite a number of their
contemporaries tried to stand out against that evidence. It became, in
England, a sort of national debate. The defenders of the ancient theory
of Evolution, finding themselves caught in a religious quarrel—of a most
irrational type, it is true—were at the same time carrying on a
conflict, quite novel and wholly their own, in favour of blind,
mechanical, Natural Selection as the _agent_ of Evolution. Their special
contribution, their only original idea, the only thing that properly can
be called “Darwinism,” was Natural Selection—“the explanation of
descent” (as Kohlbrugge, I read, has put it) “in terms of Materialism.”
But in order to defend their new instrument of Natural Selection, they
also had to support the old, old idea of Evolution. They confused the
two together. Many still confuse them.
To this day, in discussing the matter with a woolly headed man, or with
one who has not followed the matter closely, you will find him advancing
these strong arguments, which certainly support Evolution, as though
they also supported Natural Selection—with which last such arguments
have nothing whatever to do. You will find people saying (for instance)
that the exploded theory of Natural Selection must be true, because
living organisms (including the human body) appear to show vestiges of
ancient functions now atrophied. Such vestiges are properly advanced in
defence of the general Evolutionary theory; they have no bearing
whatever upon the essential point of _Agency_; and that alone is of real
theological and therefore of fundamental interest.
For this great debate has one supreme query underlying it, which is
this: whether we may see in the Universe a Creator and His Ends, or a
blind Nothingness.
Natural Selection has been the theory used to do without God: the theory
which crudely attempted to put the organic in terms of the mechanical
and chance in the place of Design. It was a bubble which burst when it
was touched by the finger of Reality.
I think I have said enough to show how strong are the considerations
against Natural Selection, and why it is being more and more abandoned
among Biologists as the Agent of Evolution.
But I am not writing this book as a treatise on such things. I am
writing a criticism of Mr. Wells. And I would ask my reader in
conclusion whether it is not remarkable to find Mr. Wells quietly taking
Natural Selection for granted as the Agent of Evolution? Taking it for
granted in 1926 as though we were still stuck fast at—say—1893?
Is it not remarkable to find a popular novelist swallowed whole when he
propounds in Natural Science a theory which has been riddled for a
generation? Is it not strange that he should take no account of such men
as (to quote at random) Bateson, Eimer, Morgan, Delage, Le Dantec,
Driesch, Dennert, Dwight, Nägeli, Sachs, Korchinsky, Wolff, Carazzi,
Vialleton, Diamare, and a hundred others?
I pretend to no sort of special knowledge in these affairs.
I have no more than that general liberal education which Mr. Wells so
greatly despises. Yet I have at least heard of these men and of their
work, and I know, roughly, where discussion now stands.
For Mr. Wells it stands as it did over thirty years ago, with no
knowledge of the revolution in thought in between!
I say that in a man professing to teach popular science, this degree of
ignorance is quite inexcusable.[3]
Footnote 3:
Not to crowd these pages too much, I have relegated to a short
appendix at the end of this volume authorities and criticisms which
the readers may consult for examples of insufficient reading on the
part of our Author.