III

The origin of species, like all origination, like the institution of

any other natural state or order, is beyond our immediate ken. We see

or may learn how things go on; we can only frame hypotheses as to how

they began.

Two hypotheses divide the scientific world, very unequally, upon the

origin of the existing diversity of the plants and animals which

surround us. One assumes that the actual kinds are primordial; the

other, that they are derivative. One, that all kinds originated

supernaturally and directly as such, and have continued unchanged in

the order of Nature; the other, that the present kinds appeared in some

sort of genealogical connection with other and earlier kinds, that they

became what they now are in the course of time and in the order of

Nature.

Or, bringing in the word species, which is well defined as "the

perennial succession of individuals," commonly of very like

individuals--as a close corporation of individuals perpetuated by

generation, instead of election--and reducing the question to

mathematical simplicity of statement: species are lines of individuals

coming down from the past and running on to the future; lines receding,

therefore, from our view in either direction. Within our limited

observation they appear to be parallel lines, as a general thing

neither approaching to nor diverging from each other.

The first hypothesis assumes that they were parallel from the unknown

beginning and will be to the unknown end. The second hypothesis assumes

that the apparent parallelism is not real and complete, at least

aboriginally, but approximate or temporary; that we should find the

lines convergent in the past, if we could trace them far enough; that

some of them, if produced back, would fall into certain fragments of

lines, which have left traces in the past, lying not exactly in the

same direction, and these farther back into others to which they are

equally unparallel. It will also claim that the present lines, whether

on the whole really or only approximately parallel, sometimes fork or

send off branches on one side or the other, producing new lines

(varieties), which run for a while, and for aught we know indefinitely

when not interfered with, near and approximately parallel to the parent

line. This claim it can establish; and it may also show that these

close subsidiary lines may branch or vary again, and that those

branches or varieties which are best adapted to the existing conditions

may be continued, while others stop or die out. And so we may have the

basis of a real theory of the diversification of species and here

indeed, there is a real, though a narrow, established ground to build

upon But as systems of organic Nature, both doctrines are equally

hypotheses, are suppositions of what there is no proof of from

experience, assumed in order to account for the observed phenomena, and

supported by such indirect evidence as can be had.

Even when the upholders of the former and more popular system mix up

revelation with scientific discussion--which we decline to do--they by

no means thereby render their view other than hypothetical. Agreeing

that plants and animals were produced by Omnipotent fiat does not

exclude the idea of natural order and what we call secondary causes.

The record of the fiat--"Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb

yielding seed," etc., "and it was so;" "let the earth bring forth the

living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing and beast of

the earth after his kind, and it was so"--seems even to imply them.

Agreeing that they were formed of "the dust of the ground," and of thin

air, only leads to the conclusion that the pristine individuals were

corporeally constituted like existing individuals, produced through

natural agencies. To agree that they were created "after their kinds"

determines nothing as to what were the original kinds, nor in what

mode, during what time, and in what connections it pleased the Almighty

to introduce the first individuals of each sort upon the earth.

Scientifically considered, the two opposing doctrines are equally

hypothetical.

The two views very unequally divide the scientific world; so that

believers in "the divine right of majorities" need not hesitate which

side to take, at least for the present. Up to a time quite within the

memory of a generation still on the stage, two hypotheses about the

nature of light very unequally divided the scientific world. But the

small minority has already prevailed: the emission theory has gone

out; the undulatory or wave theory, after some fluctuation, has reached

high tide, and is now the pervading, the fully-established system.

There was an intervening time during which most physicists held their

opinions in suspense.

The adoption of the undulatory theory of light called for the extension

of the same theory to heat, and this promptly suggested the hypothesis

of a correlation, material connection, and transmutability of heat,

light, electricity, magnetism, etc.; which hypothesis the physicists

held in absolute suspense until very lately, but are now generally

adopting. If not already established as a system, it promises soon to

become so. At least, it is generally received as a tenable and probably

true hypothesis.

Parallel to this, however less cogent the reasons, Darwin and others,

having shown it likely that some varieties of plants or animals have

diverged in time into cognate species, or into forms as different as

species, are led to infer that all species of a genus may have thus

diverged from a common stock, and thence to suppose a higher community

of origin in ages still farther back, and so on. Following the safe

example of the physicists, and acknowledging the fact of the

diversification of a once homogeneous species into varieties, we may

receive the theory of the evolution of these into species, even while

for the present we hold the hypothesis of a further evolution in cool

suspense or in grave suspicion. In respect to very many questions a

wise mans mind rests long in a state neither of belief nor unbelief.

But your intellectually short-sighted people are apt to be

preternaturally clear-sighted, and to find their way very plain to

positive conclusions upon one side or the other of every mooted

question.

In fact, most people, and some philosophers, refuse to hold questions

in abeyance, however incompetent they may be to decide them. And,

curiously enough, the more difficult, recondite, and perplexing, the

questions or hypotheses are--such, for instance, as those about organic

Nature--the more impatient they are of suspense. Sometimes, and

evidently in the present case, this impatience grows out of a fear that

a new hypothesis may endanger cherished and most important beliefs.

Impatience under such circumstances is not unnatural, though perhaps

needless, and, if so, unwise.

To us the present revival of the derivative hypothesis, in a more

winning shape than it ever before had, was not unexpected. We wonder

that any thoughtful observer of the course of investigation and of

speculation in science should not have foreseen it, and have learned at

length to take its inevitable coming patiently; the more so, as in

Darwins treatise it comes in a purely scientific form, addressed only

to scientific men. The notoriety and wide popular perusal of this

treatise appear to have astonished the author even more than the book

itself has astonished the reading world Coming as the new presentation

does from a naturalist of acknowledged character and ability and marked

by a conscientiousness and candor which have not always been

reciprocated we have thought it simply right to set forth the doctrine

as fairly and as favorably as we could There are plenty to decry it and

the whole theory is widely exposed to attack For the arguments on the

other side we may look to the numerous adverse publications which

Darwin s volume has already called out and especially to those reviews

which propose directly to refute it. Taking various lines and

reflecting very diverse modes of thought, these hostile critics may be

expected to concentrate and enforce the principal objections which can

be brought to bear against the derivative hypothesis in general, and

Darwins new exposition of it in particular.

Upon the opposing side of the question we have read with attention--1.

An article in the North American Review for April last; 2. One in the

Christian Examiner, Boston, for May; 3. M. Pictets article in the

Bibliotheque Universelle, which we have already made considerable use

of, which seems throughout most able and correct, and which in tone and

fairness is admirably in contrast with--4. The article in the Edinburgh

Review for May, attributed--although against a large amount of internal

presumptive evidence--to the most distinguished British comparative

anatomist; 5. An article in the North British Review for May; 6. Prof.

Agassiz has afforded an early opportunity to peruse the criticisms he

makes in the forthcoming third volume of his great work, by a

publication of them in advance in the American Journal of Science for

July.

In our survey of the lively discussion which has been raised, it

matters little how our own particular opinions may incline. But we may

confess to an impression, thus far, that the doctrine of the permanent

and complete immutability of species has not been established, and may

fairly be doubted. We believe that species vary, and that "Natural

Selection"

works; but we suspect that its operation, like every analogous natural

operation, may be limited by something else. Just as every species by

its natural rate of reproduction would soon completely fill any country

it could live in, but does not, being checked by some other species or

some other condition--so it may be surmised that variation and natural

selection have their struggle and consequent check, or are limited by

something inherent in the constitution of organic beings.

