belief from intuition, or faith in revelation; but who have by careful and

elaborate search in the physical, and more especially in the organic world,

inferred, by induction, the existence of God from what has seemed to them

the wonderful adaptation of the different organs and parts of the animal

body to its, apparently, designed ends! Imagine a mind of this skeptical

character, in all honesty and under its best reason, after finding itself

obliged to reject the evidence of revelation, to commence a search after

the Creator, in the light of natural theology. He goes through the proof for

final cause and design, as given in a summary though clear, plain, and

convincing form, in the pages of Paley and the "Bridgewater Treatises." The

eye and the hand, those perfect instruments of optical and mechanical

contrivance and adaptation, without the least waste or surplusage--these,

say Paley and Bell, certainly prove a designing maker as much as the palace

or the watch proves an architect or a watchmaker. Let this mind, in this

state, cross Darwin's work, and find that, after a sensitive nerve or a

rudimentary hoof or claw, no design is to be found. From this point upward

the development is the mere necessary result of natural selection; and let

him receive this law of natural selection as true, and where does he find

himself? Before, he could refer the existence of the eye, for example, only

to design, or chance. There was no other alternative. He rejected chance,

as impossible.

It must then be a design. But Darwin brings up another power, namely,

natural selection, in place of this impossible chance. This not only may,

but, according to Darwin, must of necessity produce an eye. It may indeed

coexist with design, but it must exist and act and produce its results,

even without design. Will such a mind, under such circumstances, infer the

existence of the designer--God--when he can, at the same time,

satisfactorily account for the thing produced, by the operation of this

natural selection? It seems to me, therefore, perfectly evident

57

that the substitution of natural selection, by necessity, for design in the

formation of the organic world, is a step decidedly atheistical. It is in

vain to say that Darwin takes the creation of organic life, in its simplest

forms, to have been the work of the Deity. In giving up design in these

highest and most complex forms of organization, which have always been

relied upon as the crowning proof of the existence of an intelligent

Creator, without whose intellectual power they could not have been brought

into being, he takes a most decided step to banish a belief in the

intelligent action of God from the organic world. The lower organisms will

go next.

The atheist will say, Wait a little. Some future Darwin will show how the

simple forms came necessarily from inorganic matter. This is but another

step by which, according to Laplace, "the discoveries of science throw

final causes further back."

A.G.--It is conceded that, if the two players in the supposed case were

ignorant of each other's presence, the designs of both were frustrated, and

from necessity. Thus far it is not needful to inquire whether this

necessary consequence is an unconditional or a conditioned necessity, nor

to require a more definite statement of the meaning attached to the word

necessity as a supposed third alternative.

But, if the players knew of each other's presence, we could not infer from

the result that the design of both or of either was frustrated. One of them

may have intended to frustrate the other's design, and to effect his own.

Or both may have been equally conversant with the properties of the matter

and the relation of the forces concerned (whatever the cause, origin, or

nature, of these forces and properties), and the result may have been

according to the designs of both.

As you admit that they might or might not have designed the collision of

their balls and its consequences the question arises whether there is any

way of ascertaining which of the

two conceptions we may form about it is the true one. Now, let it be

remarked that design can never be demonstrated. Witnessing the act does not

make known the design, as we have seen in the case assumed for the basis of

the argument. The word of the actor is not proof; and that source of

evidence is excluded from the cases in question. The only way left, and the

only possible way in cases where testimony is out of the question, is to

infer the design from the result, or from arrangements which strike us as

adapted or intended to produce a certain result, which affords a

presumption of design. The strength of this presumption may be zero, or an

even chance, as perhaps it is in the assumed case; but the probability of

design will increase with the particularity of the act, the specialty of

the arrangement or machinery, and with the number of identical or yet more

of similar and analogous instances, until it rises to a moral certainty--i.

e., to a conviction which practically we are as unable to resist as we are

to deny the cogency of a mathematical demonstration. A single instance, or

set of instances, of a comparatively simple arrangement might suffice. For

instance, we should not doubt that a pump was designed to raise water by

the moving of the handle. Of course, the conviction is the stronger, or at

least the sooner arrived at, where we can imitate the arrangement, and

ourselves produce the result at will, as we could with a pump, and also with

the billiard-balls.

And here I would suggest that your billiard-table, with the case of

collision, answers well to a machine. In both a result is produced by

indirection--by applying a force out of line of the ultimate direction.

And, as I should feel as confident that a man intended to raise water who

was working a pumphandle, as if he were bringing it up in pailfuls from

below by means of a ladder, so, after due examination of the billiard-table

and its appurtenances, I should probably think it likely that the effect of

the rebound was expected and intended no less than that of the immediate

impulse. And a similar inspection of arrangements and results in Nature

would raise at least an equal presumption of design.

You allow that the rebound might have been intended, but you require proof

that it was. We agree that a single such instance affords no evidence

either way. But how would it be if you saw the men doing the same thing

over and over? and if they varied it by other arrangements of the balls or

of the blow, and these were followed by analogous results? How if you at

length discovered a profitable end of the operation, say the winning of a

wager? So in the counterpart case of natural selection: must we not infer

intention from the arrangements and the results? But I will take another

case of the very same sort, though simpler, and better adapted to

illustrate natural selection; because the change of direction--your

necessity--acts gradually or successively, instead of abruptly.

Suppose I hit a man standing obliquely in my rear, by throwing forward a

crooked stick, called a boomerang. How could he know whether the blow was

intentional or not? But suppose I had been known to throw boomerangs

before; suppose that, on different occasions, I had before wounded persons

by the same, or other indirect and apparently aimless actions; and suppose

that an object appeared to be gained in the result--that definite ends were

attained--would it not at length be inferred that my assault, though

indirect, or apparently indirect, was designed?

To make the case more nearly parallel with those it is brought to

illustrate, you have only to suppose that, although the boomerang thrown by

me went forward to a definite place, and at least appeared to subserve a

purpose, and the bystanders, after a while, could get traces of the mode or

the empirical law of its flight, yet they could not themselves do anything

with it. It was quite beyond their power to use it. Would they doubt, or

deny my intention, on that account? No: they would insist that design on my

part must be presumed from the nature of the results; that, though design

may have been wanting in any one case, yet the repetition of the result,

and from different positions and under varied circumstances, showed that

there must have been design.

Moreover, in the way your case is stated, it seems to concede the most

important half of the question, and so affords a presumption for the rest,

on the side of design. For you seem to assume an actor, a designer,

accomplishing his design in the first instance. You--a bystander--infer

that the player effected his design in sending the first ball to the pocket

before him. You infer this from observation alone. Must you not from a

continuance of the same observation equally infer a common design of the two

players in the complex result, or a design of one of them to frustrate the

design of the other? If you grant a designing actor, the presumption of

design is as strong, or upon continued observation of instances soon

becomes as strong, in regard to the deflection of the balls, or variation

of the species, as it was for the result of the first impulse or for the

production of the original animal, etc.

But, in the case to be illustrated, we do not see the player. We see only

the movement of the balls. Now, if the contrivances and adaptations

referred to really do "prove a designer as much as the palace or the watch

proves an architect or a watchmaker"--as Paley and Bell argue, and as your

skeptic admits, while the alternative is between design and chance--then

they prove it with all the proof the case is susceptible of, and with

complete conviction. For we cannot doubt that the watch had a watchmaker.

And if they prove it on the supposition that the unseen operator acted

immediately--i.e., that the player directly impelled the balls in the

directions we see them moving, I insist that this proof is not impaired by

our ascertaining that he acted mediately--i.e., that the present state or

form of the plants or animals, like the present position of the

billiard-balls, resulted from the collision of the individuals with one

another, or with the surroundings. The original impulse, which we once

supposed was in the line of the observed movement, only proves to have been

in a different direction; but the series of movements took place with a

series of results, each and all of them none the less determined, none the

less designed.

Wherefore, when, at the close, you quote Laplace, that "the discoveries of

science throw final causes farther back," the most you can mean is, that

they constrain us to look farther back for the impulse. They do not at all

throw the argument for design farther back, in the sense of furnishing

evidence or presumption that only the primary impulse was designed, and

that all the rest followed from chance or necessity.

Evidence of design, I think you will allow, everywhere is drawn from the

observation of adaptations and of results, and has really nothing to do with

anything else, except where you can take the word for the will. And in that

case you have not argument for design, but testimony. In Nature we have no

testimony; but the argument is overwhelming.

