Why Darwin’s Variations were Accidental
SOME may perhaps deny that Mr. Darwin did this, and say he laid so much
stress on use and disuse as virtually to make function his main factor of
evolution.
If, indeed, we confine ourselves to isolated passages, we shall find
little difficulty in making out a strong case to this effect. Certainly
most people believe this to be Mr. Darwin’s doctrine, and considering how
long and fully he had the ear of the public, it is not likely they would
think thus if Mr. Darwin had willed otherwise, nor could he have induced
them to think as they do if he had not said a good deal that was capable
of the construction so commonly put upon it; but it is hardly necessary,
when addressing biologists, to insist on the fact that Mr. Darwin’s
distinctive doctrine is the denial of the comparative importance of
function, or use and disuse, as a purveyor of variations,—with some, but
not very considerable, exceptions, chiefly in the cases of domesticated
animals.
He did not, however, make his distinctive feature as distinct as he
should have done. Sometimes he said one thing, and sometimes the
directly opposite. Sometimes, for example, the conditions of existence
“included natural selection” or the fact that the best adapted to their
surroundings live longest and leave most offspring; {156a} sometimes “the
principle of natural selection” “fully embraced” “the expression of
conditions of existence.” {156b} It would not be easy to find more
unsatisfactory writing than this is, nor any more clearly indicating a
mind ill at ease with itself. Sometimes “ants work _by inherited
instincts_ and inherited tools;” {157a} sometimes, again, it is
surprising that the case of ants working by inherited instincts has not
been brought as a demonstrative argument “against the well-known doctrine
of _inherited habit_, as advanced by Lamarck.” {157b} Sometimes the
winglessness of beetles inhabiting ocean islands is “mainly due to
natural selection,” {157c} and though we might be tempted to ascribe the
rudimentary condition of the wing to disuse, we are on no account to do
so—though disuse was probably to some extent “combined with” natural
selection; at other times “it is probable that disuse has been the main
means of rendering the wings of beetles living on small exposed islands”
rudimentary. {157d} We may remark in passing that if disuse, as Mr.
Darwin admits on this occasion, is the main agent in rendering an organ
rudimentary, use should have been the main agent in rendering it the
opposite of rudimentary—that is to say, in bringing about its
development. The ostensible _raison d’être_, however, of the “Origin of
Species” is to maintain that this is not the case.
There is hardly an opinion on the subject of descent with modification
which does not find support in some one passage or another of the “Origin
of Species.” If it were desired to show that there is no substantial
difference between the doctrine of Erasmus Darwin and that of his
grandson, it would be easy to make out a good case for this, in spite of
Mr. Darwin’s calling his grandfather’s views “erroneous,” in the
historical sketch prefixed to the later editions of the “Origin of
Species.” Passing over the passage already quoted on p. 62 of this book,
in which Mr. Darwin declares “habit omnipotent and its effects
hereditary”—a sentence, by the way, than which none can be either more
unfalteringly Lamarckian or less tainted with the vices of Mr. Darwin’s
later style—passing this over as having been written some twenty years
before the “Origin of Species”—the last paragraph of the “Origin of
Species” itself is purely Lamarckian and Erasmus-Darwinian. It declares
the laws in accordance with which organic forms assumed their present
shape to be—“Growth with reproduction; Variability from the indirect and
direct action of the external conditions of life and from use and disuse,
&c.” {158a} Wherein does this differ from the confession of faith made
by Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck? Where are the accidental fortuitous,
spontaneous variations now? And if they are not found important enough
to demand mention in this peroration and _stretto_, as it were, of the
whole matter, in which special prominence should be given to the special
feature of the work, where ought they to be made important?
Mr. Darwin immediately goes on: “A ratio of existence so high as to lead
to a struggle for life, and as a consequence to natural selection,
entailing divergence of character and the extinction of less improved
forms;” so that natural selection turns up after all. Yes—in the letters
that compose it, but not in the spirit; not in the special sense up to
this time attached to it in the “Origin of Species.” The expression as
used here is one with which Erasmus Darwin would have found little fault,
for it means not as elsewhere in Mr. Darwin’s book and on his title-page
the preservation of “favoured” or lucky varieties, but the preservation
of varieties that have come to be varieties through the causes assigned
in the preceding two or three lines of Mr. Darwin’s sentence; and these
are mainly functional or Erasmus-Darwinian; for the indirect action of
the conditions of life is mainly functional, and the direct action is
admitted on all hands to be but small.
