Sir Richard Owen, the great naturalist, was born July 20, 1804, at
Lancaster, England, and received his early education at the grammar
school of that town. Thence he went to Edinburgh University. In
1826 he was admitted a member of the English College of Surgeons,
and in 1829 was lecturing at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London,
where he had completed his studies. His "Memoir on the Pearly
Nautillus," published in 1832, placed him, says Huxley, "at a bound
in the front rank of anatomical monographers," and for sixty-two
years the flow of his contributions to scientific literature never
ceased. In 1856 he was appointed to take charge of the natural
history departments of the British Museum, and before long set
forth views as to the inadequacy of the existing accommodation,
which led ultimately to the foundation of the buildings now devoted
to this purpose in South Kensington. Owen died on December 18,
1892. His great book, "Comparative Anatomy and Physiology of the
Vertebrates," was completed in 1868, and since Cuvier's
"Comparative Anatomy," is the most monumental treatise on the
subject by any one man. Although much of the classification adopted
by Owen has not been accepted by other zoologists, yet the work
contains an immense amount of information, most of which was gained
from Owen's own personal observations and dissections.
_I.--Biological Questions of 1830_
At the close of my studies at the Jardin des Plantes, Paris, in 1831, I
returned strongly moved to lines of research bearing upon the then
prevailing phases of thought on some biological questions.
The great master in whose dissecting rooms I was privileged to work held
that species were not permanent as a fact established inductively on a
wide basis of observation, by which comparative osteology had been
created. Camper and Hunter suspected the species might be transitory;
but Cuvier, in defining the characters of his anaplotherium and
palæotherium, etc., proved the fact. Of the relation of past to present
species, Cuvier had not an adequate basis for a decided opinion.
Observation of changes in the relative position of land and sea
suggested to him one condition of the advent of new species on an island
or continent where old species had died out. This view he illustrates by
a hypothetical case of such succession, but expressly states: "I do not
assert that a new creation was necessary to produce the species now
existing, but only that they did not exist in the same regions, and must
have come from elsewhere." Geoffrey Saint Hilaire opposed to Cuvier's
inductive treatment of the question the following expression of belief:
"I have no doubt that existing animals are directly descended from the
animals of the antediluvian world," but added, "it is my belief that the
season has not yet arrived for a really satisfying knowledge of
geology."
The main collateral questions argued in their debates appeared to me to
be the following:
Unity of plan or final purpose, as a governing condition of organic
development?
Series of species, uninterrupted or broken by intervals?
Extinction, cataclysmal or regulated?
Development, by epigenesis or evolution?
Primary life, by miracle or secondary law?
Cuvier held the work of organisation to be guided and governed by final
purpose or adaptation. Geoffrey denied the evidence of design and
contended for the principle which he called "unity of composition," as
the law of organisation. Most of his illustrations were open to the
demonstration of inaccuracy; and the language by which disciples of the
kindred school of Schelling illustrated in the animal structure the
transcendental idea of the whole in every part seemed little better than
mystical jargon. With Cuvier, answerable parts occurred in the
zoological scale because they had to perform similar functions.
As, however, my observations and comparisons accumulated, they enforced
a reconsideration of Cuvier's conclusions. To demonstrate the evidence
of the community of organisation I found the artifice of an archetype
vertebrate animal essential; and from the demonstration of its
principle, which I then satisfied myself was associated with and
dominated by that of "adaptation to purpose," the step was inevitable to
the conception of the operation of a secondary cause of the entire
series of species, such cause being the servant of predetermining
intelligent will.
But besides "derivation" or "filiation" another principle influencing
organisation became recognisable, to which I gave the name of
"irrelative repetition," or "vegetative repetition." The demonstrated
constitution of the vertebrate endoskeleton as a series of essentially
similar segments appeared to me to illustrate the law of irrelative
repetition.
These results of inductive research swayed me in rejecting direct or
miraculous creation, and in recognising a "natural law or secondary
cause" as operative in the production of species "in orderly succession
and progression."
_II.--Succession of Species, Broken or Linked?_
To the hypothesis that existing are modifications of extinct species,
Cuvier replied that traces of modification were due from the fossil
world. "You ought," he said, "to be able to show the intermediate forms
between the palæotherium and existing hoofed quadrupeds."