We are disposed to rank the derivative hypothesis in its fullness with

the nebular hypothesis, and to regard both as allowable, as not

unlikely to prove tenable in spite of some strong objections, but as

not therefore demonstrably true. Those, if any there be, who regard the

derivative hypothesis as satisfactorily proved, must have loose notions

as to what proof is. Those who imagine it can be easily refuted and

cast aside, must, we think, have imperfect or very prejudiced

conceptions of the facts concerned and of the questions at issue.

We are not disposed nor prepared to take sides for or against the new

hypothesis, and so, perhaps, occupy a good position from which to watch

the discussion and criticise those objections which are seemingly

inconclusive. On surveying the arguments urged by those who have

undertaken to demolish the theory, we have been most impressed with a

sense of their great inequality. Some strike us as excellent and

perhaps unanswerable; some, as incongruous with other views of the same

writers; others, when carried out, as incompatible with general

experience or general beliefs, and therefore as proving too much; still

others, as proving nothing at all; so that, on the whole, the effect is

rather confusing and disappointing. We certainly expected a stronger

adverse case than any which the thoroughgoing opposers of Darwin appear

to have made out. Wherefore, if it be found that the new hypothesis has

grown upon our favor as we proceeded, this must be attributed not so

much to the force of the arguments of the book itself as to the want of

force of several of those by which it has been assailed. Darwins

arguments we might resist or adjourn; but some of the refutations of it

give us more concern than the book itself did.

These remarks apply mainly to the philosophical and theological

objections which have been elaborately urged, almost exclusively by the

American reviewers. The North British reviewer, indeed, roundly

denounces the book as atheistical, but evidently deems the case too

clear for argument. The Edinburgh reviewer, on the contrary, scouts all

such objections--as well he may, since he records his belief in "a

continuous creative operation," a constantly operating secondary

creational law," through which species are successively produced; and

he emits faint, but not indistinct, glimmerings of a transmutation

theory of his own;[III-8] so that he is equally exposed to all the

philosophical objections advanced by Agassiz, and to most of those

urged by the other American critics, against Darwin himself.

Proposing now to criticise the critics, so far as to see what their

most general and comprehensive objections amount to, we must needs

begin with the American reviewers, and with their arguments adduced to

prove that a derivative hypothesis ought not to be true, or is not

possible, philosophical, or theistic.

It must not be forgotten that on former occasions very confident

judgments have been pronounced by very competent persons, which have

not been finally ratified. Of the two great minds of the seventeenth

century, Newton and Leibnitz, both profoundly religious as well as

philosophical, one produced the theory of gravitation, the other

objected to that theory that it was subversive of natural religion. The

nebular hypothesis--a natural consequence of the theory of gravitation

and of the subsequent progress of physical and astronomical

discovery--has been denounced as atheistical even down to our own day.

But it is now largely adopted by the most theistical natural

philosophers as a tenable and perhaps sufficient hypothesis, and where

not accepted is no longer objected to, so far as we know, on

philosophical or religious grounds.

The gist of the philosophical objections urged by the two Boston

reviewers against an hypothesis of the derivation of species--or at

least against Darwins particular hypothesis-- is, that it is

incompatible with the idea of any manifestation of design in the

universe, that it denies final causes. A serious objection this, and

one that demands very serious attention.

The proposition, that things and events in Nature were not designed to

be so, if logically carried out, is doubtless tantamount to atheism.

Yet most people believe that some were designed and others were not,

although they fall into a hopeless maze whenever they undertake to

define their position. So we should not like to stigmatize as

atheistically disposed a person who regards certain things and events

as being what they are through designed laws (whatever that expression

means), but as not themselves specially ordained, or who, in another

connection, believes in general, but not in particular Providence. We

could sadly puzzle him with questions; but in return he might equally

puzzle us. Then, to deny that anything was specially designed to be

what it is, is one proposition; while to deny that the Designer

supernaturally or immediately made it so, is another: though the

reviewers appear not to recognize the distinction.

Also, "scornfully to repudiate" or to "sneer at the idea of any

manifestation of design in the material universe,"[III-9] is one thing;

while to consider, and perhaps to exaggerate, the difficulties which

attend the practical application of the doctrine of final causes to

certain instances, is quite another thing: yet the Boston reviewers, we

regret to say, have not been duly regardful of the difference. Whatever

be thought of Darwins doctrine, we are surprised that he should be

charged with scorning or sneering at the opinions of others, upon such

a subject. Perhaps Darwins view is incompatible with final causes--we

will consider that question presently-- but as to the Examiners charge,

that he "sneers at the idea of any manifestation of design in the

material universe," though we are confident that no misrepresentation

was intended, we are equally confident that it is not at all warranted

by the two passages cited in support of it. Here are the passages:

"If green woodpeckers alone had existed, or we did not know that there

were many black and pied kinds, I dare say that we should have thought

that the green color was a beautiful adaptation to hide this

tree-frequenting bird from its enemies."

"If our reason leads us to admire with enthusiasm a multitude of

inimitable contrivances in Nature, this same reason tells us, though we

may easily err on both sides, that some contrivances are less perfect.

Can we consider the sting of the wasp or of the bee as perfect, which,

when used against many attacking animals, cannot be withdrawn, owing to

the backward serratures, and so inevitably causes the death of the

insect by tearing out its viscera?"

If the sneer here escapes ordinary vision in the detached extracts (one

of them wanting the end of the sentence), it is, if possible, more

imperceptible when read with the context. Moreover, this perusal

inclines us to think that the Examiner has misapprehended the

particular argument or object, as well as the spirit, of the author in

these passages. The whole reads more naturally as a caution against the

inconsiderate use of final causes in science, and an illustration of

some of the manifold errors and absurdities which their hasty

assumption is apt to involve--considerations probably equivalent to

those which induced Lord Bacon to liken final causes to "vestal

virgins." So, if any one, it is here Bacon that "sitteth in the seat of

the scornful." As to Darwin, in the section from which the extracts

were made, he is considering a subsidiary question, and trying to

obviate a particular difficulty, but, we suppose, is wholly unconscious

of denying "any manifestation of design in the material universe." He

concludes the first sentence:

--"and consequently that it was a character of importance, and might

have been acquired through natural selection; as it is, I have no doubt

that the color is due to some quite distinct cause, probably to sexual

selection."

After an illustration from the vegetable creation, Darwin adds:

"The naked skin on the head of a vulture is generally looked at as a

direct adaptation for wallowing in putridity; and so it may be, or it

may possibly be due to the direct action of putrid matter; but we

should be very cautious in drawing any such inference, when we see that

the skin on the head of the clean-feeding male turkey is likewise

naked. The sutures in the skulls of young mammals have been advanced as

a beautiful adaptation for aiding parturition, and no doubt they

facilitate or may be indispensable for this act; but as sutures occur

in the skulls of young birds and reptiles, which have only to escape

from a broken egg, we may infer that this structure has arisen from the

laws of growth, and has been taken advantage of in the parturition of

the higher animals."

All this, simply taken, is beyond cavil, unless the attempt to explain

scientifically how any designed result is accomplished savors of

impropriety.