Now, note that the argument of the olden time--that of Paley, etc., which

your skeptic found so convincing--was always the argument for design in the

movement of the balls after deflection. For it was drawn from animals

produced by generation, not by creation, and through a long succession of

generations or deflections. Wherefore, if the argument for design is

perfect in the case of an animal derived from a long succession of

individuals as nearly alike as offspring is generally like parents and

grandparents, and if this argument is not weakened when a variation, or

series of variations, has occurred in the course, as great as any

variations we know of among domestic cattle, how then is it weakened by the

supposition, or by the likelihood, that the variations have been twice or

thrice as great as we formerly supposed, or because the variations have been

"picked out," and a few of them pre served as breeders of still other

variations, by natural selection?

Finally let it be noted that your element of necessity has to do, so far as

we know, only with the picking out and preserving of certain changing

forms, i. e., with the natural selection. This selection, you may say, must

happen under the circumstances. This is a necessary result of the collision

of the balls; and these results can be predicted. If the balls strike so

and so, they will be deflected so and so. But the variation itself is of

the nature of an origination. It answers well to the original impulse of the

balls, or to a series of such impulses. We cannot predict what particular

new variation will occur from any observation of the past. Just as the

first impulse was given to the balls at a point out of sight, so the

impulse which resulted in the variety or new form was given at a point

beyond observation, and is equally mysterious or unaccountable, except on

the supposition of an ordaining will. The parent had not the peculiarity of

the variety, the progeny has. Between the two is the dim or obscure region

of the formation of a new individual, in some unknown part of which, and in

some wholly unknown way, the difference is intercalated. To introduce

necessity here is gratuitous and unscientific; but here you must have it to

make your argument valid.

I agree that, judging from the past, it is not improbable that variation

itself may be hereafter shown to result from physical causes. When it is so

shown, you may extend your necessity into this region, but not till then.

But the whole course of scientific discovery goes to assure us that the

discovery of the cause of variation will be only a resolution of variation

into two factors: one, the immediate secondary cause of the changes, which

so far explains them; the other an unresolved or unexplained phenomenon,

which will then stand just where the product, variation, stands now, only

that it will be one step nearer to the efficient cause. This line of

argument appears to me so convincing, that I am bound to suppose that it

does not meet your case. Although you introduced players to illustrate what

design is, it is probable that you did not intend, and would not accept,

the parallel which your supposed case suggested. When you declare that the

proof of design in the eye and the hand, as given by Paley and Bell, was

convincing, you mean, of course, that it was convincing, so long as the

question was between design and chance, but that now another alternative is

offered, one which obviates the force of those arguments, and may account

for the actual results without design. I do not clearly apprehend this

third alternative.

Will you be so good, then, as to state the grounds upon which you conclude

that the supposed proof of design from the eye, or the hand, as it stood

before Darwin's theory was promulgated, would be invalidated by the

admission of this new theory?

D.T.--As I have ever found you, in controversy, meeting the array of your

opponent fairly and directly, without any attempt to strike the body of his

argument through an unguarded joint in the phraseology, I was somewhat

surprised at the course taken in your answer to my statement on Darwin's

theory. You there seem to suppose that I instanced the action of the

billiard balls and players as a parallel, throughout, to the formation of

the organic world. Had it occurred to me that such an application might be

supposed to follow legitimately from my introduction of this action, I

should certainly have stated that I did not intend, and should by no means

accede to, that construction. My purpose in bringing the billiard-table

upon the scene was to illustrate, by example, design and necessity, as

different and independent sources from which results, it might indeed be

identical results, may be derived All the conclusions, therefore, that you

have arrived at through this misconception or misapplication of my

illustration, I cannot take as an answer to the matter stated or intended

to be stated by me. Again, following this misconception, you suppose the

skeptic (instanced by me as revealing through the evidence of design,

exhibited in the structure of the eye, for its designer, God) as bringing to

the examination a belief in the existence of design in the construction of

the animals as they existed up to the moment when the eye was, according to

my supposition, added to the heart, stomach, brain, etc. By skeptic I, of

course, intended one who doubted the existence of design in every organic

structure, or at least required proof of such design. Now, as the watch may

be instanced as a more complete exhibition of design than a flint knife or

an hour-glass, I selected, after the example of Paley, the eye, as

exhibiting by its complex but harmonious arrangements a higher evidence of

design and a designer than is to be found in a nerve sensitive to light, or

any mere rudimentary part or organ. I could not mean by skeptic one who

believed in design so far as a claw, or a nerve sensitive to light, was

concerned, but doubted all above. For one who believes in design at all

will not fail to recognize it in a hand or an eye. But I need not extend

these remarks, as you acknowledge in the sequel to your argument that you

may not have suited it to the case as I have stated it.

You now request me to "state the grounds upon which I conclude that the

supposed proof of design from the eye and the hand, as it stood before

Darwin's theory was promulgated, is invalidated by the admission of that

theory." It seems to me that a sufficient answer to this question has

already been made in the last part of my former paper; but, as you request

it, I will go over the leading points as there given, with more minuteness

of detail.

Let us, then, suppose a skeptic, one who is yet considering and doubting of

the existence of God, having already concluded that the testimony from any

and all revelation is insufficient, and having rejected what is called the

a priori arguments brought forward in natural theology, and pertinaciously

insisted upon by Dr. Clark and others, turning as a last resource to the

argument from design in the organic world. Voltaire tells him that a palace

could not exist without an architect to design it. Dr. Paley tells him

that a watch proves the design of a watchmaker. He thinks this very

reasonable, and, although he sees a difference between the works of Nature

and those of mere human art, yet if he can find in any organic body, or

part of a body, the same adaptation to its use that he finds in a watch,

this truth will go very far toward proving, if it is not entirely

conclusive, that, in making it, the powers of life by which it grew were

directed by an intelligent, reasoning master. Under the guidance of Paley he

takes an eye, which, although an optical, and not a mechanical instrument

like the watch, is as well adapted to testify to design. He sees, first,

that the eye is transparent when every other part of the body is opaque.

Was this the result of a mere Epicurean or Lucretian "fortuitous concourse"

of living "atoms"? He is not yet certain it might not be so. Next he sees

that it is spherical, and that this convex form alone is capable of changing

the direction of the light which proceeds from a distant body, and of

collecting it so as to form a distinct image within its globe. Next he sees

at the exact place where this image must be formed a curtain of nerve-work,

ready to receive and convey it, or excite from it, in its own mysterious

way, an idea of it in the mind. Last of all, he comes to the crystalline

lens. Now, he has before learned that without this lens an eye would by the

aqueous and Vitreous humors alone form an image upon the retina, but this

image would be indistinct from the light not being sufficiently refracted,

and likewise from having a colored fringe round its edges. This last effect

is attributable to the refrangibility of light, that is, to some of the

colors being more refracted than others. He likewise knows that more than a

hundred years ago Mr. Dollond having found out, after many experiments,

that some kinds of glass have the power of dispersing light, for each degree

of its refraction, much more than other kinds, and that on the discovery of

this fact he contrived to make telescopes in which he passed the light

through two object-glasses successively, one of which he made of crown and

one of flint glass, so ground and adapted to each other that the greater

dispersion produced by the substance of one should be corrected by the

smaller dispersion of the other. This contrivance corrected entirely the

colored images which had rendered all previous telescopes very imperfect. He

finds in this invention all the elements of design, as it appeared in the

thought and action of a human designer. First, conjecture of certain laws

or facts in optics. Then, experiment proving these laws or facts. Then, the

contrivance and formation of an instrument by which those laws or facts

must produce a certain sought result.