The progress of palæontology since 1830 has brought to light many
missing links unknown to the founder of the science. The discovery of
the remains of the hipparion supplied one of the links required by
Cuvier, and it is significant that the remains of such three-toed horses
are found only in deposits of that tertiary period which intervene
between the older palæotherian one and the newer strata in which the
modern horse first appears to have lost its lateral hooflets.
The molar series of the horse includes six large complex grinders
individually recognisable by developmental characters. The
representative of the first premolar is minute and soon shod. Its
homologue in palæotherium is functionally developed and retained, that
type-dentition being adhered to. In hipparion this tooth is smaller than
in palæotherium, but functional and permanent. The transitory and
singularly small and simple denticle in the horse exemplifies the
rudiment of an ancestral structure in the same degree as do the hoofless
splint-bones; just as the spurious hoofs dangling therefrom in hipparion
are retained rudiments of the functionally developed lateral hoofs in
the broader foot of palæotherium.
Other missing links of this series of species have also been supplied.
How then is the origin of these intermediate gradations to be
interpreted? If the alternative--species by miracle or by law--be
applied to palæotherium, paloplotherium, anchitherium, hipparion, equus,
I accept the latter without misgiving, and recognise such law as
continuously operative throughout tertiary time.
In respect to its law of operation we may suppose Lamarck to say, "as
the surface of the earth consolidated, the larger and more produced
mid-hoof of the old three-toed pachyderius took a greater share in
sustaining the animal's weight; and more blood being required to meet
the greater demand of the more active mid-toe, it grew; whilst, the
side-toes, losing their share of nourishment and becoming more and more
withdrawn from use, shrank"--and so on. Mr. Darwin, I conceive, would
modify this by saying that some individuals of palæotherium happening to
be born with a larger and longer middle toe, and with shorter and
smaller side-toes, such variety was better adapted to prevailing altered
conditions of the earth's surface than the parental form; and so on,
until finally the extreme equine modifications of foot came to be
"naturally selected." But the hypothesis of appetency and volition, as
of natural selection, are less applicable, less intelligible, in
connection with the changes in the teeth.
I must further observe that to say the palæotherium has graduated into
equus by "natural selection" is an explanation of the process of the
same kind and value as that by which the secretion of bile was
attributed to the "appetency" of the liver for the elements of bile.
One's surprise is that such explanatory devices should not have died out
with the "archeus faber," the "nisus formations," and other
self-deceiving, world-beguiling simulacra of science, with the last
century; and that a resuscitation should have had any success in the
present.
What, then, are the facts on which any reasonable or intelligible
conception can be formed of the mode of operation of the derivative law
exemplified in the series linking on palæotherium to equus? A very
significant one is the following. A modern horse occasionally comes into
the world with the supplementary ancestral hoofs. From Valerius Maximus,
who attributes the variety to Bucephalus downwards, such "polydactyle"
horses have been noted as monsters and marvels. In one of the latest
examples, the inner splint-bone, answering to the second metacarpal of
the pentadactyle foot, supported phalanges and a terminal hoof
resembling the corresponding one in hipparion. And the pairing of horses
with the meterpodials bearing, according to type, phalanges and hoofs
might restore the race of hipparions.
Now, the fact suggesting such possibility teaches that the change would
be sudden and considerable; it opposes the idea that species are
transmuted by minute and slow degrees. It also shows that a species
might originate independently of the operation of any external
influence; that change of structure would precede that of use and
habit; that appetency, impulse, ambient medium, fortuitous fitness of
surrounding circumstances, or a personified "selecting nature" would
have had no share in the transmutative act.
Thus I have been led to recognise species as exemplifying the continuous
operation of natural law, or secondary cause; and that not only
successively but progressively; "from the first embodiment of the
vertebrate idea under its old ichthyic vestment until it became arrayed
in the glorious garb of the human form."
_III.--Extinction--Cataclysmal or Regulated_
If the species of palæothere, paloplothere, anchithere, hipparion, and
horse be severally deemed due to remotely and successively repeated acts
of creation; the successive going out of such species must have been as
miraculous as their coming in. Accordingly, in Cuvier's "Discourse on
Revolutions of the Earth's Surface" we have a section of "Proofs that
these revolutions have been numerous," and another of "Proofs that these
revolutions have been sudden." But as the discoveries of palæontologists
have supplied the links between the species held to have perished by the
cataclysms, so each successive parcel of geological truth has tended to
dissipate the belief in the unusually sudden and violent nature of the
changes recognisable in the earth's surface. In specially directing my
attention to this moot point, whilst engaged in investigations of fossil
remains, I was led to recognise one cause of extinction as being due to
defeat in the contest which the individual of each species had to
maintain against the surrounding agencies which might militate against
its existence. This principle has received a large and most instructive
accession of illustrations from the labours of Charles Darwin; but he
aims to apply it not only to the extinction but to the origin of
species.
