Professor Ray Lankester and Lamarck
BEING anxious to give the reader a sample of the arguments against the
theory of natural selection from among variations that are mainly either
directly or indirectly functional in their inception, or more briefly
against the Erasmus-Darwinian and Lamarckian systems, I can find nothing
more to the point, or more recent, than Professor Ray Lankester’s letter
to the _Athenæum_ of March 29, 1884, to the latter part of which,
however, I need alone call attention. Professor Ray Lankester says:—
“And then we are introduced to the discredited speculations of Lamarck,
which have found a worthy advocate in Mr. Butler, as really solid
contributions to the discovery of the _veræ causæ_ of variation! A much
more important attempt to do something for Lamarck’s hypothesis, of the
transmission to offspring of structural peculiarities acquired by the
parents, was recently made by an able and experienced naturalist,
Professor Semper of Wurzburg. His book on ‘Animal Life,’ &c., is
published in the ‘International Scientific Series.’ Professor Semper
adduces an immense number and variety of cases of structural change in
animals and plants brought about in the individual by adaptation (during
its individual life-history) to new conditions. Some of these are very
marked changes, such as the loss of its horny coat in the gizzard of a
pigeon fed on meat; _but in no single instance could Professor Semper
show_—although it was his object and desire to do so if possible—that
such change was transmitted from parent to offspring. Lamarckism looks
all very well on paper, but, as Professor Semper’s book shows, when put
to the test of observation and experiment it collapses absolutely.”
I should have thought it would have been enough if it had collapsed
without the “absolutely,” but Professor Ray Lankester does not like doing
things by halves. Few will be taken in by the foregoing quotation,
except those who do not greatly care whether they are taken in or not;
but to save trouble to readers who may have neither Lamarck nor Professor
Semper at hand, I will put the case as follows:—
Professor Semper writes a book to show, we will say, that the hour-hand
of the clock moves gradually forward, in spite of its appearing
stationary. He makes his case sufficiently clear, and then might have
been content to leave it; nevertheless, in the innocence of his heart, he
adds the admission that though he had often looked at the clock for a
long time together, he had never been able actually to see the hour-hand
moving. “There now,” exclaims Professor Ray Lankester on this, “I told
you so; the theory collapses absolutely; his whole object and desire is
to show that the hour-hand moves, and yet when it comes to the point, he
is obliged to confess that he cannot see it do so.” It is not worth
while to meet what Professor Ray Lankester has been above quoted as
saying about Lamarckism beyond quoting the following passage from a
review of “The Neanderthal Skull on Evolution” in the “Monthly Journal of
Science” for June, 1885 (p. 362):—
“On the very next page the author reproduces the threadbare objection
that the ‘supporters of the theory have never yet succeeded in observing
a single instance in all the millions of years invented (!) in its
support of one species of animal turning into another.’ Now, _ex
hypothesi_, one species turns into another not rapidly, as in a
transformation scene, but in successive generations, each being born a
shade different from its progenitors. Hence to observe such a change is
excluded by the very terms of the question. Does Mr. Saville forget Mr.
Herbert Spencer’s apologue of the ephemeron which had never witnessed the
change of a child into a man?”
The apologue, I may say in passing, is not Mr. Spencer’s; it is by the
author of the “Vestiges,” and will be found on page 161 of the 1853
edition of that book; but let this pass. How impatient Professor Ray
Lankester is of any attempt to call attention to the older view of
evolution appears perhaps even more plainly in a review of this same book
of Professor Semper’s that appeared in “Nature,” March 3, 1881. The
tenor of the remarks last quoted shows that though what I am about to
quote is now more than five years old, it may be taken as still giving us
the position which Professor Ray Lankester takes on these matters. He
wrote:—
“It is necessary,” he exclaims, “to plainly and emphatically state” (Why
so much emphasis? Why not “it should be stated”?) “that Professor Semper
and a few other writers of similar views” {227a} (I have sent for the
number of “Modern Thought” referred to by Professor Ray Lankester but
find no article by Mr. Henslow, and do not, therefore, know what he had
said) “are not adding to or building on Mr. Darwin’s theory, but are
actually opposing all that is essential and distinctive in that theory,
by the revival of the exploded notion of ‘directly transforming agents’
advocated by Lamarck and others.”