Thus enlightened, our skeptic turns to his crystalline lens to see if he

can discover the work of a Dollond in this. Here he finds that an eye,

having a crystalline lens placed between the humors, not only refracts the

light more than it would be refracted by the humors alone, but that, in

this combination of humors and lens, the colors are as completely corrected

as in the combination of Dollond's telescope. Can it be that there was no

design, no designer, directing the powers of life in the formation of this

wonderful organ? Our skeptic is aware that, in the arts of man, great aid

has been, sometimes, given by chance, that is, by the artist or workman

observing some fortuitous combination, form, or action, around him. He has

heard it said that the chance arrangement of two pairs of spectacles, in

the shop of a Dutch optician, gave the direction

67

for constructing the first telescope. Possibly, in time, say a few

geological ages, it might in some optician's shop have brought about a

combination of flint and crown glass which, together, should have been

achromatic. But the space between the humors of the eye is not an optician'

s shop where object-glasses of all kinds, shapes, and sizes, are placed by

chance, in all manner of relations and positions. On the hypothesis under

which our skeptic is making his examination--the eye having been completed

in all but the formation of the lens--the place which the lens occupies

when completed was filled with parts of the humors and plane membrane,

homogeneous in texture and surface, presenting, therefore, neither the

variety of the materials nor forms which are contained in the optician's

shop for chance to make its combinations with. How, then, could it be cast

of a combination not before used, and fashioned to a shape different from

that before known, and placed in exact combination with all the parts

before enumerated, with many others not even mentioned? He sees no

parallelism of condition, then, by which chance could act in forming a

crystalline lens, which answers to the condition of an optician's shop,

where it might be possible in many ages for chance to combine existing forms

into an achromatic object-glass.

Considering, therefore, the eye thus completed and placed in its bony case

and provided with its muscles, its lids, its tear-ducts, and all its other

elaborate and curious appendages, and, a thousand times more wonderful

still, without being encumbered with a single superfluous or useless part,

can he say that this could be the work of chance? The improbability of this

is so great, and consequently the evidence of design is so strong, that he

is about to seal his verdict in favor of design, when he opens Mr. Darwin's

book.

There he finds that an eye is no more than a vital aggregation or growth,

directed, not by design nor chance, but moulded by natural variation and

natural selection, through which it must, necessarily, have been developed

and formed. Particles or atoms being aggregated by the blind powers of

life, must become under the given conditions, by natural variation and

natural selection, eyes, without design, as certainly as the red

billiard-ball went to the west pocket, by the powers of inertia and

elasticity, without the design of the hand that put it in motion. (See

Darwin, p. 169.)

Let us lay before our skeptic the way in which we may suppose that Darwin

would trace the operation of life, or the vital force conforming to these

laws. In doing this we need not go through with the formation of the

several membranes, humors, etc., but take the crystalline lens as the most

curious and nicely arranged and adapted of all the parts, and as giving,

moreover, a close parallel, in the end produced, to that produced by

design, by a human designer, Dollond, in forming his achromatic

object-glass. If it can be shown that natural variation and natural

selection were capable of forming the crystalline lens, it will not be

denied that they were capable of forming the iris, the sclerotica, the

aqueous humors, or any and all the other parts. Suppose, then, that we have

a number of animals, with eyes yet wanting the crystalline. In this state

the animals can see, but dimly and imperfectly, as a man sees after having

been couched. Some of the offspring of these animals have, by natural

variation, merely a portion of the membrane which separates the aqueous

from the vitreous humor a little thickened in its middle part, a little

swelled out. This refracts the light a little more than it would be

refracted by a membrane in which no such swelling existed, and not only so,

but, in combination with the humors, it corrects the errors of dispersion

and makes the image somewhat more colorless. All the young animals that

have this swelled membrane see more distinctly than their parents or

brethren. They, therefore, have an advantage over them in the struggle for

life. They can obtain food more easily; can find their prey, and escape

from their enemies with greater facility than their kindred. This thickening

and rounding of the membrane goes on from generation to generation by

natural variation; natural selection all the while "picking out with

unerring skill all the improvements, through countless generations," until

at length it is found that the membrane has become a perfect crystalline

lens. Now, where is the design in all this? The membrane was not thickened

and rounded to the end that the image should be more distinct and colorless;

but, being thickened and rounded by the operation of natural variation,

inherent in generation, natural selection of necessity produced the result

that we have seen. The same result was thus produced of necessity, in the

eye, that Dollond came at, in the telescope, with design, through painful

guessing, reasoning, experimenting, and forming.

Suppose our skeptic to believe in all this power of natural selection; will

he now seal up his verdict for design, with the same confidence that he

would before he heard of Darwin? If not, then "the supposed proof from

design is invalidated by Darwin's theory."

A.G.--Waiving incidental points and looking only to the gist of the

question, I remark that the argument for design as against chance, in the

formation of the eye, is most convincingly stated in your argument. Upon

this and upon numerous similar arguments the whole question we are

discussing turns. So, if the skeptic was about to seal his verdict in favor

of design, and a designer, when Darwin's book appeared, why should his

verdict now be changed or withheld? All the facts about the eye, which

convinced him that the organ was designed, remain just as they were. His

conviction was not produced through testimony or eyewitness, but design was

irresistibly inferred from the evidence of contrivance in the eye itself.

Now, if the eye as it is, or has become, so convincingly argued design why

not each particular step or part of this result? If the production of a

perfect crystalline lens in the eye--you know not how--as much indicated

design as did the production of a Dollond achromatic lens--you understand

how--then why does not "the swelling out" of a particular portion of the

membrane behind the iris--caused you know not how--which, by "correcting

the errors of dispersion and making the image somewhat more colorless,"

enabled the "young animals to see more distinctly than their parents or

brethren," equally indicate design--if not as much as a perfect

crystalline, or a Dollond compound lens, yet as much as a common

spectacle-glass?

Darwin only assures you that what you may have thought was done directly and

at once was done indirectly and successively. But you freely admit that

indirection and succession do not invalidate design, and also that Paley

and all the natural theologians drew the arguments which convinced your

skeptic wholly from eyes indirectly or naturally produced.

Recall a woman of a past generation and show her a web of cloth; ask her

how it was made, and she will say that the wool or cotton was carded, spun,

and woven by hand. When you tell her it was not made by manual labor, that

probably no hand has touched the materials throughout the process, it is

possible that she might at first regard your statement as tantamount to the

assertion that the cloth was made without design. If she did, she would not

credit your statement. If you patiently explained to her the theory of

carding-machines, spinning-jennies, and power-looms, would her reception of

your explanation weaken her conviction that the cloth was the result of

design? It is certain that she would believe in design as firmly as before,

and that this belief would be attended by a higher conception and reverent

admiration of a wisdom, skill, and power greatly beyond anything she had

previously conceived possible.

Wherefore, we may insist that, for all that yet appears, the argument for

design, as presented by the natural theologians, is just as good now, if we

accept Darwin's theory, as it was before that theory was promulgated; and

that the skeptical juryman, who was about to join the other eleven in a

unanimous verdict in favor of design, finds no good excuse for keeping the

court longer waiting.[II-1]

III

NATURAL SELECTION

NOT INCONSISTENT WITH

NATURAL THEOLOGY

(Atlantic Monthly for July, August, and October, 1860, reprinted in 1861)

I

Novelties are enticing to most people; to us they are simply annoying. We

cling to a long-accepted theory, just as we cling to an old suit of

clothes. A new theory, like a new pair of breeches (the Atlantic still

affects the older type of nether garment), is sure to have hard-fitting

places; or, even when no particular fault can be found with the article, it

oppresses with a sense of general discomfort. New notions and new styles

worry us, till we get well used to them, which is only by slow degrees.

Wherefore, in Galileo's time, we might have helped to proscribe, or to

burn--had he been stubborn enough to warrant cremation--even the great

pioneer of inductive research; although, when we had fairly recovered our

composure, and bad leisurely excogitated the matter, we might have come to

conclude that the new doctrine was better than the old one, after all, at

least for those who had nothing to unlearn.

Such being our habitual state of mind, it may well be believed that the

perusal of the new book "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural

Selection" left an uncomfortable impression, in spite of its plausible and

winning ways. We were not wholly unprepared for it, as many of our

contemporaries seem to have been. The scientific reading in which we

indulge as a relaxation from severer studies had raised dim forebodings.

Investigations about the succession of species in time, and their actual

geographical distribution over the earth's surface, were leading up from all

sides and in various ways to the question of their origin. Now and then we

encountered a sentence, like Prof. Owen's "axiom of the continuous

operation of the ordained becoming of living things," which haunted us like

an apparition. For, dim as our conception must needs be as to what such

oracular and grandiloquent phrases might really mean, we felt confident that

they presaged no good to old beliefs. Foreseeing, yet deprecating, the

coming time of trouble, we still hoped that, with some repairs and

makeshifts, the old views might last out our days. Apres nous le deluge.