In the other place, Darwin is contemplating the patent fact that

"perfection here below" is relative, not absolute--and illustrating

this by the circumstance that European animals, and especially plants,

are now proving to be better adapted for New Zealand than many of the

indigenous ones--that "the correction for the aberration of light is

said, on high authority, not to be quite perfect even in that most

perfect organ, the eye." And then follows the second extract of the

reviewer. But what is the position of the reviewer upon his own

interpretation of these passages? If he insists that green woodpeckers

were specifically created so in order that they might be less liable to

capture, must he not equally hold that the black and pied ones were

specifically made of these colors in order that they might be more

liable to be caught? And would an explanation of the mode in which

those woodpeckers came to be green, however complete, convince him that

the color was undesigned?

As to the other illustration, is the reviewer so complete an optimist

as to insist that the arrangement and the weapon are wholly perfect

(quoad the insect) the normal use of which often causes the animal

fatally to injure or to disembowel itself? Either way it seems to us

that the argument here, as well as the insect, performs hari-kari. The

Examiner adds:

"We should in like manner object to the word favorable, as implying

that some species are placed by the Creator under unfavorable

circumstances, at least under such as might be advantageously

modified."

But are not many individuals and some races of men placed by the

Creator "under unfavorable circumstances, at least under such as might

be advantageously modified?" Surely these reviewers must be living in

an ideal world, surrounded by "the faultless monsters which our world

neer saw," in some elysium where imperfection and distress were never

heard of! Such arguments resemble some which we often hear against the

Bible, holding that book responsible as if it originated certain facts

on the shady side of human nature or the apparently darker lines of

Providential dealing, though the facts are facts of common observation

and have to be confronted upon any theory.

The North American reviewer also has a world of his own--just such a

one as an idealizing philosopher would be apt to devise--that is, full

of sharp and absolute distinctions: such, for instance, as the

"absolute invariableness of instinct;" an absolute want of intelligence

in any brute animal; and a complete monopoly of instinct by the brute

animals, so that this "instinct is a great matter" for them only, since

it sharply and perfectly distinguishes this portion of organic Nature

from the vegetable kingdom on the one hand and from man on the other:

most convenient views for argumentative purposes, but we suppose not

borne out in fact.

In their scientific objections the two reviewers take somewhat

different lines; but their philosophical and theological arguments

strikingly coincide. They agree in emphatically asserting that Darwins

hypothesis of the origination of species through variation and natural

selection "repudiates the whole doctrine of final causes," and "all

indication of design or purpose in the organic world . . . is neither

more nor less than a formal denial of any agency beyond that of a blind

chance in the developing or perfecting of the organs or instincts of

created beings. . . . It is in vain that the apologists of this

hypothesis might say that it merely attributes a different mode and

time to the Divine agency--that all the qualities subsequently

appearing in their descendants must have been implanted, and have

remained latent in the original pair." Such a view, the Examiner

declares, "is nowhere stated in this book, and would be, we are sure,

disclaimed by the author."

We should like to be informed of the grounds of this sureness. The

marked rejection of spontaneous generation--the statement of a belief

that all animals have descended from four or five progenitors, and

plants from an equal or lesser number, or, perhaps, if constrained to

it by analogy, "from some one primordial form into which life was first

breathed"--coupled with the expression, "To my mind it accords better

with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that

the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of

the world should have been due to secondary causes," than "that each

species has been independently created"--these and similar expressions

lead us to suppose that the author probably does accept the kind of

view which the Examiner is sure he would disclaim. At least, we

charitably see nothing in his scientific theory to hinder his adoption

of Lord Bacons "Confession of Faith" in this regard-- "That,

notwithstanding God hath rested and ceased from creating, yet,

nevertheless, he doth accomplish and fulfill his divine will in all

things, great and small, singular and general, as fully and exactly by

providence as he could by miracle and new creation, though his working

be not immediate and direct, but by compass; not violating Nature,

which is his own law upon the creature."

However that may be, it is undeniable that Mr. Darwin has purposely

been silent upon the philosophical and theological applications of his

theory. This reticence, under the circumstances, argues design, and

raises inquiry as to the final cause or reason why. Here, as in higher

instances, confident as we are that there is a final cause, we must not

be overconfident that we can infer the particular or true one. Perhaps

the author is more familiar with natural-historical than with

philosophical inquiries, and, not having decided which particular

theory about efficient cause is best founded, he meanwhile argues the

scientific questions concerned--all that relates to secondary

causes--upon purely scientific grounds, as he must do in any case.

Perhaps, confident, as he evidently is, that his view will finally be

adopted, he may enjoy a sort of satisfaction in hearing it denounced as

sheer atheism by the inconsiderate, and afterward, when it takes its

place with the nebular hypothesis and the like, see this judgment

reversed, as we suppose it would be in such event.

Whatever Mr. Darwins philosophy may be, or whether he has any, is a

matter of no consequence at all, compared with the important questions,

whether a theory to account for the origination and diversification of

animal and vegetable forms through the operation of secondary causes

does or does not exclude design; and whether the establishment by

adequate evidence of Darwin s particular theory of diversification

through variation and natural selection would essentially alter the

present scientific and philosophical grounds for theistic views of

Nature. The unqualified affirmative judgment rendered by the two Boston

reviewers, evidently able and practised reasoners, "must give us

pause." We hesitate to advance our conclusions in opposition to theirs.

But, after full and serious consideration, we are constrained to say

that, in our opinion, the adoption of a derivative hypothesis, and of

Darwins particular hypothesis, if we understand it, would leave the

doctrines of final causes, utility, and special design, just where they

were before. We do not pretend that the subject is not environed with

difficulties. Every view is so environed; and every shifting of the

view is likely, if it removes some difficulties, to bring others into

prominence. But we cannot perceive that Darwins theory brings in any

new kind of scientific difficulty, that is, any with which

philosophical naturalists were not already familiar.

Since natural science deals only with secondary or natural causes, the

scientific terms of a theory of derivation of species--no less than of

a theory of dynamics--must needs be the same to the theist as to the

atheist. The difference appears only when the inquiry is carried up to

the question of primary cause--a question which belongs to philosophy.

Wherefore, Darwin s reticence about efficient cause does not disturb

us. He considers only the scientific questions. As already stated, we

think that a theistic view of Nature is implied in his book, and we

must charitably refrain from suggesting the contrary until the contrary

is logically deduced from his premises. If, however, he anywhere

maintains that the natural causes through which species are diversified

operate without an ordaining and directing intelligence, and that the

orderly arrangements and admirable adaptations we see all around us are

fortuitous or blind, undesigned results--that the eye, though it came

to see, was not designed for seeing, nor the hand for handling--then,

we suppose, he is justly chargeable with denying, and very needlessly

denying, all design in organic Nature; otherwise, we suppose not. Why,

if Darwins well-known passage about the eye[III-10] equivocal though

some of the language be--does not imply ordaining and directing

intelligence, then he refutes his own theory as effectually as any of

his opponents are likely to do. He asks:

"May we not believe that [under variation proceeding long enough,

generation multiplying the better variations times enough, and natural

selection securing the improvements] a living optical instrument might

be thus formed as superior to one of glass as the works of the Creator

are to those of man?"