Although I fail to recognise proof of the latter bearing of the battle
of life, the concurrence of so much evidence in favour of extinction by
law is, in like measure, corroborative of the truth of the ascription of
the origin of species to a secondary cause.
What spectacle can be more beautiful than that of the inhabitants of the
calm expanse of water of an atoll encircled by its ring of coral rock!
Leaving locomotive frequenters of the calcarious basin out of the
question, we may ask, Was direct creation after the dying out of its
result as a "rugose coral" repeated to constitute the succeeding and
superseding "tabulate coral"? Must we also invoke the miraculous power
to initiate every distinct species of both rugosa and tabulata? These
grand old groups have had their day and are utterly gone. When we
endeavour to conceive or realise such mode of origin, not of them only
but of their manifold successors, the miracle, by the very
multiplication of its manifestations, becomes incredible--inconsistent
with any worthy conception of an all-seeing, all-provident Omnipotence.
Being unable to accept the volitional hypothesis (of Lamarck) or the
selective force exerted by outward circumstances (Darwin), I deem an
innate tendency to deviate from parental type, operating through periods
of adequate duration, to be the most probable way of operation of the
secondary law whereby species have been derived one from another.
According to my derivative hypothesis a change takes place first in the
structure of the animal, and this, when sufficiently advanced, may lead
to modifications of habits. But species owe as little to the accidental
concurrence of environing circumstances as kosmos depends upon a
fortuitous concourse of atoms. A purposive route of development and
change of correlation and inter-dependence, manifesting intelligent
will, is as determinable in the succession of races as in the
development and organisation of the individual.
Derivation holds that every species changes in time, by virtue of
inherent tendencies thereto. Natural selection holds that no such change
can take place without the influence of altered external circumstances
educing or eliciting such change.
Derivation sees among the effects of the innate tendency to change,
irrespective of altered surrounding circumstances, a manifestation of
creative power in the variety and beauty of the results; and, in the
ultimate forthcoming of a being susceptible of appreciating such beauty,
evidence of the preordaining of such relation of power to the
appreciation. Natural selection acknowledges that if power or beauty, in
itself, should be a purpose in creation, it would be absolutely fatal to
it as a hypothesis.
Natural selection sees grandeur in the "view of life, with its several
powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms
or into one." Derivation sees, therein, a narrow invocation of a special
miracle and an unworthy limitation of creative power, the grandeur of
which is manifested daily, hourly, in calling into life many forms, by
conversion of physical and chemical into vital modes of force, under as
many diversified conditions of the requisite elements to be so combined.
Natural selection leaves the subsequent origin and succession of species
to the fortuitous concurrence of outward conditions; derivation
recognises a purpose in the defined and preordained course, due to
innate capacity or power of change, by which homogeneously-created
protozoa have risen to the higher forms of plants and animals.
The hypothesis of derivation rests upon conclusions from four great
series of inductively established facts, together with a probable result
of facts of a fifth class; the hypothesis of natural selection totters
on the extension of a conjectural condition explanatory of extinction to
the origination of species, inapplicable in that extension to the
majority of organisms, and not known or observed to apply to the origin
of any species.
_IV.--Epigenesis or Evolution?_
The derivative origin of species, then, being at present the most
admissible one, and the retrospective survey of such species showing
convergence, as time recedes, to more simplified or generalised
organisations, the result to which the suggested train of thought
inevitably leads is very analogous in each instance. If to kosmos or the
mundane system have been allotted powers equivalent to the development
of the several grades of life, may not the demonstrated series of
conversions of force have also included that into the vital form?
In the last century, physiologists were divided as to the principle
guiding the work of organic development.
The "evolutionists" contended that the new being preexisted in a
complete state of formation, needing only to be vivified by impregnation
in order to commence the series of expansions or disencasings,
culminating in the independent individual.