Still, not to lag behind the rest of the world, we read the book in which

the new theory is promulgated. We took it up, like our neighbors, and, as

was natural, in a somewhat captious frame of mind.

Well, we found no cause of quarrel with the first chapter. Here the author

takes us directly to the barn-yard and the kitchen-garden. Like an

honorable rural member of our General Court, who sat silent until, near the

close of a long session, a bill requiring all swine at large to wear pokes

was introduced, when he claimed the privilege of addressing the house, on

the proper ground that he had been "brought up among the pigs, and knew all

about them"--so we were brought up among cows and cabbages; and the lowing

of cattle, the cackle of hens, and the cooing of pigeons, were sounds native

and pleasant to our ears. So "Variation under Domestication" dealt with

familiar subjects in a natural way, and gently introduced "Variation under

Nature," which seemed likely enough. Then follows "Struggle for

Existence"--a principle which we experimentally know to be true and

cogent--bringing the comfortable assurance, that man, even upon Leviathan

Hobbes's theory of society, is no worse than the rest of creation, since all

Nature is at war, one species with another, and the nearer kindred the more

internecine--bringing in thousandfold confirmation and extension of the

Malthusian doctrine that population tends far to outrun means of

subsistence throughout the animal and vegetable world, and has to be kept

down by sharp preventive checks; so that not more than one of a hundred or a

thousand of the individuals whose existence is so wonderfully and so

sedulously provided for ever comes to anything, under ordinary

circumstances; so the lucky and the strong must prevail, and the weaker and

ill-favored must perish; and then follows, as naturally as one sheep

follows another, the chapter on "Natural Selection," Darwin's cheval de

bataille, which is very much the Napoleonic doctrine that Providence favors

the strongest battalions--that, since many more individuals are born than

can possibly survive, those individuals and those variations which possess

any advantage, however slight, over the rest, are in the long-run sure to

survive, to propagate, and to occupy the limited field, to the exclusion or

destruction of the weaker brethren. All this we pondered, and could not

much object to. In fact, we began to contract a liking for a system which at

the outset illustrates the advantages of good breeding, and which makes the

most "of every creature's best."

Could we "let by-gones be by-gones," and, beginning now, go on improving

and diversifying for the future by natural selection, could we even take up

the theory at the introduction of the actually existing species, we should

be well content; and so, perhaps, would most naturalists be. It is by no

means difficult to believe that varieties are incipient or possible

species, when we see what trouble naturalists, especially botanists, have

to distinguish between them--one regarding as a true species what another

regards as a variety; when the progress of knowledge continually increases,

rather than diminishes, the number of doubtful instances; and when there is

less agreement than ever among naturalists as to what is the basis in

Nature upon which our idea of species reposes, or how the word is to be

defined. Indeed, when we consider the endless disputes of naturalists and

ethnologists over the human races, as to whether they belong to one species

or to more, and, if to more, whether to three, or five, or fifty, we can

hardly help fancying that both may be right--or rather, that the

uni-humanitarians would have been right many thousand years ago, and the

multi-humanitarians will be several thousand years later; while at present

the safe thing to say is, that probably there is some truth on both sides.

"Natural selection," Darwin remarks, "leads to divergence of character; for

the more living beings can be supported on the same area, the more they

diverge in structure, habits, and constitution" (a principle which,

by-the-way, is paralleled and illustrated by the diversification of human

labor); and also leads to much extinction of intermediate or unimproved

forms. Now, though this divergence may "steadily tend to increase," yet

this is evidently a slow process in Nature, and liable to much counteraction

wherever man does not interpose, and so not likely to work much harm for

the future. And if natural selection, with artificial to help it, will

produce better animals and better men than the present, and fit them better

to the conditions of existence, why, let it work, say we, to the top of its

bent There is still room enough for improvement. Only let us hope that it

always works for good: if not, the divergent lines on Darwin's lithographic

diagram of "Transmutation made Easy," ominously show what small deviations

from the straight path may come to in the end.

The prospect of the future, accordingly, is on the whole pleasant and

encouraging. It is only the backward glance, the gaze up the long vista of

the past, that reveals anything alarming. Here the lines converge as they

recede into the geological ages, and point to conclusions which, upon the

theory, are inevitable, but hardly welcome. The very first step backward

makes the negro and the Hottentot our blood-relations--not that reason or

Scripture objects to that, though pride may. The next suggests a closer

association of our ancestors of the olden time with "our poor relations" of

the quadrumanous family than we like to acknowledge. Fortunately,

however--even if we must account for him scientifically --man with his two

feet stands upon a foundation of his own. Intermediate links between the

Bimana and the Quadrumana are lacking altogether; so that, put the

genealogy of the brutes upon what footing you will, the four-handed races

will not serve for our forerunners--at least, not until some monkey, live

or fossil, is producible with great-toes, instead of thumbs, upon his nether

extremities; or until some lucky geologist turns up the bones of his

ancestor and prototype in France or England, who was so busy "napping the

chuckie-stanes" and chipping out flint knives and arrow-heads in the time

of the drift, very many ages ago--before the British Channel existed, says

Lyell [III-1]--and until these men of the olden time are shown to have worn

their great-toes in the divergent and thumblike fashion. That would be

evidence indeed: but, until some testimony of the sort is produced, we must

needs believe in the separate and special creation of man, however it may

have been with the lower animals and with plants.

No doubt, the full development and symmetry of Darwin's hypothesis strongly

suggest the evolution of the human no less than the lower animal races out

of some simple primordial animal--that all are equally "lineal descendants

of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian

system was deposited." But, as the author speaks disrespectfully of

spontaneous generation, and accepts a supernatural beginning of life on

earth, in some form or forms of being which included potentially all that

have since existed and are yet to be, he is thereby not warranted to extend

his inferences beyond the evidence or the fair probability. There seems as

great likelihood that one special origination should be followed by another

upon fitting occasion (such as the introduction of man), as that one form

should be transmuted into another upon fitting occasion, as, for instance,

in the succession of species which differ from each other only in some

details. To compare small things with great in a homely illustration: man

alters from time to time his instruments or machines, as new circumstances

or conditions may require and his wit suggest. Minor alterations and

improvements he adds to the machine he possesses; he adapts a new rig or a

new rudder to an old boat: this answers to Variation. "Like begets like,"

being the great rule in Nature, if boats could engender, the variations

would doubtless be propagated, like those of domestic cattle. In course of

time the old ones would be worn out or wrecked; the best sorts would be

chosen for each particular use, and further improved upon; and so the

primordial boat be developed into the scow, the skiff, the sloop, and other

species of water-craft--the very diversification, as well as the successive

improvements, entailing the disappearance of intermediate forms, less

adapted to any one particular purpose; wherefore these go slowly out of

use, and become extinct species: this is Natural Selection. Now, let a great

and important advance be made, like that of steam navigation: here, though

the engine might be added to the old vessel, yet the wiser and therefore

the actual way is to make a new vessel on a modified plan: this may answer

to Specific Creation. Anyhow, the one does not necessarily exclude the

other. Variation and natural selection may play their part, and so may

specific creation also. Why not?

This leads us to ask for the reasons which call for this new theory of

transmutation. The beginning of things must needs lie in obscurity, beyond

the bounds of proof, though within those of conjecture or of analogical

inference. Why not hold fast to the customary view, that all species were

directly, instead of indirectly, created after their respective kinds, as

we now behold them--and that in a manner which, passing our comprehension,

we intuitively refer to the supernatural? Why this continual striving after

"the unattained and dim?" why these anxious endeavors, especially of late

years, by naturalists and philosophers of various schools and different

tendencies, to penetrate what one of them calls "that mystery of

mysteries," the origin of species?