It now appears more plainly, as insisted upon on an earlier page, that
there is not one natural selection and one survival of the fittest, but
two, inasmuch as there are two classes of variations from which nature
(supposing no exception taken to her personification) can select. The
bottles have the same labels, and they are of the same colour, but the
one holds brandy, and the other toast and water. Nature can, by a figure
of speech, be said to select from variations that are mainly functional
or from variations that are mainly accidental; in the first case she will
eventually get an accumulation of variation, and widely different types
will come into existence; in the second, the variations will not occur
with sufficient steadiness for accumulation to be possible. In the body
of Mr. Darwin’s book the variations are supposed to be mainly due to
accident, and function, though not denied all efficacy, is declared to be
the greatly subordinate factor; natural selection, therefore, has been
hitherto throughout tantamount to luck; in the peroration the position is
reversed _in toto_; the selection is now made from variations into which
luck has entered so little that it may be neglected, the greatly
preponderating factor being function; here, then, natural selection is
tantamount to cunning. We are such slaves of words that, seeing the
words “natural selection” employed—and forgetting that the results
ensuing on natural selection will depend entirely on what it is that is
selected from, so that the gist of the matter lies in this and not in the
words “natural selection”—it escaped us that a change of front had been
made, and a conclusion entirely alien to the tenor of the whole book
smuggled into the last paragraph as the one which it had been written to
support; the book preached luck, the peroration cunning.
And there can be no doubt Mr. Darwin intended that the change of front
should escape us; for it cannot be believed that he did not perfectly
well know what he had done. Mr. Darwin edited and re-edited with such
minuteness of revision that it may be said no detail escaped him provided
it was small enough; it is incredible that he should have allowed this
paragraph to remain from first to last unchanged (except for the
introduction of the words “by the Creator,” which are wanting in the
first edition) if they did not convey the conception he most wished his
readers to retain. Even if in his first edition he had failed to see
that he was abandoning in his last paragraph all that it had been his
ostensible object most especially to support in the body of his book, he
must have become aware of it long before he revised the “Origin of
Species” for the last time; still he never altered it, and never put us
on our guard.
It was not Mr. Darwin’s manner to put his reader on his guard; we might
as well expect Mr. Gladstone to put us on our guard about the Irish land
bills. Caveat _lector_ seems to have been his motto. Mr. Spencer, in
the articles already referred to, is at pains to show that Mr. Darwin’s
opinions in later life underwent a change in the direction of laying
greater stress on functionally produced modifications, and points out
that in the sixth edition of the “Origin of Species” Mr. Darwin says, “I
think there can be no doubt that use in our domestic animals has
strengthened and enlarged certain parts, and disuse diminished them;”
whereas in his first edition he said, “I think there can be _little_
doubt” of this. Mr. Spencer also quotes a passage from “The Descent of
Man,” in which Mr. Darwin said that _even in the first edition_ of the
“Origin of Species” he had attributed great effect to function, as though
in the later ones he had attributed still more; but if there was any
considerable change of position, it should not have been left to be
toilsomely collected by collation of editions, and comparison of passages
far removed from one another in other books. If his mind had undergone
the modification supposed by Mr. Spencer, Mr. Darwin should have said so
in a prominent passage of some later edition of the “Origin of Species.”
He should have said—“In my earlier editions I underrated, as now seems
probable, the effects of use and disuse as purveyors of the slight
successive modifications whose accumulation in the ordinary course of
things results in specific difference, and I laid too much stress on the
accumulation of merely accidental variations;” having said this, he
should have summarised the reasons that had made him change his mind, and
given a list of the most important cases in which he has seen fit to
alter what he had originally written. If Mr. Darwin had dealt thus with
us we should have readily condoned all the mistakes he would have been at
all likely to have made, for we should have known him as one who was
trying to help us, tidy us up, keep us straight, and enable us to use our
judgments to the best advantage. The public will forgive many errors
alike of taste and judgment, where it feels that a writer persistently
desires this.
I can only remember a couple of sentences in the later editions of the
“Origin of Species” in which Mr. Darwin directly admits a change of
opinion as regards the main causes of organic modification. How
shuffling the first of these is I have already shown in “Life and Habit,”
p. 260, and in “Evolution, Old and New,” p. 359; I need not, therefore,
say more here, especially as there has been no rejoinder to what I then
said. Curiously enough the sentence does not bear out Mr. Spencer’s
contention that Mr. Darwin in his later years leaned more decidedly
towards functionally produced modifications, for it runs: {161a}—“In the
earlier editions of this work I underrated, as now seems probable, the
frequency and importance of modifications due,” not, as Mr. Spencer would
have us believe, to use and disuse, but “to spontaneous variability,” by
which can only be intended, “to variations in no way connected with use
and disuse,” as not being assignable to any known cause of general
application, and referable as far as we are concerned to accident only;
so that he gives the natural survival of the luckiest, which is indeed
his distinctive feature, if it deserve to be called a feature at all,
greater prominence than ever. Nevertheless there is no change in his
concluding paragraph, which still remains an embodiment of the views of
Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck.