The "epigenesists" held that both the germ and its subsequent organs
were built up of juxtaposed molecules according to the operation of a
developmental force, or "nisus formations."
At the present day the question may seem hardly worth the paper on which
it is referred to. Nevertheless, "pre-existence of germs" and evolution
are logically inseparable from the idea of species by primary
miraculously-created individuals. Cuvier, therefore, maintained both as
firmly as did Haller. In the debates of 1830 I remained the thrall of
that dogma in regard to the origin of single-celled organisms whether in
or out of body. Every result of formfaction, I believed, with most
physiologists, to be the genetic outcome of a pre-existing "cell." The
first was due to miraculous interposition and suspension of ordinary
laws; it contained potentially all future possible cells.
Cell-development exemplified evolution of pre-existing germs, the
progeny of the primary cell. They progagated themselves by
self-division, or by "proliferation" of minutes granules or atoms,
which, when properly nourished, again multiplied by self-division, and
grew to the likeness of the parent cells.
It seems to me more consistent with the present phase of dynamical
science and the observed graduations of living things to suppose the
sarcode or the "protogenal" jelly-speck should be formable through the
concurrence of conditions favouring such combination of their elements,
and involving a change of force productive of their contractions and
extensions, molecular attractions, and repulsions--and the sarcode has
so become, from the period when its irrelative repetitions resulted in
the vast indefinite masses of the "eozoon," exemplifying the earliest
process of "formification" or organic crystallisation--than that all
existing sarcodes or "protogenes" are the result of genetic descent from
a germ or cell due to a primary act of miraculous interposition.
I prefer, while indulging in such speculations, to consider the various
daily nomogeneously developed forms of protozoal or protistal jellies,
sarcodes, and single-celled organisms, to have been as many roots from
which the higher grades have ramified than that the origin of the whole
organic creation is to be referred, as the Egyptian priests did that of
the universe, to a single egg.
Amber or steel, when magnetised, seem to exercise "selection"; they do
not attract all substances alike. A speck of protogenal jelly or
sarcode, if alive, shows analogous relations to certain substances; but
the soft yielding tissue allows the part next the attractive matter to
move thereto, and then, by retraction, to draw such matter into the
sarcodal mass, which overspreads, dissolves, and assimilates it. The
term "living" in the one case is correlative with the term "magnetic" in
the other. A man perceives ripe fruit; he stretches out his hand,
plucks, masticates, swallows, and digests it.
The question then arises whether the difference between such series of
actions in the man and the attractive and assimilative movement of the
amæba be greater or less than the difference between these acts of the
amæba and the attracting and retaining acts of the magnet.
The question, I think, may be put with some confidence as to the quality
of the ultimate reply whether the amæbal phenomena are so much more
different, or so essentially different, from the magnetic phenomena than
they are from the mammalian phenomena, as to necessitate the invocation
of a special miracle for their manifestation. It is analogically
conceivable that the same cause which has endowed His world with power
convertible into magnetic, electric, thermotic and other forms or modes
of force, has also added the conditions of conversion into the vital
force.
From protozoa or protista to plants and animals the graduation is closer
than from magnetised iron to vitalised sarcode. From reflex acts of the
nervous system animals rise to sentient and volitional ones. And with
the ascent are associated brain-cells progressively increasing in size
and complexity. Thought relates to the "brain" of man as does
electricity to the nervous "battery" of the torpedo; both are forms of
force and the results of action of their respective organs.
Each sensation affects a cerebral fibre, and, in so affecting it, gives
it the faculty of repeating the action, wherein memory consists and
sensation in a dream.
If the hypothesis of an abstract entity produces psychological phenomena
by playing upon the brain as a musician upon his instrument be rejected,
and these phenomena be held to be the result of cerebral actions, an
objection is made that the latter view is "materialistic" and adverse to
the notion of an independent, indivisible, "immaterial," mental
principle or soul.
But in the endeavour to comprehend clearly and explain the functions of
the combination of forces called "brain," the physiologist is hindered
and troubled by the views of the nature of those cerebral forces which
the needs of dogmatic theology have imposed on mankind. How long
physiologists would have entertained the notion of a "life," or "vital
principle," as a distinct entity if freed from this baneful influence
may be questioned; but it can be truly affirmed that physiology has now
established and does accept the truth of that statement of Locke--"the
life, whether of a material or immaterial substance, is not the
substance itself, but an affection of it."