It may be presumed that these writers know they are not “adding to or
building on” Mr. Darwin’s theory, and do not wish to build on it, as not
thinking it a sound foundation. Professor Ray Lankester says they are
“actually opposing,” as though there were something intolerably audacious
in this; but it is not easy to see why he should be more angry with them
for “actually opposing” Mr. Darwin than they may be with him, if they
think it worth while, for “actually defending” the exploded notion of
natural selection—for assuredly the Charles-Darwinian system is now more
exploded than Lamarck’s is.
What Professor Ray Lankester says about Lamarck and “directly
transforming agents” will mislead those who take his statement without
examination. Lamarck does not say that modification is effected by means
of “directly transforming agents;” nothing can be more alien to the
spirit of his teaching. With him the action of the external conditions
of existence (and these are the only transforming agents intended by
Professor Ray Lankester) is not direct, but indirect. Change in
surroundings changes the organism’s outlook, and thus changes its
desires; desires changing, there is corresponding change in the actions
performed; actions changing, a corresponding change is by-and-by induced
in the organs that perform them; this, if long continued, will be
transmitted; becoming augmented by accumulation in many successive
generations, and further modifications perhaps arising through further
changes in surroundings, the change will amount ultimately to specific
and generic difference. Lamarck knows no drug, nor operation, that will
medicine one organism into another, and expects the results of adaptive
effort to be so gradual as to be only perceptible when accumulated in the
course of many generations. When, therefore, Professor Ray Lankester
speaks of Lamarck as having “advocated directly transforming agents,” he
either does not know what he is talking about, or he is trifling with his
readers. Professor Ray Lankester continues:—
“They do not seem to be aware of this, for they make no attempt to
examine Mr. Darwin’s accumulated facts and arguments.” Professor Ray
Lankester need not shake Mr. Darwin’s “accumulated facts and arguments”
at us. We have taken more pains to understand them than Professor Ray
Lankester has taken to understand Lamarck, and by this time know them
sufficiently. We thankfully accept by far the greater number, and rely
on them as our sheet-anchors to save us from drifting on to the
quicksands of Neo-Darwinian natural selection; few of them, indeed, are
Mr. Darwin’s, except in so far as he has endorsed them and given them
publicity, but I do not know that this detracts from their value. We
have paid great attention to Mr. Darwin’s facts, and if we do not
understand all his arguments—for it is not always given to mortal man to
understand these—yet we think we know what he was driving at. We believe
we understand this to the full as well as Mr. Darwin intended us to do,
and perhaps better. Where the arguments tend to show that all animals
and plants are descended from a common source we find them much the same
as Buffon’s, or as those of Erasmus Darwin or Lamarck, and have nothing
to say against them; where, on the other hand, they aim at proving that
the main means of modification has been the fact that if an animal has
been “favoured” it will be “preserved”—then we think that the animal’s
own exertions will, in the long run, have had more to do with its
preservation than any real or fancied “favour.” Professor Ray Lankester
continues:—
“The doctrine of evolution has become an accepted truth” (Professor Ray
Lankester writes as though the making of truth and falsehood lay in the
hollow of Mr. Darwin’s hand. Surely “has become accepted” should be
enough; Mr. Darwin did not make the doctrine true) “entirely in
consequence of Mr. Darwin’s having demonstrated the mechanism.” (There
is no mechanism in the matter, and if there is, Mr. Darwin did not show
it. He made some words which confused us and prevented us from seeing
that “the preservation of favoured races” was a cloak for “luck,” and
that this was all the explanation he was giving) “by which the evolution
is possible; it was almost universally rejected, while such
undemonstrable agencies as those arbitrarily asserted to exist by
Professor Semper and Mr. George Henslow were the only means suggested by
its advocates.”
Undoubtedly the theory of descent with modification, which received its
first sufficiently ample and undisguised exposition in 1809 with the
“Philosophie Zoologique” of Lamarck, shared the common fate of all
theories that revolutionise opinion on important matters, and was
fiercely opposed by the Huxleys, Romaneses, Grant Allens, and Ray
Lankesters of its time. It had to face the reaction in favour of the
Church which began in the days of the First Empire, as a natural
consequence of the horrors of the Revolution; it had to face the social
influence and then almost Darwinian reputation of Cuvier, whom Lamarck
could not, or would not, square; it was put forward by one who was old,
poor, and ere long blind. What theory could do more than just keep
itself alive under conditions so unfavourable? Even under the most
favourable conditions descent with modification would have been a hard
plant to rear, but, as things were, the wonder is that it was not killed
outright at once. We all know how large a share social influences have
in deciding what kind of reception a book or theory is to meet with;
true, these influences are not permanent, but at first they are almost
irresistible; in reality it was not the theory of descent that was
matched against that of fixity, but Lamarck against Cuvier; who can be
surprised that Cuvier for a time should have had the best of it?