The other passage is on p. 421 of the edition of 1876. It stands:—“I
have now recapitulated the facts and considerations which have
thoroughly” (why “thoroughly”?) “convinced me that species have been
modified during a long course of descent. This has been effected chiefly
through the natural selection of numerous, successive, slight, favourable
variations; aided in an important manner by the inherited effects of the
use and disuse of parts; and in an unimportant manner, that is, in
relation to adaptive structures, whether past or present, by the direct
action of external conditions, and by variations which seem to us in our
ignorance to arise spontaneously. It appears that I formerly underrated
the frequency and value of these latter forms of variation as leading to
permanent modifications of structure independently of natural selection.”
Here, again, it is not use and disuse which Mr. Darwin declares himself
to have undervalued, but spontaneous variations. The sentence just given
is one of the most confusing I ever read even in the works of Mr Darwin.
It is the essence of his theory that the “numerous successive, slight,
favourable variations,” above referred to, should be fortuitous,
accidental, spontaneous; it is evident, moreover, that they are intended
in this passage to be accidental or spontaneous, although neither of
these words is employed, inasmuch as use and disuse and the action of the
conditions of existence, whether direct or indirect, are mentioned
specially as separate causes which purvey only the minor part of the
variations from among which nature selects. The words “that is, in
relation to adaptive forms” should be omitted, as surplusage that draws
the reader’s attention from the point at issue; the sentence really
amounts to this—that modification has been effected _chiefly through
selection_ in the ordinary course of nature _from among spontaneous
variations_, _aided in an unimportant manner by variations which quâ us
are spontaneous_. Nevertheless, though these spontaneous variations are
still so trifling in effect that they only aid spontaneous variations in
an unimportant manner, in his earlier editions Mr. Darwin thought them
still less important than he does now.
This comes of tinkering. We do not know whether we are on our heads or
our heels. We catch ourselves repeating “important,” “unimportant,”
“unimportant,” “important,” like the King when addressing the jury in
“Alice in Wonderland;” and yet this is the book of which Mr. Grant Allen
{163a} says that it is “one of the greatest, and most learned, the most
lucid, the most logical, the most crushing, the most conclusive, that the
world has ever seen. Step by step, and principle by principle, it proved
every point in its progress triumphantly before it went on to the next.
So vast an array of facts so thoroughly in hand had never before been
mustered and marshalled in favour of any biological theory.” The book
and the eulogy are well mated.
I see that in the paragraph following on the one just quoted, Mr. Allen
says, that “to the world at large Darwinism and evolution became at once
synonymous terms.” Certainly it was no fault of Mr. Darwin’s if they did
not, but I will add more on this head presently; for the moment,
returning to Mr. Darwin, it is hardly credible, but it is nevertheless
true, that Mr Darwin begins the paragraph next following on the one on
which I have just reflected so severely, with the words, “It can hardly
be supposed that a false theory would explain in so satisfactory a manner
as does the theory of natural selection, the several large classes of
facts above specified.” If Mr. Darwin found the large classes of facts
“satisfactorily” explained by the survival of the luckiest irrespectively
of the cunning which enabled them to turn their luck to account, he must
have been easily satisfied. Perhaps he was in the same frame of mind as
when he said {164a} that “even an imperfect answer would be
satisfactory,” but surely this is being thankful for small mercies.
On the following page Mr. Darwin says:—“Although I am fully” (why
“fully”?) “convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume under
the form of an abstract, I by no means expect to convince experienced
naturalists,” &c. I have not quoted the whole of Mr. Darwin’s sentence,
but it implies that any experienced naturalist who remained unconvinced
was an old-fashioned, prejudiced person. I confess that this is what I
rather feel about the experienced naturalists who differ in only too
great numbers from myself, but I did not expect to find so much of the
old Adam remaining in Mr. Darwin; I did not expect to find him support me
in the belief that naturalists are made of much the same stuff as other
people, and, if they are wise, will look upon new theories with distrust
until they find them becoming generally accepted. I am not sure that Mr.
Darwin is not just a little bit flippant here.