This must mean one of two things: either that the living instrument was

made and perfected under (which is the same thing as by) an intelligent

First Cause, or that it was not. If it was, then theism is asserted;

and as to the mode of operation, how do we know, and why must we

believe, that, fitting precedent forms being in existence, a living

instrument (so different from a lifeless manufacture) would be

originated and perfected in any other way, or that this is not the

fitting way? If it means that it was not, if he so misuses words that

by the Creator he intends an unintelligent power, undirected force, or

necessity, then he has put his case so as to invite disbelief in it.

For then blind forces have produced not only manifest adaptions of

means to specific ends--which is absurd enough--but better adjusted and

more perfect instruments or machines than intellect (that is, human

intellect) can contrive and human skill execute--which no sane person

will believe.

On the other hand, if Darwin even admits--we will not say adopts--the

theistic view, he may save himself much needless trouble in the

endeavor to account for the absence of every sort of intermediate form.

Those in the line between one species and another supposed to be

derived from it he may be bound to provide; but as to "an infinite

number of other varieties not intermediate, gross, rude, and

purposeless, the unmeaning creations of an unconscious cause," born

only to perish, which a relentless reviewer has imposed upon his

theory--rightly enough upon the atheistic alternative--the theistic

view rids him at once of this "scum of creation." For, as species do

not now vary at all times and places and in all directions, nor produce

crude, vague, imperfect, and useless forms, there is no reason for

supposing that they ever did. Good-for-nothing monstrosities, failures

of purpose rather than purposeless, indeed, sometimes occur; but these

are just as anomalous and unlikely upon Darwins theory as upon any

other. For his particular theory is based, and even over-strictly

insists, upon the most universal of physiological laws, namely, that

successive generations shall differ only slightly, if at all, from

their parents; and this effectively excludes crude and impotent forms.

Wherefore, if we believe that the species were designed, and that

natural propagation was designed, how can we say that the actual

varieties of the species were not equally designed? Have we not similar

grounds for inferring design in the supposed varieties of species, that

we have in the case of the supposed species of a genus? When a

naturalist comes to regard as three closely related species what he

before took to be so many varieties of one species how has he thereby

strengthened our conviction that the three forms are designed to have

the differences which they actually exhibit? Wherefore so long as

gradatory, orderly, and adapted forms in Nature argue design, and at

least while the physical cause of variation is utterly unknown and

mysterious, we should advise Mr. Darwin to assume in the philosophy of

his hypothesis that variation has been led along certain beneficial

lines. Streams flowing over a sloping plain by gravitation (here the

counterpart of natural selection) may have worn their actual channels

as they flowed; yet their particular courses may have been assigned;

and where we see them forming definite and useful lines of irrigation,

after a manner unaccountable on the laws of gravitation and dynamics,

we should believe that the distribution was designed.

To insist, therefore, that the new hypothesis of the derivative origin

of the actual species is incompatible with final causes and design, is

to take a position which we must consider philosophically untenable. We

must also regard it as highly unwise and dangerous, in the present

state and present prospects of physical and physiological science. We

should expect the philosophical atheist or skeptic to take this ground;

also, until better informed, the unlearned and unphilosophical

believer; but we should think that the thoughtful theistic philosopher

would take the other side. Not to do so seems to concede that only

supernatural events can be shown to be designed, which no theist can

admit--seems also to misconceive the scope and meaning of all ordinary

arguments for design in Nature. This misconception is shared both by

the reviewers and the reviewed. At least, Mr. Darwin uses expressions

which imply that the natural forms which surround us, because they have

a history or natural sequence, could have been only generally, but not

particularly designed--a view at once superficial and contradictory;

whereas his true line should be, that his hypothesis concerns the order

and not the cause, the how and not the why of the phenomena, and so

leaves the question of design just where it was before.

To illustrate this from the theists point of view: Transfer the

question for a moment from the origination of species to the

origination of individuals, which occurs, as we say, naturally. Because

natural, that is, "stated, fixed, or settled," is it any the less

designed on that account? We acknowledge that God is our maker--not

merely the originator of the race, but our maker as individuals--and

none the less so because it pleased him to make us in the way of

ordinary generation. If any of us were born unlike our parents and

grandparents, in a slight degree, or in whatever degree, would the case

be altered in this regard?

The whole argument in natural theology proceeds upon the ground that

the inference for a final cause of the structure of the hand and of the

valves in the veins is just as valid now, in individuals produced

through natural generation, as it would have been in the case of the

first man, supernaturally created. Why not, then, just as good even on

the supposition of the descent of men from chimpanzees and gorillas,

since those animals possess these same contrivances? Or, to take a more

supposable case: If the argument from structure to design is convincing

when drawn from a particular animal, say a Newfoundland dog, and is not

weakened by the knowledge that this dog came from similar parents,

would it be at all weakened if, in tracing his genealogy, it were

ascertained that he was a remote descendant of the mastiff or some

other breed, or that both these and other breeds came (as is suspected)

from some wolf? If not, how is the argument for design in the structure

of our particular dog affected by the supposition that his wolfish

progenitor came from a post-tertiary wolf, perhaps less unlike an

existing one than the dog in question is to some other of the numerous

existing races of dogs, and that this post-tertiary came from an

equally or more different tertiary wolf? And if the argument from

structure to design is not invalidated by our present knowledge that

our

individual dog was developed from a single organic cell, how is it

invalidated by the supposition of an analogous natural descent, through

a long line of connected forms, from such a cell, or from some simple

animal, existing ages before there were any dogs?

Again, suppose we have two well-known and apparently most decidedly

different animals or plants, A and D, both presenting, in their

structure and in their adaptations to the conditions of existence, as

valid and clear evidence of design as any animal or plant ever

presented: suppose we have now discovered two intermediate species, B

and C, which make up a series with equable differences from A to D. Is

the proof of design or final cause in A and D, whatever it amounted to,

at all weakened by the discovery of the intermediate forms? Rather does

not the proof extend to the intermediate species, and go to show that

all four were equally designed? Suppose, now, the number of

intermediate forms to be much increased, and therefore the gradations

to be closer yet--as close as those between the various sorts of dogs,

or races of men, or of horned cattle: would the evidence of design, as

shown in the structure of any of the members of the series, be any

weaker than it was in the case of A and D? Whoever contends that it

would be, should likewise maintain that the origination of individuals

by generation is incompatible with design, or an impossibility in

Nature. We might all have confidently thought the latter, antecedently

to experience of the fact of reproduction. Let our experience teach us

wisdom.

These illustrations make it clear that the evidence of design from

structure and adaptation is furnished complete by the individual animal

or plant itself, and that our knowledge or our ignorance of the history

of its formation or mode of production adds nothing to it and takes

nothing away. We infer design from certain arrangements and results;

and we have no other way of ascertaining it. Testimony, unless

infallible, cannot prove it, and is out of the question here. Testimony

is not the appropriate proof of design: adaptation to purpose is. Some

arrangements in Nature appear to be contrivances, but may leave us in

doubt. Many others, of which the eye and the hand are notable examples,

compel belief with a force not appreciably short of demonstration.

Clearly to settle that such as these must have been designed goes far

toward proving that other organs and other seemingly less explicit

adaptations in Nature must also have been designed, and clinches our

belief, from manifold considerations, that all Nature is a preconcerted

arrangement, a manifested design. A strange contradiction would it be

to insist that the shape and markings of certain rude pieces of flint,

lately found in drift-deposits, prove design, but that nicer and

thousand-fold more complex adaptations to use in animals and vegetables

do not a fortiori argue design.