To this, in general, sufficient answer may be found in the activity of the

human intellect, "the delirious yet divine desire to know," stimulated as

it has been by its own success in unveiling the laws and processes of

inorganic Nature; in the fact that the principal triumphs of our age in

physical science have consisted in tracing connections where none were

known before, in reducing heterogeneous phenomena to a common cause or

origin, in a manner quite analogous to that of the reduction of supposed

independently originated species to a common ultimate origin--thus, and in

various other ways, largely and legitimately extending the domain of

secondary causes. Surely the scientific mind of an age which contemplates

the solar system as evolved from a common revolving fluid mass--which,

through experimental research, has come to regard light, heat, electricity,

magnetism, chemical affinity, and mechanical power as varieties or

derivative and convertible forms of one force, instead of independent

species--which has brought the so-called elementary kinds of matter, such

as the metals, into kindred groups, and pertinently raised the question,

whether the members of each group may not be mere varieties of one

species--and which speculates steadily in the direction of the ultimate

unity of matter, of a sort of prototype or simple element which may be to

the ordinary species of matter what the Protozoa or what the component

cells of an organism are to the higher sorts of animals and plants--the

mind of such an age cannot be expected to let the old belief about species

pass unquestioned. It will raise the question, how the diverse sorts of

plants and animals came to be as they are and where they are and will allow

that the whole inquiry transcends its powers only when all endeavors have

failed Granting the origin to be super natural or miraculous even, will not

arrest the inquiry All real origination the philosophers will say, is

supernatural, their very question is, whether we have yet gone back to the

origin and can affirm that the present forms of plants and animals are the

primordial, the miraculously created ones. And, even if they admit that,

they will still inquire into the order of the phenomena, into the form of

the miracle You might as well expect the child to grow up content with what

it is told about the advent of its infant brother Indeed, to learn that the

new comer is the gift of God, far from lulling inquiry, only stimulates

speculation as to how the precious gift was bestowed That questioning child

is father to the man--is philosopher in short-clothes.

Since, then questions about the origin of species will be raised, and have

been raised--and since the theorizings, however different in particulars,

all proceed upon the notion that one species of plant or animal is somehow

derived from another, that the different sorts which now flourish are

lineal (or unlineal) descendants of other and earlier sorts--it now

concerns us to ask, What are the grounds in Nature, the admitted facts,

which suggest hypotheses of derivation in some :shape or other? Reasons

there must be, and plausible ones, for the persistent recurrence of

theories upon this genetic basis. A study of Darwin's book, and a general

glance at the present state of the natural sciences, enable us to gather

the following as among the most suggestive and influential. We can only

enumerate them here, without much indication of their particular bearing.

There is--

1. The general fact of variability, and the general tendency of the variety

to propagate its like--the patent facts that all species vary more or less;

that domesticated plants and animals, being in conditions favorable to the

production and preservation of varieties, are apt to vary widely; and that,

by interbreeding, any variety may be fixed into a race, that is, into a

variety which comes true from seed. Many such races, it is allowed, differ

from each other in structure and appearance as widely as do many admitted

species; and it is practically very difficult, even impossible, to draw a

clear line between races and species. Witness the human races, for

instance. Wild species also vary, perhaps about as widely as those of

domestication, though in different ways. Some of them apparently vary

little, others moderately, others immoderately, to the great bewilderment

of systematic botanists and zoologists, and increasing disagreement as to

whether various forms shall be held to be original species or strong

varieties. Moreover, the degree to which the descendants of the same stock,

varying in different directions, may at length diverge, is unknown. All we

know is, that varieties are themselves variable, and that very diverse

forms have been educed from one stock.

2. Species of the same genus are not distinguished from each other by equal

amounts of difference. There is diversity in this respect analogous to that

of the varieties of a polymorphous species, some of them slight, others

extreme. And in large genera the unequal resemblance shows itself in the

clustering of the species around several types or central species, like

satellites around their respective planets. Obviously suggestive this of

the hypothesis that they were satellites, not thrown off by revolution,

like the moons of Jupiter, Saturn, and our own solitary moon, but gradually

and peacefully detached by divergent variation. That such closely-related

species may be only varieties of higher grade, earlier origin, or more

favored evolution, is not a very violent supposition. Anyhow, it was a

supposition sure to be made.

3. The actual geographical distribution of species upon the earth's surface

tends to suggest the same notion. For, as a general thing, all or most of

the species of a peculiar genus or other type are grouped in the same

country, or occupy continuous, proximate, or accessible areas. So well does

this rule hold, so general is the implication that kindred species are or

were associated geographically, that most trustworthy naturalists, quite

free from hypotheses of transmutation, are constantly inferring former

geographical continuity between parts of the world now widely disjoined, in

order to account thereby for certain generic similarities among their

inhabitants; just as philologists infer former connection of races, and a

parent language, to account for generic similarities among existing

languages. Yet no scientific explanation has been offered to account for

the geographical association of kindred species, except the hypothesis of a

common origin.

4. Here the fact of the antiquity of creation, and in particular of the

present kinds of the earth's inhabitants, or of a large part of them, comes

in to rebut the objection that there has not been time enough for any

marked diversification of living things through divergent variation--not

time enough for varieties to have diverged into what we call species.

So long as the existing species of plants and animals were thought to have

originated a few thousand years ago, and without predecessors, there was no

room for a theory of derivation of one sort from another, nor time enough

even to account for the establishment of the races which are generally

believed to have diverged from a common stock. Not so much that five or six

thousand years was a short allowance for this; but because some of our

familiar domesticated varieties of grain, of fowls, and of other animals,

were pictured and mummified by the old Egyptians more than half that number

of years ago, if not earlier. Indeed, perhaps the strongest argument for

the original plurality of human species was drawn from the identification

of some of the present races of men upon these early historical monuments

and records.

But this very extension of the current chronology, if we may rely upon the

archaeologists, removes the difficulty by opening up a longer vista. So does

the discovery in Europe of remains and implements of prehistoric races of

men, to whom the use of metals was unknown--men of the stone age, as the

Scandinavian archaeologists designate them. And now, "axes and knives of

flint, evidently wrought by human skill, are found in beds of the drift at

Amiens (also in other places, both in France and England), associated with

the bones of extinct species of animals." These implements, indeed, were

noticed twenty years ago; at a place in Suffolk they have been exhumed from

time to time for more than a century; but the full confirmation, the

recognition of the age of the deposit in which the implements occur, their

abundance, and the appreciation of their bearings upon most interesting

questions, belong to the present time. To complete the connection of these

primitive people with the fossil ages, the French geologists, we are told,

have now "found these axes in Picardy associated with remains of Elephas

primigenius, Rhinoceros tichorhinus, Equus fossilis, and an extinct species

of Bos."[III-2] In plain language, these workers in flint lived in the time

of the mammoth, of a rhinoceros now extinct, and along with horses and

cattle unlike any now existing--specifically different, as naturalists say,

from those with which man is now associated. Their connection with

existing human races may perhaps be traced through the intervening people

of the stone age, who were succeeded by the people of the bronze age, and

these by workers in iron.[III-3] Now, various evidence carries back the

existence of many of the present lower species of animals, and probably of a

larger number of plants, to the same drift period. All agree that this was

very many thousand years ago. Agassiz tells us that the same species of

polyps which are now building coral walls around the present peninsula of

Florida actually made that peninsula, and have been building there for many

thousand centuries.

5. The overlapping of existing and extinct species, and the seemingly

gradual transition of the life of the drift period into that of the present,

may be turned to the same account. Mammoths, mastodons, and Irish elks, now

extinct, must have lived down to human, if not almost to historic times.

Perhaps the last dodo did not long outlive his huge New Zealand kindred.

The aurochs, once the companion of mammoths, still survives, but owes his

present and precarious existence to man's care. Now, nothing that we know

of forbids the hypothesis that some new species have been independently and

supernaturally created within the period which other species have survived.

Some may even believe that man was created in the days of the mammoth,

became extinct, and was recreated at a later date. But why not say the same

of the aurochs, contemporary both of the old man and of the new? Still it

is more natural, if not inevitable, to infer that, if the aurochs of that

olden time were the ancestors of the aurochs of the Lithuanian forests, so

likewise were the men of that age the ancestors of the present human races.

Then, whoever concludes that these primitive makers of rude flint axes and

knives were the ancestors of the better workmen of the succeeding stone

age, and these again of the succeeding artificers in brass and iron, will

also be likely to suppose that the Equus and Bos of that time, different

though they be, were the remote progenitors of our own horses and cattle.

In all candor we must at least concede that such considerations suggest a

genetic descent from the drift period down to the present, and allow time

enough--if time is of any account-- for variation and natural selection to

work out some appreciable results in the way of divergence into races, or

even into so-called species. Whatever might have been thought, when

geological time was supposed to be separated from the present era by a

clear line, it is now certain that a gradual replacement of old forms by

new ones is strongly suggestive of some mode of origination which may still

be operative. When species, like individuals, were found to die out one by

one, and apparently to come in one by one, a theory for what Owen

sonorously calls "the continuous operation of the ordained becoming of

living things" could not be far off.