Sometimes I ask myself whether it is possible that, not being convinced,
I may be an experienced naturalist after all; at other times, when I read
Mr. Darwin’s works and those of his eulogists, I wonder whether there is
not some other Mr. Darwin, some other “Origin of Species,” some other
Professors Huxley, Tyndal, and Ray Lankester, and whether in each case
some malicious fiend has not palmed off a counterfeit upon me that
differs _toto cælo_ from the original. I felt exactly the same when I
read Goethe’s “Wilhelm Meister”; I could not believe my eyes, which
nevertheless told me that the dull diseased trash I was so toilsomely
reading was a work which was commonly held to be one of the great
literary masterpieces of the world. It seemed to me that there must be
some other Goethe and some other Wilhelm Meister. Indeed I find myself
so depressingly out of harmony with the prevailing not opinion only, but
spirit—if, indeed, the Huxleys, Tyndals, Miss Buckleys, Ray Lankesters,
and Romaneses express the prevailing spirit as accurately as they appear
to do—that at times I find it difficult to believe I am not the victim of
hallucination; nevertheless I know that either every canon, whether of
criticism or honourable conduct, which I have learned to respect is an
impudent swindle, suitable for the cloister only, and having no force or
application in the outside world; or else that Mr. Darwin and his
supporters are misleading the public to the full as much as the
theologians of whom they speak at times so disapprovingly. They sin,
moreover, with incomparably less excuse. Right as they doubtless are in
much, and much as we doubtless owe them (so we owe much also to the
theologians, and they also are right in much), they are giving way to a
temper which cannot be indulged with impunity. I know the great power of
academicism; I know how instinctively academicism everywhere must range
itself on Mr. Darwin’s side, and how askance it must look on those who
write as I do; but I know also that there is a power before which even
academicism must bow, and to this power I look not unhopefully for
support.
As regards Mr. Spencer’s contention that Mr. Darwin leaned more towards
function as he grew older, I do not doubt that at the end of his life Mr.
Darwin believed modification to be mainly due to function, but the
passage quoted on page 62 written in 1839, coupled with the concluding
paragraph of the “Origin of Species” written in 1859, and allowed to
stand during seventeen years of revision, though so much else was
altered—these passages, when their dates and surroundings are considered,
suggest strongly that Mr. Darwin thought during all the forty years or so
thus covered exactly as his grandfather and Lamarck had done, and indeed
as all sensible people since Buffon wrote have done if they have accepted
evolution at all.
Then why should he not have said so? What object could he have in
writing an elaborate work to support a theory which he knew all the time
to be untenable? The impropriety of such a course, unless the work was,
like Buffon’s, transparently ironical, could only be matched by its
fatuousness, or indeed by the folly of one who should assign action so
motiveless to any one out of a lunatic asylum.
This sounds well, but unfortunately we cannot forget that when Mr. Darwin
wrote the “Origin of Species” he claimed to be the originator of the
theory of descent with modification generally; that he did this without
one word of reference either to Buffon or Erasmus Darwin until the first
six thousand copies of his book had been sold, and then with as meagre,
inadequate notice as can be well conceived. Lamarck was just named in
the first editions of the “Origin of Species,” but only to be told that
Mr. Darwin had not got anything to give him, and he must go away; the
author of the “Vestiges of Creation” was also just mentioned, but only in
a sentence full of such gross misrepresentation that Mr. Darwin did not
venture to stand by it, and expunged it in later editions, as usual,
without calling attention to what he had done. It would have been in the
highest degree imprudent, not to say impossible, for one so conscientious
as Mr. Darwin to have taken the line he took in respect of descent with
modification generally, if he were not provided with some ostensibly
distinctive feature, in virtue of which, if people said anything, he
might claim to have advanced something different, and widely different,
from the theory of evolution propounded by his illustrious predecessors;
a distinctive theory of some sort, therefore, had got to be looked
for—and if people look in this spirit they can generally find.
I imagine that Mr. Darwin, casting about for a substantial difference,
and being unable to find one, committed the Gladstonian blunder of
mistaking an unsubstantial for a substantial one. It was doubtless
because he suspected it that he never took us fully into his confidence,
nor in all probability allowed even to himself how deeply he distrusted
it. Much, however, as he disliked the accumulation of accidental
variations, he disliked not claiming the theory of descent with
modification still more; and if he was to claim this, accidental his
variations had got to be. Accidental they accordingly were, but in as
obscure and perfunctory a fashion as Mr. Darwin could make them
consistently with their being to hand as accidental variations should
later developments make this convenient. Under these circumstances it
was hardly to be expected that Mr. Darwin should help the reader to
follow the workings of his mind—nor, again, that a book the writer of
which was hampered as I have supposed should prove clear and easy
reading.
The attitude of Mr. Darwin’s mind, whatever it may have been in regard to
the theory of descent with modification generally, goes so far to explain
his attitude in respect to the theory of natural selection (which, it
cannot be too often repeated, is only one of the conditions of existence
advanced as the main means of modification by the earlier evolutionists),
that it is worth while to settle the question once for all whether Mr.
Darwin did or did not believe himself justified in claiming the theory of
descent as an original discovery of his own. This will be a task of some
little length, and may perhaps try the reader’s patience, as it assuredly
tried mine; if, however, he will read the two following chapters, he will
probably be able to make up his mind upon much that will otherwise, if he
thinks about it at all, continue to puzzle him.