We could not affirm that the arguments for design in Nature are

conclusive to all minds. But we may insist, upon grounds already

intimated, that, whatever they were good for before Darwins book

appeared, they are good for now. To our minds the argument from design

always appeared conclusive of the being and continued operation of an

intelligent First Cause, the Ordainer of Nature; and we do not see that

the grounds of such belief would be disturbed or shifted by the

adoption of Darwins hypothesis. We are not blind to the philosophical

difficulties which the thoroughgoing implication of design in Nature

has to encounter, nor is it our vocation to obviate them It suffices us

to know that they are not new nor peculiar difficulties--that, as

Darwin s theory and our reasonings upon it did not raise these

perturbing spirits, they are not bound to lay them. Meanwhile, that the

doctrine of design encounters the very same difficulties in the

material that it does in the moral world is Just what ought to be

expected.

So the issue between the skeptic and the theist is only the old one,

long ago argued out--namely, whether organic Nature is a result of

design or of chance. Variation and natural selection open no third

alternative; they concern only the question how the results, whether

fortuitous or designed, may have been brought about. Organic Nature

abounds with unmistakable and irresistible indications of design, and,

being a connected and consistent system, this evidence carries the

implication of design throughout the whole. On the other hand, chance

carries no probabilities with it, can never be developed into a

consistent system, but, when applied to the explanation of orderly or

beneficial results, heaps up improbabilities at every step beyond all

computation. To us, a fortuitous Cosmos is simply inconceivable. The

alternative is a designed Cosmos.

It is very easy to assume that, because events in Nature are in one

sense accidental, and the operative forces which bring them to pass are

themselves blind and unintelligent (physically considered, all forces

are), therefore they are undirected, or that he who describes these

events as the results of such forces thereby assumes that they are

undirected. This is the assumption of the Boston reviewers, and of Mr.

Agassiz, who insists that the only alternative to the doctrine, that

all organized beings were supernaturally created just as they are, is,

that they have arisen spontaneously through the omnipotence of

matter.[III-11]

As to all this, nothing is easier than to bring out in the conclusion

what you introduce in the premises. If you import atheism into your

conception of variation and natural selection, you can readily exhibit

it in the result. If you do not put it in, perhaps there need be none

to come out. While the mechanician is considering a steamboat or

locomotive-engine as a material organism, and contemplating the fuel,

water, and steam, the source of the mechanical forces, and how they

operate, he may not have occasion to mention the engineer. But, the

orderly and special results accomplished, the why the movements are in

this or that particular direction, etc., is inexplicable without him.

If Mr. Darwin believes that the events which he supposes to have

occurred and the results we behold were undirected and undesigned, or

if the physicist believes that the natural forces to which he refers

phenomena are uncaused and undirected, no argument is needed to show

that such belief is atheism. But the admission of the phenomena and of

these natural processes and forces does not necessitate any such

belief, nor even render it one whit less improbable than before.

Surely, too, the accidental element may play its part in Nature without

negativing design in the theists view. He believes that the earths

surface has been very gradually prepared for man and the existing

animal races, that vegetable matter has through a long series of

generations imparted fertility to the soil in order that it may support

its present occupants, that even beds of coal have been stored up for

mans benefit Yet what is more accidental, and more simply the

consequence of physical agencies than the accumulation of vegetable

matter in a peat bog and its transformation into coal? No scientific

person at this day doubts that our solar system is a progressive

development, whether in his conception he begins with molten masses, or

aeriform or nebulous masses, or with a fluid revolving mass of vast

extent, from which the specific existing worlds have been developed one

by one What theist doubts that the actual results of the development in

the inorganic worlds are not merely compatible with design but are in

the truest sense designed re suits? Not Mr. Agassiz, certainly, who

adopts a remarkable illustration of design directly founded on the

nebular hypothesis drawing from the position and times of the

revolution of the world, so originated direct evidence that the

physical world has been ordained in conformity with laws which obtain

also among living beings But the reader of the interesting

exposition[III-12] will notice that the designed result has been

brought to pass through what, speaking after the manner of men, might

be called a chapter of accidents.

A natural corollary of this demonstration would seem to be, that a

material connection between a series of created things--such as the

development of one of them from another, or of all from a common

stock--is highly compatible with their intellectual connection, namely,

with their being designed and directed by one mind. Yet upon some

ground which is not explained, and which we are unable to conjecture,

Mr. Agassiz concludes to the contrary in the organic kingdoms, and

insists that, because the members of such a series have an intellectual

connection, "they cannot be the result of a material differentiation of

the objects themselves,"[III-13] that is, they cannot have had a

genealogical connection. But is there not as much intellectual

connection between the successive generations of any species as there

is between the several species of a genus, or the several genera of an

order? As the intellectual connection here is realized through the

material connection, why may it not be so in the case of species and

genera? On all sides, therefore, the implication seems to be quite the

other way.

Returning to the accidental element, it is evident that the strongest

point against the compatibility of Darwins hypothesis with design in

Nature is made when natural selection is referred to as picking out

those variations which are improvements from a vast number which are

not improvements, but perhaps the contrary, and therefore useless or

purposeless, and born to perish. But even here the difficulty is not

peculiar; for Nature abounds with analogous instances. Some of our race

are useless, or worse, as regards the improvement of mankind; yet the

race may be designed to improve, and may be actually improving. Or, to

avoid the complication with free agency--the whole animate life of a

country depends absolutely upon the vegetation, the vegetation upon the

rain. The moisture is furnished by the ocean, is raised by the suns

heat from the oceans surface, and is wafted inland by the winds. But

what multitudes of raindrops fall back into the ocean--are as much

without a final cause as the incipient varieties which come to

nothing! Does it therefore follow that the rains which are bestowed

upon the soil with such rule and average regularity were not designed

to support vegetable and animal life? Consider, likewise, the vast

proportion of seeds and pollen, of ova and young--a thousand or more to

one--which come to nothing, and are therefore purposeless in the same

sense, and only in the same sense, as are Darwins unimproved and unused

slight variations. The world is full of such cases; and these must

answer the argument--for we cannot, except by thus showing that it

proves too much.

Finally, it is worth noticing that, though natural selection is

scientifically explicable, variation is not. Thus far the cause of

variation, or the reason why the offspring is sometimes unlike the

parents, is just as mysterious as the reason why it is generally like

the parents. It is now as inexplicable as any other origination; and,

if ever explained, the explanation will only carry up the sequence of

secondary causes one step farther, and bring us in face of a somewhat

different problem, but which will have the same element of mystery that

the problem of variation has now. Circumstances may preserve or may

destroy the variations man may use or direct them but selection whether

artificial or natural no more originates them than man originates the

power which turns a wheel when he dams a stream and lets the water fall

upon it The origination of this power is a question about efficient

cause. The tendency of science in respect to this obviously is not

toward the omnipotence of matter, as some suppose, but to ward the

omnipotence of spirit.

So the real question we come to is as to the way in which we are to

conceive intelligent and efficient cause to be exerted, and upon what

exerted. Are we bound to suppose efficient cause in all cases exerted

upon nothing to evoke something into existence--and this thousands of

times repeated, when a slight change in the details would make all the

difference between successive species? Why may not the new species, or

some of them, be designed diversifications of the old?

There are, perhaps, only three views of efficient cause which may claim

to be both philosophical and theistic:

1. The view of its exertion at the beginning of time, endowing matter

and created things with forces which do the work and produce the

phenomena.