That all such theories should take the form of a derivation of the new from

the old seems to be inevitable, perhaps from our inability to conceive of

any other line of secondary causes in this connection. Owen himself is

apparently in travail with some transmutation theory of his own conceiving,

which may yet see the light, although Darwin's came first to the birth.

Different as the two theories will probably be, they cannot fail to exhibit

that fundamental resemblance in this respect which betokens a community of

origin, a common foundation on the general facts and the obvious suggestions

of modern science. Indeed--to turn the point of a pungent simile directed

against Darwin--the difference between the Darwinian and the Owenian

hypotheses may, after all, be only that between homoeopathic and heroic

doses of the same drug.

If theories of derivation could only stop here, content with explaining the

diversification and succession of species between the teritiary period and

the present time, through natural agencies or secondary causes still in

operation, we fancy they would not be generally or violently objected to by

the savants of the present day. But it is hard, if not impossible, to find

a stopping-place. Some of the facts or accepted conclusions already

referred to, and several others, of a more general character, which must be

taken into the account, impel the theory onward with accumulated force.

Vires (not to say virus) acquirit eundo. The theory hitches on wonderfully

well to Lyell's uniformitarian theory in geology--that the thing that has

been is the thing that is and shall be--that the natural operations now

going on will account for all geological changes in a quiet and easy way,

only give them time enough, so connecting the present and the proximate

with the farthest past by almost imperceptible gradations--a view which

finds large and increasing, if not general, acceptance in physical geology,

and of which Darwin's theory is the natural complement.

So the Darwinian theory, once getting a foothold, marches; boldly on,

follows the supposed near ancestors of our present species farther and yet

farther back into the dim past, and ends with an analogical inference which

"makes the whole world kin." As we said at the beginning, this upshot

discomposes us. Several features of the theory have an uncanny look. They

may prove to be innocent: but their first aspect is suspicious, and high

authorities pronounce the whole thing to be positively mischievous. In this

dilemma we are going to take advice. Following the bent of our prejudices,

and hoping to fortify these by new and strong arguments, we are going now

to read the principal reviews which undertake to demolish the theory--with

what result our readers shall be duly informed.

II

"I can entertain no doubt, after the most deliberate study and

dispassionate judgment of which I am capable, that the view which most

naturalists entertain, and which I formerly entertained, namely, that each

species has been independently created, is erroneous. I am fully convinced

that species are not immutable; but that those belonging to what are called

the same genera are lineal descendants of some other and generally extinct

species, in the same manner as the acknowledged varieties of any one species

are the descendants of that species. Furthermore, I am convinced that

Natural Selection has been the main, but not exclusive, means of

modification."

This is the kernel of the new theory, the Darwinian creed, as recited at

the close of the introduction to the remarkable book under consideration.

The questions, "What will he do with it?" and "How far will he carry it?"

the author answers at the close of the volume:

"I cannot doubt that the theory of descent with modification embraces all

the members of the same class." Furthermore, "I believe that all animals

have descended from at most only four or five progenitors, and plants from

an equal or lesser number."

Seeing that analogy as strongly suggests a further step in the same

direction, while he protests that "analogy may be a deceitful guide," yet

he follows its inexorable leading to the inference that--

"Probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this ear have

descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first

breathed."[III-4]

In the first extract we have the thin end of the wedge driven a little way;

in the last, the wedge driven home.

We have already sketched some of the reasons suggestive of such a theory of

derivation of species, reasons which gave it plausibility, and even no small

probability, as applied to our actual world and to changes occurring since

the latest tertiary period. We are well pleased at this moment to find that

the conclusions we were arriving at in this respect are sustained by the

very high authority and impartial judgment of Pictet, the Swiss

paleontologist. In his review of Darwin's book[III-5] -- the fairest and

most admirable opposing one that has appeared--he freely accepts that

ensemble of natural operations which Darwin impersonates under the now

familiar name of Natural Selection, allows that the exposition throughout

the first chapters seems "a la fois prudent et fort," and is disposed to

accept the whole argument in its foundations, that is, so far as it relates

to what is now going on, or has taken place in the present geological

period--which period he carries back through the diluvial epoch to the

borders of the tertiary.[III-6] Pictet accordingly admits that the theory

will very well account for the origination by divergence of nearly-related

species, whether within the present period or in remoter geological times;

a very natural view for him to take, since he appears to have reached and

published, several years ago, the pregnant conclusion that there most

probably was some material connection between the closely-related species of

two successive faunas, and that the numerous close species, whose limits are

so difficult to determine, were not all created distinct and independent.

But while thus accepting, or ready to accept, the basis of Darwin's theory,

and all its legitimate direct inferences, he rejects the ultimate

conclusions, brings some weighty arguments to bear against them, and is

evidently convinced that he can draw a clear line between the sound

inferences, which he favors, and the unsound or unwarranted theoretical

deductions, which he rejects. We hope he can.

This raises the question, Why does Darwin press his theory to these extreme

conclusions? Why do all hypotheses of derivation converge so inevitably to

one ultimate point? Having already considered some of the reasons which

suggest or support the theory at its outset--which may carry it as far as

such sound and experienced naturalists as Pictet allow that it may be

true--perhaps as far as Darwin himself unfolds it in the introductory

proposition cited at the beginning of this article--we may now inquire after

the motives which impel the theorist so much farther. Here proofs, in the

proper sense of the word, are not to be had. We are beyond the region of

demonstration, and have only probabilities to consider. What are these

probabilities? What work will this hypothesis do to establish a claim to be

adopted in its completeness? Why should a theory which may plausibly enough

account for the diversification of the species of each special type or

genus be expanded into a general system for the origination or successive

diversification of all species, and all special types or forms, from four

or five remote primordial forms, or perhaps from one? We accept the theory

of gravitation because it explains all the facts we know, and bears all the

tests that we can put it to. We incline to accept the nebular hypothesis,

for similar reasons; not because it is proved--thus far it is incapable of

proof--but because it is a natural theoretical deduction from accepted

physical laws, is thoroughly congruous with the facts, and because its

assumption serves to connect and harmonize these into one probable and

consistent whole. Can the derivative hypothesis be maintained and carried

out into a system on similar grounds? If so, however unproved, it would

appear to be a tenable hypothesis, which is all that its author ought now

to claim. Such hypotheses as, from the conditions of the case, can neither

be proved nor disproved by direct evidence or experiment, are to be tested

only indirectly, and therefore imperfectly, by trying their power to

harmonize the known facts, and to account for what is otherwise

unaccountable. So the question comes to this: What will an hypothesis of

the derivation of species explain which the opposing view leaves

unexplained?

Questions these which ought to be entertained before we take up the

arguments which have been advanced against this theory. We can barely

glance at some of the considerations which Darwin adduces, or will be sure

to adduce in the future and fuller exposition which is promised. To display

them in such wise as to indoctrinate the unscientific reader would require

a volume. Merely to refer to them in the most general terms would suffice

for those familiar with scientific matters, but would scarcely enlighten

those who are not. Wherefore let these trust the impartial Pictet, who

freely admits that, "in the absence of sufficient direct proofs to justify

the possibility of his hypothesis, Mr. Darwin relies upon indirect proofs,

the bearing of which is real and incontestable;" who concedes that "his

theory accords very well with the great facts of comparative anatomy and

zoology--comes in admirably to explain unity of composition of organisms,

also to explain rudimentary and representative organs, and the natural

series of genera and species--equally corresponds with many paleontological

data--agrees well with the specific resemblances which exist between two

successive faunas, with the parallelism which is sometimes observed between

the series of paleontological succession and of embryonal development,"

etc.; and finally, although he does not accept the theory in these results,

he allows that "it appears to offer the best means of explaining the manner

in which organized beings were produced in epochs anterior to our own."

What more than this could be said for such an hypothesis? Here, probably,

is its charm, and its strong hold upon the speculative mind. Unproven

though it be, and cumbered prima facie with cumulative improbabilities as

it proceeds, yet it singularly accords with great classes of facts

otherwise insulated and enigmatic, and explains many things which are thus

far utterly inexplicable upon any other scientific assumption.

We have said that Darwin's hypothesis is the natural complement to Lyell's

uniformitarian theory in physical geology. It is for the organic world what

that is for the inorganic; and the accepters of the latter stand in a

position from which to regard the former in the most favorable light.