And yet it is pleasant to reflect that his triumph was not, as triumphs
go, long lived. How is Cuvier best known now? As one who missed a great
opportunity; as one who was great in small things, and stubbornly small
in great ones. Lamarck died in 1831; in 1861 descent with modification
was almost universally accepted by those most competent to form an
opinion. This result was by no means so exclusively due to Mr. Darwin’s
“Origin of Species” as is commonly believed. During the thirty years
that followed 1831 Lamarck’s opinions made more way than Darwinians are
willing to allow. Granted that in 1861 the theory was generally accepted
under the name of Darwin, not under that of Lamarck, still it was Lamarck
and not Darwin that was being accepted; it was descent, not descent with
modification by means of natural selection from among fortuitous
variations, that we carried away with us from the “Origin of Species.”
The thing triumphed whether the name was lost or not. I need not waste
the reader’s time by showing further how little weight he need attach to
the fact that Lamarckism was not immediately received with open arms by
an admiring public. The theory of descent has become accepted as
rapidly, if I am not mistaken, as the Copernican theory, or as Newton’s
theory of gravitation.
When Professor Ray Lankester goes on to speak of the “undemonstrable
agencies” “arbitrarily asserted” to exist by Professor Semper, he is
again presuming on the ignorance of his readers. Professor Semper’s
agencies are in no way more undemonstrable than Mr. Darwin’s are. Mr.
Darwin was perfectly cogent as long as he stuck to Lamarck’s
demonstration; his arguments were sound as long as they were Lamarck’s,
or developments of, and riders upon, Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck,
and almost incredibly silly when they were his own. Fortunately the
greater part of the “Origin of Species” is devoted to proving the theory
of descent with modification, by arguments against which no exception
would have been taken by Mr. Darwin’s three great precursors, except in
so far as the variations whose accumulation results in specific
difference are supposed to be fortuitous—and, to do Mr. Darwin justice,
the fortuitousness, though always within hail, is kept as far as possible
in the background.
“Mr. Darwin’s arguments,” says Professor Ray Lankester, “rest on the
_proved_ existence of minute, many-sided, irrelative variations _not_
produced by directly transforming agents.” Mr. Darwin throughout the
body of the “Origin of Species” is not supposed to know what his
variations are or are not produced by; if they come, they come, and if
they do not come, they do not come. True, we have seen that in the last
paragraph of the book all this was changed, and the variations were
ascribed to the conditions of existence, and to use and disuse, but a
concluding paragraph cannot be allowed to override a whole book
throughout which the variations have been kept to hand as accidental.
Mr. Romanes is perfectly correct when he says {232a} that “natural
selection” (meaning the Charles-Darwinian natural selection) “trusts to
the chapter of accidents in the matter of variation” this is all that Mr.
Darwin can tell us; whether they come from directly transforming agents
or no he neither knows nor says. Those who accept Lamarck will know that
the agencies are not, as a rule, directly transforming, but the followers
of Mr. Darwin cannot.
“But showing themselves,” continues Professor Ray Lankester, “at each new
act of reproduction, as part of the phenomena of heredity such minute
‘sports’ or ‘variations’ are due to constitutional disturbance” (No
doubt. The difference, however, between Mr. Darwin and Lamarck consists
in the fact that Lamarck believes he knows what it is that so disturbs
the constitution as generally to induce variation, whereas Mr. Darwin
says he does not know), “and appear not in individuals subjected to new
conditions” (What organism can pass through life without being subjected
to more or less new conditions? What life is ever the exact fac-simile
of another? And in a matter of such extreme delicacy as the adjustment
of psychical and physical relations, who can say how small a disturbance
of established equilibrium may not involve how great a rearrangement?),
“but in the offspring of all, though more freely in the offspring of
those subjected to special causes of constitutional disturbance. Mr.