2. This same view, with the theory of insulated interpositions, or

occasional direct action, engrafted upon it--the view that events and

operations in general go on in virtue simply of forces communicated at

the first, but that now and then, and only now and then, the Deity puts

his hand directly to the work.

3. The theory of the immediate, orderly, and constant, however

infinitely diversified, action of the intelligent efficient Cause.

It must be allowed that, while the third is preeminently the Christian

view, all three are philosophically compatible with design in Nature.

The second is probably the popular conception. Perhaps most thoughtful

people oscillate from the middle view toward the first or the

third--adopting the first on some occasions, the third on others. Those

philosophers who like and expect to settle all mooted questions will

take one or the other extreme. The Examiner inclines toward, the North

American reviewer fully adopts, the third view, to the logical extent

of maintaining that "the origin of an individual, as well as the origin

of a species or a genus, can be explained only by the direct action of

an intelligent creative cause." To silence his critics, this is the

line for Mr. Darwin to take; for it at once and completely relieves his

scientific theory from every theological objection which his reviewers

have urged against it.

At present we suspect that our author prefers the first conception,

though he might contend that his hypothesis is compatible with either

of the three. That it is also compatible with an atheistic or

pantheistic conception of the universe, is an objection which, being

shared by all physical, and some ethical or moral science, cannot

specially be urged against Darwins system. As he rejects spontaneous

generation, and admits of intervention at the beginning of organic

life, and probably in more than one instance, he is not wholly excluded

from adopting the middle view, although the interventions he would

allow are few and far back. Yet one interposition admits the principle

as well as more. Interposition presupposes particular necessity or

reason for it, and raises the question, when and how often it may have

been necessary. It might be the natural supposition, if we had only one

set of species to account for, or if the successive inhabitants of the

earth had no other connections or resemblances than those which

adaptation to similar conditions, which final causes in the narrower

sense, might explain. But if this explanation of organic Nature

requires one to "believe that, at innumerable periods in the earths

history, certain elemental atoms have been commanded suddenly to flash

into living tissues," and this when the results are seen to be strictly

connected and systematic, we cannot wonder that such interventions

should at length be considered, not as interpositions or interferences,

but rather--to use the reviewers own language--as "exertions so

frequent and beneficent that we come to regard them as the ordinary

action of Him who laid the foundation of the earth, and without whom

not a sparrow falleth to the ground."[III-14] What does the difference

between Mr. Darwin and his reviewer now amount to? If we say that

according to one view the origination of species is natural, according

to the other miraculous, Mr. Darwin agrees that "what is natural as

much requires and presupposes an intelligent mind to render it so--

that is, to effect it continually or at stated times--as what is

supernatural does to effect it for once."[III-15] He merely inquires

into the form of the miracle, may remind us that all recorded miracles

(except the primal creation of matter) were transformations or actions

in and upon natural things, and will ask how many times and how

frequently may the origination of successive species be repeated before

the supernatural merges in the natural.

In short, Darwin maintains that the origination of a species, no less

than that of an individual, is natural; the reviewer, that the natural

origination of an individual, no less than the origination of a

species, requires and presupposes Divine power. A fortiori, then, the

origination of a variety requires and presupposes Divine power. And so

between the scientific hypothesis of the one and the philosophical

conception of the other no contrariety remains. And so, concludes the

North American reviewer, "a proper view of the nature of causation

places the vital doctrine of the being and the providence of a God on

ground that can never be shaken."[III-16] A worthy conclusion, and a

sufficient answer to the denunciations and arguments of the rest of the

article, so far as philosophy and natural theology are concerned. If a

writer must needs use his own favorite dogma as a weapon with which to

give coup de grace to a pernicious theory, he should be careful to

seize his edge-tool by the handle, and not by the blade.

We can barely glance at a subsidiary philosophical objection of the

North American reviewer, which the Examiner also raises, though less

explicitly. Like all geologists, Mr. Darwin draws upon time in the

most unlimited manner. He is not peculiar in this regard. Mr. Agassiz

tells us that the conviction is "now universal, among well-informed

naturalists, that this globe has been in existence for innumerable

ages, and that the length of time elapsed since it first became

inhabited cannot be counted in years;" Pictet, that the imagination

refuses to calculate the immense number of years and of ages during

which the faunas of thirty or more epochs have succeeded one another,

and developed their long succession of generations. Now, the reviewer

declares that such indefinite succession of ages is "virtually

infinite," "lacks no characteristic of eternity except its name," at

least, that "the difference between such a conception and that of the

strictly infinite, if any, is not appreciable." But infinity belongs to

metaphysics. Therefore, he concludes, Darwin supports his theory, not

by scientific but by metaphysical evidence; his theory is "essentially

and completely metaphysical in character, resting altogether upon that

idea of the infinite which the human mind can neither put aside nor

comprehend."[III-17] And so a theory which will be generally regarded

as much too physical is transferred by a single syllogism to

metaphysics.

Well, physical geology must go with it: for, even on the soberest view,

it demands an indefinitely long time antecedent to the introduction of

organic life upon our earth. A fortiori is physical astronomy a branch

of metaphysics, demanding, as it does, still larger "instalments of

infinity," as the reviewer calls them, both as to time and number.

Moreover, far the greater part of physical inquiries now relate to

molecular actions, which, a distinguished natural philosopher informs

us, "we have to regard as the results of an infinite number of in

finitely small material particles, acting on each other at infinitely

small distances"--a triad of infinities--and so physics becomes the

most metaphysical of sciences. Verily, if this style of reasoning is

to prevail--

"Thinking is but an idle waste of thought,

And naught is everything, and everything is naught."

The leading objection of Mr. Agassiz is likewise of a philosophical

character. It is, that species exist only "as categories of

thought"--that, having no material existence, they can have had no

material variation, and no material community of origin. Here the

predication is of species in the subjective sense, the inference in the

objective sense. Reduced to plain terms, the argument seems to be:

Species are ideas; therefore the objects from which the idea is derived

cannot vary or blend, and cannot have had a genealogical connection.

The common view of species is, that, although they are generalizations,

yet they have a direct objective ground in Nature, which genera,

orders, etc., have not. According to the succinct definition of

Jussieu--and that of Linnaeus is identical in meaning--a species is the

perennial succession of similar individuals in continued generations.

The species is the chain of which the individuals are the links. The

sum of the genealogically-connected similar individuals constitutes the

species, which thus has an actuality and ground of distinction not

shared by genera and other groups which were not supposed to be

genealogically connected. How a derivative hypothesis would modify this

view, in assigning to species only a temporary fixity, is obvious. Yet,

if naturalists adopt that hypothesis, they will still retain Jussieus

definition, which leaves untouched the question as to how and when the

"perennial successions" were established. The practical question will

only be, How much difference between two sets of individuals entitles

them to rank under distinct species? and that is the practical question

now, on whatever theory. The theoretical question is--as stated at the

beginning of this article--whether these specific lines were always as

distinct as now.