Wherefore the rumor that the cautious Lyell himself has adopted the

Darwinian hypothesis need not surprise us. The two views are made for each

other, and, like the two counterpart pictures for the stereoscope, when

brought together, combine into one apparently solid whole.

If we allow, with Pictet, that Darwin's theory will very well serve for all

that concerns the present epoch of the world's history--an epoch in which

this renowned paleontologist includes the diluvial or quaternary

period--then Darwin's first and foremost need in his onward course is a

practicable road from this into and through the tertiary period, the

intervening region between the comparatively near and the far remote past.

Here Lyell's doctrine paves the way, by showing that in the physical geology

there is no general or absolute break between the two, probably no greater

between the latest tertiary and the quaternary period than between the

latter and the present time. So far, the Lyellian view is, we suppose,

generally concurred in. It is largely admitted that numerous tertiary

species have continued down into the quaternary, and many of them to the

present time. A goodly percentage of the earlier and nearly half of the

later tertiary mollusca, according to Des Hayes, Lye!!, and, if we mistake

not, Bronn, still live. This identification, however, is now questioned by

a naturalist of the very highest authority. But, in its bearings on the new

theory, the point here turns not upon absolute identity so much as upon

close resemblance. For those who, with Agassiz, doubt the specific identity

in any of these cases, and those who say, with Pictet, that "the later

tertiary deposits contain in general the debris of species very nearly

related to those which still exist, belonging to the same genera, but

specifically different," may also agree with Pictet, that the

nearly-related species of successive faunas must or may have had "a

material connection." But the only material connection that we have an idea

of in such a case is a genealogical one. And the supposition of a

genealogical connection is surely not unnatural in such cases--is

demonstrably the natural one as respects all those tertiary species which

experienced naturalists have pronounced to be identical with existing ones,

but which others now deem distinct For to identify the two is the same

thing as to conclude the one to be the ancestor of the other No doubt there

are differences between the tertiary and the present individuals,

differences equally noticed by both classes of naturalists, but differently

estimated By the one these are deemed quite compatible, by the other

incompatible, with community of origin But who can tell us what amount of

difference is compatible with community of origin? This is the very

question at issue, and one to be settled by observation alone Who would have

thought that the peach and the nectarine came from one stock? But, this

being proved is it now very improbable that both were derived from the

almond, or from some common amygdaline progenitor? Who would have thought

that the cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli kale, and kohlrabi are derivatives

of one species, and rape or colza, turnip, and probably ruta-baga, of

another species? And who that is convinced of this can long undoubtingly

hold the original distinctness of turnips from cabbages as an article of

faith? On scientific grounds may not a primordial cabbage or rape be

assumed as the ancestor of all the cabbage races, on much the same ground

that we assume a common ancestry for the diversified human races? If all

Our breeds of cattle came from one stock why not this stock from the

auroch, which has had all the time between the diluvial and the historic

periods in which to set off a variation perhaps no greater than the

difference between some sorts of domestic cattle?

That considerable differences are often discernible between tertiary

individuals and their supposed descendants of the present day affords no

argument against Darwin's theory, as has been rashly thought, but is

decidedly in its favor. If the identification were so perfect that no more

differences were observable between the tertiary and the recent shells than

between various individuals of either, then Darwin's opponents, who argue

the immutability of species from the ibises and cats preserved by the

ancient Egyptians being just like those of the present day, could

triumphantly add a few hundred thousand years more to the length of the

experiment and to the force of their argument.

As the facts stand, it appears that, while some tertiary forms are

essentially undistinguishable from existing ones, others are the same with

a difference, which is judged not to be specific or aboriginal; and yet

others show somewhat greater differences, such as are scientifically

expressed by calling them marked varieties, or else doubtful species; while

others, differing a little more, are confidently termed distinct, but

nearly-related species. Now, is not all this a question of degree, of mere

gradation of difference? And is it at all likely that these several

gradations came to be established in two totally different ways--some of

them (though naturalists can't agree which) through natural variation, or

other secondary cause, and some by original creation, without secondary

cause? We have seen that the judicious Pictet answers such questions as

Darwin would have him do, in affirming that, in all probability, the

nearly-related species of two successive faunas were materially connected,

and that contemporaneous species, similarly resembling each other, were not

all created so, but have become so. This is equivalent to saying that

species (using the term as all naturalists do, and must continue to employ

the word) have only a relative, not an absolute fixity; that differences

fully equivalent to what are held to be specific may arise in the course of

time, so that one species may at length be naturally replaced by another

species a good deal like it, or may be diversified into two, three, or more

species, or forms as different as species. This concedes all that Darwin has

a right to ask, all that he can directly infer from evidence. We must add

that it affords a locus standi, more or less tenable, for inferring more.

Here another geological consideration comes in to help on this inference.

The species of the later tertiary period for the most part not only

resembled those of our days--many of them so closely as to suggest an

absolute continuity--but also occupied in general the same regions that

their relatives occupy now. The same may be said, though less specially, of

the earlier tertiary and of the later secondary; but there is less and less

localization of forms as we recede, yet some localization even in palaeozoic

times. While in the secondary period one is struck with the similarity of

forms and the identity of many of the species which flourished apparently

at the same time in all or in the most widely-separated parts of the world,

in the tertiary epoch, on the contrary, along with the increasing

specialization of climates and their approximation to the present state, we

find abundant evidence of increasing localization of orders, genera and

species, and this localization strikingly accords with the present

geographical distribution of the same groups of species Where the imputed

forefathers lived their relatives and supposed descendants now flourish All

the actual classes of the animal and vegetable kingdoms were represented in

the tertiary faunas and floras and in nearly the same proportions and the

same diversities as at present The faunas of what is now Europe, Asia

America and Australia, differed from each other much as they now differ: in

fact--according to Adolphe Brongniart, whose statements we here

condense[III-7]--the inhabitants of these different regions appear for the

most part to have acquired, before the close of the tertiary period, the

characters which essentially distinguish their existing faunas. The Eastern

Continent had then, as now, its great pachyderms, elephants, rhinoceros,

hippopotamus; South America, its armadillos, sloths, and anteaters;

Australia, a crowd of marsupials; and the very strange birds of New Zealand

had predecessors of similar strangeness.

Everywhere the same geographical distribution as now, with a difference in

the particular area, as respects the northern portion of the continents,

answering to a warmer climate then than ours, such as allowed species of

hippopotamus, rhinoceros, and elephant, to range even to the regions now

inhabited by the reindeer and the musk-ox, and with the serious disturbing

intervention of the glacial period within a comparatively recent time. Let

it be noted also that those tertiary species which have continued with

little change down to our days are the marine animals of the lower grades,

especially mollusca. Their low organization, moderate sensibility, and the

simple conditions of an existence in a medium like the ocean, not subject

to great variation and incapable of sudden change, may well account for

their continuance; while, on the other hand, the more intense, however

gradual, climatic vicissitudes on land, which have driven all tropical and

subtropical forms out of the higher latitudes and assigned to them their

actual limits, would be almost sure to extinguish such huge and unwieldy

animals as mastodons, mammoths, and the like, whose power of enduring

altered circumstances must have been small.

This general replacement of the tertiary species of a country by others so

much like them is a noteworthy fact. The hypothesis of the independent

creation of all species, irrespective of their antecedents, leaves this

fact just as mysterious as is creation itself; that of derivation

undertakes to account for it. Whether it satisfactorily does so or not, it

must be allowed that the facts well accord with that hypothesis. The same

may be said of another conclusion, namely, that the geological succession

of animals and plants appears to correspond in a general way with their

relative standing or rank in a natural system of classification. It seems

clear that, though no one of the grand types of the animal kingdom can be

traced back farther than the rest, yet the lower classes long preceded the

higher; that there has been on the whole a steady progression within each

class and order; and that the highest plants and animals have appeared only

in relatively modern times. It is only, however, in a broad sense that this

generalization is now thought to hold good. It encounters many apparent

exceptions, and sundry real ones. So far as the rule holds, all is as it

should be upon an hypothesis of derivation.

The rule has its exceptions. But, curiously enough, the most striking class

of exceptions, if such they be, seems to us even more favorable to the

doctrine of derivation than is the general rule of a pure and simple

ascending gradation. We refer to what Agassiz calls prophetic and synthetic

types; for which the former name may suffice, as the difference between the

two is evanescent.