Darwin has further proved that these slight variations can be transmitted
and intensified by selective breeding.”
Mr. Darwin did, indeed, follow Buffon and Lamarck in at once turning to
animals and plants under domestication in order to bring the plasticity
of organic forms more easily home to his readers, but the fact that
variations can be transmitted and intensified by selective breeding had
been so well established and was so widely known long before Mr. Darwin
was born, that he can no more be said to have proved it than Newton can
be said to have proved the revolution of the earth on its own axis.
Every breeder throughout the world had known it for centuries. I believe
even Virgil knew it.
“They have,” continues Professor Ray Lankester, “in reference to
breeding, a remarkably tenacious, persistent character, as might be
expected from their origin in connection with the reproductive process.”
The variations do not normally “originate in connection with the
reproductive process,” though it is during this process that they receive
organic expression. They originate mainly, so far as anything originates
anywhere, in the life of the parent or parents. Without going so far as
to say that no variation can arise in connection with the reproductive
system—for, doubtless, striking and successful sports do occasionally so
arise—it is more probable that the majority originate earlier. Professor
Ray Lankester proceeds:—
“On the other hand, mutilations and other effects of directly
transforming agents are rarely, if ever, transmitted.” Professor Ray
Lankester ought to know the facts better than to say that the effects of
mutilation are rarely, if ever, transmitted. The rule is, that they will
not be transmitted unless they have been followed by disease, but that
where disease has supervened they not uncommonly descend to offspring.
{234a} I know Brown-Séquard considered it to be the morbid state of the
nervous system consequent upon the mutilation that is transmitted, rather
than the immediate effects of the mutilation, but this distinction is
somewhat finely drawn.
When Professor Ray Lankester talks about the “other effects of directly
transforming agents” being rarely transmitted, he should first show us
the directly transforming agents. Lamarck, as I have said, knows them
not. “It is little short of an absurdity,” he continues, “for people to
come forward at this epoch, when evolution is at length accepted solely
because of Mr. Darwin’s doctrine, and coolly to propose to replace that
doctrine by the old notion so often tried and rejected.”
Whether this is an absurdity or no, Professor Lankester will do well to
learn to bear it without showing so much warmth, for it is one that is
becoming common. Evolution has been accepted not “because of” Mr.
Darwin’s doctrine, but because Mr. Darwin so fogged us about his doctrine
that we did not understand it. We thought we were backing his bill for
descent with modification, whereas we were in reality backing it for
descent with modification by means of natural selection from among
fortuitous variations. This last really is Mr. Darwin’s theory, except
in so far as it is also Mr. A. R. Wallace’s; descent, alone, is just as
much and just as little Mr. Darwin’s doctrine as it is Professor Ray
Lankester’s or mine. I grant it is in great measure through Mr. Darwin’s
books that descent has become so widely accepted; it has become so
through his books, but in spite of, rather than by reason of, his
doctrine. Indeed his doctrine was no doctrine, but only a back-door for
himself to escape by in the event of flood or fire; the flood and fire
have come; it remains to be seen how far the door will work
satisfactorily.
Professor Ray Lankester, again, should not say that Lamarck’s doctrine
has been “so often tried and rejected.” M. Martins, in his edition of
the “Philosophie Zoologique,” {235a} said truly that Lamarck’s theory had
never yet had the honour of being seriously discussed. It never has—not
at least in connection with the name of its propounder. To mention
Lamarck’s name in the presence of the conventional English society
naturalist has always been like shaking a red rag at a cow; he is at once
infuriated; “as if it were possible,” to quote from Isidore Geoffroy St.
Hilaire, whose defence of Lamarck is one of the best things in his book,
{235b} “that so great labour on the part of so great a naturalist should
have led him to ‘a fantastic conclusion’ only—to ‘a flighty error,’ and,
as has been often said, though not written, to ‘one absurdity the more.’
Such was the language which Lamarck heard during his protracted old age,
saddened alike by the weight of years and blindness; this was what people
did not hesitate to utter over his grave, yet barely closed, and what,
indeed, they are still saying—commonly too, without any knowledge of what
Lamarck maintained, but merely repeating at second hand bad caricatures
of his teaching.