Mr. Agassiz has "lost no opportunity of urging the idea that, while

species have no material existence, they yet exist as categories of

thought in the same way [and only in the same way] as genera, families,

orders, classes," etc. He

"has taken the ground that all the natural divisions in the animal

kingdom are primarily distinct, founded upon different categories of

characters, and that all exist in the same way, that is, as categories

of thought, embodied in individual living forms. I have attempted to

show that branches in the animal kingdom are founded upon different

plans of structure, and for that very reason have embraced from the

beginning representatives between which there could be no community of

origin; that classes are founded upon different modes of execution of

these plans, and therefore they also embrace representatives which

could have no community of origin; that orders represent the different

degrees of complication in the mode of execution of each class, and

therefore embrace representatives which could not have a community of

origin any more than the members of different classes or branches; that

families are founded upon different patterns of form, and embrace,

representatives equally independent in their origin; that genera are

founded upon ultimate peculiarities of structure, embracing

representatives which, from the very nature of their peculiarities,

could have no community of origin; and that, finally, species are based

upon relations--and proportions that exclude, as much as all the

preceding distinctions, the idea of a common descent.

"As the community of characters among the beings belonging to these

different categories arises from the intellectual connection which

shows them to be categories of thought, they cannot be the result of a

gradual

material differentiation of the objects themselves. The argument on

which these views are founded may be summed up in the following few

words: Species, genera, families, etc., exist as thoughts, individuals

as facts."[III-18]

An ingenious dilemma caps the argument:

"It seems to me that there is much confusion of ideas in the general

statement of the variability of species so often repeated lately. If

species do not exist at all, as the supporters of the transmutation

theory maintain, how can they vary? And if individuals alone exist, how

can the differences which may be observed among them prove the

variability of species?"

Now, we imagine that Mr. Darwin need not be dangerously gored by either

horn of this curious dilemma. Although we ourselves cherish

old-fashioned prejudices in favor of the probable permanence, and

therefore of a more stable objective ground of species, yet we

agree--and Mr. Darwin will agree fully with Mr. Agassiz--that species,

and he will add varieties, "exist as categories of thought," that is,

as cognizable distinctions--which is all that we can make of the phrase

here, whatever it may mean in the Aristotelian metaphysics. Admitting

that species are only categories of thought, and not facts or things,

how does this prevent the individuals, which are material things, from

having varied in the course of time, so as to exemplify the present

almost innumerable categories of thought, or embodiments of Divine

thought in material forms, or--viewed on the human side--in forms

marked with such orderly and graduated resemblances and differences as

to suggest to our minds the idea of species, genera, orders, etc., and

to our reason the inference of a Divine Original? We have no clear idea

how Mr. Agassiz intends to answer this question, in saying that

branches are founded upon different plans of structure, classes upon

different mode of execution of these plans, orders on different degrees

of complication in the mode of execution, families upon different

patterns of form, genera upon ultimate peculiarities of structure, and

species upon relations and proportions. That is, we do not perceive how

these several "categories of thought" exclude the possibility or the

probability that the individuals which manifest or suggest the thoughts

had an ultimate community of origin.

Moreover, Mr. Darwin might insinuate that the particular philosophy of

classification upon which this whole argument reposes is as purely

hypothetical and as little accepted as is his own doctrine. If both are

pure hypotheses, it is hardly fair or satisfactory to extinguish the

one by the other. If there is no real contradiction between them,

nothing is gained by the attempt.

As to the dilemma propounded, suppose we try it upon that category of

thought which we call chair. This is a genus, comprising a common chair

(Sella vulgaris), arm or easy chair (S. cathedra), the rocking-chair

(S. oscillans)--widely distributed in the United States--and some

others, each of which has sported, as the gardeners say, into many

varieties. But now, as the genus and the species have no material

existence, how can they vary? If only individual chairs exist, how can

the differences which may be observed among them prove the variability

of the species? To which we reply by asking, Which does the question

refer to, the category of thought, or the individual embodiment? If the

former, then we would remark that our categories of thought vary from

time to time in the readiest manner. And, although the Divine thoughts

are eternal, yet they are manifested to us in time and succession, and

by their manifestation only can we know them, how imperfectly! Allowing

that what has no material existence can have had no material connection

or variation, we should yet infer that what has intellectual existence

and connection might have intellectual variation; and, turning to the

individuals, which represent the species, we do not see how all this

shows that they may not vary. Observation shows us that they do.

Wherefore, taught by fact that successive individuals do vary, we

safely infer that the idea must have varied, and that this variation of

the individual representatives proves the variability of the species,

whether objectively or subjectively regarded.

Each species or sort of chair, as we have said, has its varieties, and

one species shades off by gradations into another. And--note it

well--these numerous and successively slight variations and gradations,

far from suggesting an accidental origin to chairs and to their forms,

are very proofs of design.

Again, edifice is a generic category of thought. Egyptian, Grecian,

Byzantine, and Gothic buildings are well-marked species, of which each

individual building of the sort is a material embodiment. Now, the

question is, whether these categories or ideas may not have been

evolved, one from another in succession, or from some primal, less

specialized, edificial category. What better evidence for such

hypothesis could we have than the variations and grades which connect

these species with each other? We might extend the parallel, and get

some good illustrations of natural selection from the history of

architecture, and the origin of the different styles under different

climates and conditions. Two considerations may qualify or limit the

comparison. One, that houses do not propagate, so as to produce

continuing lines of each sort and variety; but this is of small moment

on Agassizs view, he holding that genealogical connection is not of the

essence of a species at all. The other, that the formation and

development of the ideas upon which human works proceed are gradual;

or, as the same great naturalist well states it, "while human thought

is consecutive, Divine thought is simultaneous." But we have no right

to affirm this of Divine action.

We must close here. We meant to review some of the more general

scientific objections which we thought not altogether tenable. But,

after all, we are not so anxious just now to know whether the new

theory is well founded on facts, as whether it would be harmless if it

were. Besides, we feel quite unable to answer some of these objections,

and it is pleasanter to take up those which one thinks he can.

Among the unanswerable, perhaps the weightiest of the objections, is

that of the absence, in geological deposits, of vestiges of the

intermediate forms which the theory requires to have existed. Here all

that Mr. Darwin can do is to insist upon the extreme imperfection of

the geological record and the uncertainty of negative evidence. But,

withal, he allows the force of the objection almost as much as his

opponents urge it--so much so, indeed, that two of his English critics

turn the concession unfairly upon him, and charge him with actually

basing his hypothesis upon these and similar difficulties--as if he

held it because of the difficulties, and not in spite of them; a

handsome return for his candor!

As to this imperfection of the geological record, perhaps we should get

a fair and intelligible illustration of it by imagining the existing

animals and plants of New England, with all their remains and products

since the arrival of the Mayflower, to be annihilated; and that, in the

coming time, the geologists of a new colony, dropped by the New Zealand

fleet on its way to explore the ruins of London, undertake, after fifty

years of examination, to reconstruct in a catalogue the flora and fauna

of our day, that is, from the close of the glacial period to the

present time. With all the advantages of a surface exploration, what a

beggarly account it would be! How many of the land animals and plants

which are enumerated in the Massachusetts official reports would it be

likely to contain?

Another unanswerable question asked by the Boston reviewers is, Why,

when structure and instinct or habit vary-- as they must have varied,

on Darwins hypothesis--they vary together and harmoniously, instead of

vaguely? We cannot tell, because we cannot tell why either varies at

all. Yet, as they both do vary in successive generations--as is seen

under domestication--and are correlated, we can only adduce the fact.

Darwin may be precluded from our answer, but we may say that they vary

together because designed to do so. A reviewer says that the chance of

their varying together is inconceivably small; yet, if they do not, the

variant individuals must all perish. Then it is well that it is not

left to chance. To refer to a parallel case: before we were born,

nourishment and the equivalent to respiration took place in a certain

way. But the moment we were ushered into this breathing world, our

actions promptly conformed, both as to respiration and nourishment, to

the before unused structure and to the new surroundings.

"Now," says the Examiner, "suppose, for instance, the gills of an

aquatic animal converted into lungs, while instinct still compelled a

continuance under water, would not drowning ensue?" No doubt.

But--simply contemplating the facts, instead of theorizing--we notice

that young frogs do not keep their heads under water after ceasing to

be tadpoles. The instinct promptly changes with the structure, without

supernatural interposition--just as Darwin would have it, if the

development of a variety or incipient species, though rare, were as

natural as a metamorphosis.

"Or if a quadruped, not yet furnished with wings, were suddenly

inspired with the instinct of a bird, and precipitated itself from a

cliff, would not the descent be hazardously rapid?" Doubtless the

animal would be no better supported than the objection. But Darwin

makes very little indeed of voluntary efforts as a cause of change, and

even poor Lamarck need not be caricatured. He never supposed that an

elephant would take such a notion into his wise head, or that a

squirrel would begin with other than short and easy leaps; yet might

not the length of the leap be increased by practice?

The North American reviewers position, that the higher brute animals

have comparatively little instinct and no intelligence, is a heavy blow

and great discouragement to dogs, horses, elephants, and monkeys. Thus

stripped of their all, and left to shift for themselves as they may in

this hard world, their pursuit and seeming attainment of knowledge

under such peculiar difficulties are interesting to contemplate.

However, we are not so sure as is the critic that instinct regularly

increases downward and decreases upward in the scale of being. Now that

the case of the bee is reduced to moderate proportions,[III-19] we know

of nothing in instinct surpassing that of an animal so high as a bird,

the talegal, the male of which plumes himself upon making a hot-bed in

which to batch his partners eggs--which he tends and regulates the beat

of about as carefully and skillfully as the unplumed biped does an

eccaleobion.[III-20]

As to the real intelligence of the higher brutes, it has been ably

defended by a far more competent observer, Mr. Agassiz, to whose

conclusions we yield a general assent, although we cannot quite place

the best of dogs "in that respect upon a level with a considerable

proportion of poor humanity," nor indulge the hope, or indeed the

desire, of a renewed acquaintance with the whole animal kingdom in a

future life.

The assertion that acquired habitudes or instincts, and acquired

structures, are not heritable, any breeder or good observer can

refute.

That "the human mind has become what it is out of a developed

instinct," is a statement which Mr. Darwin nowhere makes, and, we

presume, would not accept. That he would have us believe that

individual animals acquire their instincts gradually,[III-21] is a

statement which must have been penned in inadvertence both of the very

definition of instinct, and of everything we know of in Mr. Darwins

book.

It has been attempted to destroy the very foundation of Darwins

hypothesis by denying that there are any wild varieties, to speak of,

for natural selection to operate upon. We cannot gravely sit down to

prove that wild varieties abound. We should think it just as necessary

to prove that snow falls in winter. That variation among plants cannot

be largely due to hybridism, and that their variation in Nature is not

essentially different from much that occurs in domestication, and, in

the long-run, probably hardly less in amount, we could show if our

space permitted.

As to the sterility of hybrids, that can no longer be insisted upon as

absolutely true, nor be practically used as a test between species and

varieties, unless we allow that hares and rabbits are of one species.

That such sterility, whether total or partial, subserves a purpose in

keeping species apart, and was so designed, we do not doubt. But the

critics fail to perceive that this sterility proves nothing whatever

against the derivative origin of the actual species; for it may as well

have been intended to keep separate those forms which have reached a

certain amount of divergence, as those which were always thus

distinct.

The argument for the permanence of species, drawn from the identity

with those now living of cats, birds, and other animals preserved in

Egyptian catacombs, was good enough as used by Cuvier against

St.-Hilaire, that is, against the supposition that time brings about a

gradual alteration of whole species; but it goes for little against

Darwin, unless it be proved that species never vary, or that the

perpetuation of a variety necessitates the extinction of the parent

breed. For Darwin clearly maintains--what the facts warrant--that the

mass of a species remains fixed so long as it exists at all, though it

may set off a variety now and then. The variety may finally supersede

the parent form, or it may coexist with it; yet it does not in the

least hinder the unvaried stock from continuing true to the breed,

unless it crosses with it. The common law of inheritance may be

expected to keep both the original and the variety mainly true as long

as they last, and none the less so because they have given rise to

occasional varieties. The tailless Manx cats, like the curtailed fox in

the fable, have not induced the normal breeds to dispense with their

tails, nor have the Dorkings (apparently known to Pliny) affected the

permanence of the common sort of fowl.

As to the objection that the lower forms of life ought, on Darwins

theory, to have been long ago improved out of existence, and replaced

by higher forms, the objectors forget what a vacuum that would leave

below, and what a vast field there is to which a simple organization is

best adapted, and where an advance would be no improvement, but the

contrary. To accumulate the greatest amount of being upon a given

space, and to provide as much enjoyment of life as can be under the

conditions, is what Nature seems to aim at; and this is effected by

diversification.

Finally, we advise nobody to accept Darwins or any other derivative

theory as true. The time has not come for that, and perhaps never will.

We also advise against a similar credulity on the other side, in a

blind faith that species--that the manifold sorts and forms of existing

animals and vegetables--"have no secondary cause." The contrary is

already not unlikely, and we suppose will hereafter become more and

more probable. But we are confident that, if a derivative hypothesis

ever is established, it will be so on a solid theistic ground.

Meanwhile an inevitable and legitimate hypothesis is on trial--an

hypothesis thus far not untenable--a trial just now very useful to

science, and, we conclude, not harmful to religion, unless injudicious

assailants temporarily make it so.

One good effect is already manifest; its enabling the advocates of the

hypothesis of a multiplicity of human species to perceive the double

insecurity of their ground. When the races of men are admitted to be of

one species, the corollary, that they are of one origin, may be

expected to follow. Those who allow them to be of one species must

admit an actual diversification into strongly-marked and persistent

varieties, and so admit the basis of fact upon which the Darwinian

hypothesis is built; while those, on the other hand, who recognize

several or numerous human species, will hardly be able to maintain that

such species were primordial and supernatural in the ordinary sense of

the word.

The English mind is prone to positivism and kindred forms of

materialistic philosophy, and we must expect the derivative theory to

be taken up in that interest. We have no predilection for that school,

but the contrary. If we had, we might have looked complacently upon a

line of criticism which would indirectly, but effectively, play into

the hands of positivists and materialistic atheists generally. The

wiser and stronger ground to take is, that the derivative hypothesis

leaves the argument for design, and therefore for a designer, as valid

as it ever was; that to do any work by an instrument must require, and

therefore presuppose, the exertion rather of more than of less power

than to do it directly; that whoever would be a consistent theist

should believe that Design in the natural world is coextensive with

Providence, and hold as firmly to the one as he does to the other, in

spite of the wholly similar and apparently insuperable difficulties

which the mind encounters whenever it endeavors to develop the idea

into a system, either in the material and organic, or in the moral

world. It is enough, in the way of obviating objections, to show that

the philosophical difficulties of the one are the same, and only the

same, as of the other.