“When will the time come when we may see Lamarck’s theory discussed, and
I may as well at once say refuted, in some important points, with at any
rate the respect due to one of the most illustrious masters of our
science? And when will this theory, the hardihood of which has been
greatly exaggerated, become freed from the interpretations and
commentaries by the false light of which so many naturalists have formed
their opinion concerning it? If its author is to be condemned, let it,
at any rate, not be before he has been heard.”
Lamarck was the Lazarus of biology. I wish his more fortunate brethren,
instead of intoning the old Church argument that he has “been refuted
over and over again,” would refer us to some of the best chapters in the
writers who have refuted him. My own reading has led me to become
moderately well acquainted with the literature of evolution, but I have
never come across a single attempt fairly to grapple with Lamarck, and it
is plain that neither Isidore Geoffroy nor M. Martins knows of such an
attempt any more than I do. When Professor Ray Lankester puts his finger
on Lamarck’s weak places, then, but not till then, may he complain of
those who try to replace Mr. Darwin’s doctrine by Lamarck’s.
Professor Ray Lankester concludes his note thus:—
“That such an attempt should be made is an illustration of a curious
weakness of humanity. Not infrequently, after a long contested cause has
triumphed, and all have yielded allegiance thereto, you will find, when
few generations have passed, that men have clean forgotten what and who
it was that made that cause triumphant, and ignorantly will set up for
honour the name of a traitor or an impostor, or attribute to a great man
as a merit deeds and thoughts which he spent a long life in opposing.”
Exactly so; that is what one rather feels, but surely Professor Ray
Lankester should say “in trying to filch while pretending to oppose and
to amend.” He is complaining here that people persistently ascribe
Lamarck’s doctrine to Mr. Darwin. Of course they do; but, as I have
already perhaps too abundantly asked, whose fault is this? If a man
knows his own mind, and wants others to understand it, it is not often
that he is misunderstood for any length of time. If he finds he is being
misapprehended in a way he does not like, he will write another book and
make his meaning plainer. He will go on doing this for as long time as
he thinks necessary. I do not suppose, for example, that people will say
I originated the theory of descent by means of natural selection from
among fortunate accidents, or even that I was one of its supporters as a
means of modification; but if this impression were to prevail, I cannot
think I should have much difficulty in removing it. At any rate no such
misapprehension could endure for more than twenty years, during which I
continued to address a public who welcomed all I wrote, unless I myself
aided and abetted the mistake. Mr. Darwin wrote many books, but the
impression that Darwinism and evolution, or descent with modification,
are identical is still nearly as prevalent as it was soon after the
appearance of the “Origin of Species;” the reason of this is, that Mr.
Darwin was at no pains to correct us. Where, in any one of his many
later books, is there a passage which sets the matter in its true light,
and enters a protest against the misconception of which Professor Ray
Lankester complains so bitterly? The only inference from this is, that
Mr. Darwin was not displeased at our thinking him to be the originator of
the theory of descent with modification, and did not want us to know more
about Lamarck than he could help. If we wanted to know about him, we
must find out what he had said for ourselves, it was no part of Mr.
Darwin’s business to tell us; he had no interest in our catching the
distinctive difference between himself and that writer; perhaps not; but
this approaches closely to wishing us to misunderstand it. When Mr.
Darwin wished us to understand this or that, no one knew better how to
show it to us.
We were aware, on reading the “Origin of Species,” that there was a
something about it of which we had not full hold; nevertheless we gave
Mr. Darwin our confidence at once, partly because he led off by telling
us that we must trust him to a great extent, and explained that the
present book was only an instalment of a larger work which, when it came
out, would make everything perfectly clear; partly, again, because the
case for descent with modification, which was the leading idea throughout
the book, was so obviously strong, but perhaps mainly because every one
said Mr. Darwin was so good, and so much less self-heeding than other
people; besides, he had so “patiently” and “carefully” accumulated “such
a vast store of facts” as no other naturalist, living or dead, had ever
yet even tried to get together; he was so kind to us with his, “May we
not believe?” and his “Have we any right to infer that the Creator?” &c.
“Of course we have not,” we exclaimed, almost with tears in our eyes—“not
if you ask us in that way.” Now that we understand what it was that
puzzled us in Mr. Darwin’s work we do not think highly either of the
chief offender, or of the accessories after the fact, many of whom are
trying to brazen the matter out, and on a smaller scale to follow his
example.