"It has been noticed," writes our great zoologist, "that certain types,

which are frequently prominent among the representatives of past ages,

combine in their structure peculiarities which at later periods are only

observed separately in different, distinct types. Sauroid fishes before

reptiles, Pterodactyles before birds, Ichthyosauri before dolphins, etc.

There are entire families, of nearly every class of animals, which in the

state of their perfect development exemplify such prophetic relations.

The sauroid fishes of the past geological ages are an example of this kind

These fishes which preceded the appearance of reptiles present a

combination of ichthyic and reptilian characters not to be found in the

true members of this class, which form its bulk at present. The

Pterodactyles, which preceded the class of birds, and the Ichthyosauri,

which preceded the Cetacea, are other examples of such prophetic

types."--(Agassiz, "Contributions, Essay on Classification," p. 117.)

Now, these reptile-like fishes, of which gar-pikes are the living

representatives, though of earlier appearance, are admittedly of higher rank

than common fishes. They dominated until reptiles appeared, when they

mostly gave place to (or, as the derivationists will insist, were resolved

by divergent variation and natural selection into) common fishes, destitute

of reptilian characters, and saurian reptiles--the intermediate grades,

which, according to a familiar piscine saying, are "neither fish, flesh,

nor good red-herring," being eliminated and extinguished by natural

consequence of the struggle for existence which Darwin so aptly portrays.

And so, perhaps, of the other prophetic types. Here type and antitype

correspond. If these are true prophecies, we need not wonder that some who

read them in Agassiz's book will read their fulfillment in Darwin's.

Note also, in this connection, that along with a wonderful persistence of

type, with change of species, genera, orders, etc., from formation to

formation, no species and no higher group which has once unequivocally died

out ever afterward reappears. Why is this, but that the link of generation

has been sundered? Why, on the hypothesis of independent originations, were

not failing species recreated, either identically or with a difference, in

regions eminently adapted to their well-being? To take a striking case.

That no part of the world now offers more suitable conditions for wild

horses and cattle than the pampas and other plains of South America, is

shown by the facility with which they have there run wild and enormously

multiplied, since introduced from the Old World not long ago. There was no

wild American stock. Yet in the times of the mastodon and megatherium, at

the dawn of the present period, wild-horses--certainly very much like the

existing horse--roamed over those plains in abundance. On the principle of

original and direct created adaptation of species to climate and other

conditions, why were they not reproduced, when, after the colder

intervening era, those regions became again eminently adapted to such

animals? Why, but because, by their complete extinction in South America,

the line of descent was there utterly broken? Upon the ordinary hypothesis,

there is no scientific explanation possible of this series of facts, and of

many others like them. Upon the new hypothesis, "the succession of the same

types of structure within the same areas during the later geological

periods ceases to be mysterious, and is simply explained by inheritance."

Their cessation is failure of issue.

Along with these considerations the fact (alluded to on page 98) should be

remembered that, as a general thing, related species of the present age are

geographically associated. The larger part of the plants, and still more of

the animals, of each separate country are peculiar to it; and, as most

species now flourish over the graves of their by-gone relatives of former

ages, so they now dwell among or accessibly near their kindred species.

Here also comes in that general "parallelism between the order of

succession of animals and plants in geological times, and the gradation

among their living representatives" from low to highly organized, from

simple and general to complex and specialized forms; also "the parallelism

between the order of succession of animals in geological times and the

changes their living representatives undergo during their embryological

growth," as if the world were one prolonged gestation. Modern science has

much insisted on this parallelism, and to a certain extent is allowed to

have made it out. All these things, which conspire to prove that the

ancient and the recent forms of life "are somehow intimately connected

together in one grand system," equally conspire to suggest that the

connection is one similar or analogous to generation. Surely no naturalist

can be blamed for entering somewhat confidently upon a field of speculative

inquiry which here opens so invitingly; nor need former premature endeavors

and failures utterly dishearten him.

All these things, it may naturally be said, go to explain the order, not

the mode, of the incoming of species. But they all do tend to bring out the

generalization expressed by Mr. Wallace in the formula that "every species

has come into existence coincident both in time and space with preexisting

closely-allied species." Not, however, that this is proved even of existing

species as a matter of general fact. It is obviously impossible to prove

anything of the kind. But we must concede that the known facts strongly

suggest such an inference. And--since species are only congeries of

individuals, since every individual came into existence in consequence of

preexisting individuals of the same sort, so leading up to the individuals

with which the species began, and since the only material sequence we know

of among plants and animals is that from parent to progeny--the presumption

becomes exceedingly strong that the connection of the incoming with the

preexisting species is a genealogical one.

Here, however, all depends upon the probability that Mr. Wallace's

inference is really true. Certainly it is not yet generally accepted; but a

strong current is setting toward its acceptance.

So long as universal cataclysms were in vogue, and all life upon the earth

was thought to have been suddenly destroyed and renewed many times in

succession, such a view could not be thought of. So the equivalent view

maintained by Agassiz, and formerly, we believe, by D'Orbigny, that

irrespectively of general and sudden catastrophes, or any known adequate

physical cause, there has been a total depopulation at the close of each

geological period or formation, say forty or fifty times or more, followed

by as many independent great acts of creation, at which alone have species

been originated, and at each of which a vegetable and an animal kingdom

were produced entire and complete, full-fledged, as flourishing, as

wide-spread, and populous, as varied and mutually adapted from the

beginning as ever afterward--such a view, of course, supersedes all

material connection between successive species, and removes even the

association and geographical range of species entirely out of the domain of

physical causes and of natural science. This is the extreme opposite of

Wallace's and Darwin's view, and is quite as hypothetical. The nearly

universal opinion, if we rightly gather it, manifestly is, that the

replacement of the species of successive formations was not complete and

simultaneous, but partial and successive; and that along the course of each

epoch some species probably were introduced, and some, doubtless, became

extinct. If all since the tertiary belongs to our present epoch, this is

certainly true of it: if to two or more epochs, then the hypothesis of a

total change is not true of them.

Geology makes huge demands upon time; and we regret to find that it has

exhausted ours--that what we meant for the briefest and most general sketch

of some geological considerations in favor of Darwin's hypothesis has so

extended as to leave no room for considering "the great facts of

comparative anatomy and zoology" with which Darwin's theory "very well

accords," nor for indicating how "it admirably serves for explaining the

unity of composition of all organisms, the existence of representative and

rudimentary organs, and the natural series which genera and species

compose." Suffice it to say that these are the real strongholds of the new

system on its theoretical side; that it goes far toward explaining both the

physiological and the structural gradations and relations between the two

kingdoms, and the arrangement of all their forms in groups subordinate to

groups, all within a few great types; that it reads the riddle of abortive

organs and of morphological conformity, of which no other theory has ever

offered a scientific explanation, and supplies a ground for harmonizing the

two fundamental ideas which naturalists and philosophers conceive to have

ruled the organic world, though they could not reconcile them; namely,

Adaptation to Purpose and Conditions of Existence, and Unity of Type. To

reconcile these two undeniable principles is the capital problem in the

philosophy of natural history; and the hypothesis which consistently does

so thereby secures a great advantage.

We all know that the arm and hand of a monkey, the foreleg and foot of a

dog and of a horse, the wing of a bat, and the fin of a porpoise, are

fundamentally identical; that the long neck of the giraffe has the same and

no more bones than the short one of the elephant; that the eggs of Surinam

frogs hatch into tadpoles with as good tails for swimming as any of their

kindred, although as tadpoles they never enter the water; that the

Guinea-pig is furnished with incisor teeth which it never uses, as it sheds

them before birth; that embryos of mammals and birds have branchial slits

and arteries running in loops, in imitation or reminiscence of the

arrangement which is permanent in fishes; and that thousands of animals and

plants have rudimentary organs which, at least in numerous cases, are

wholly useless to their possessors, etc., etc. Upon a derivative theory

this morphological conformity is explained by community of descent; and it

has not been explained in any other way.

Naturalists are constantly speaking of "related species," of the "affinity"

of a genus or other group, and of "family resemblance"--vaguely conscious

that these terms of kinship are something more than mere metaphors, but

unaware of the grounds of their aptness. Mr. Darwin assures them that they

have been talking derivative doctrine all their lives--as M. Jourdain

talked prose--without knowing it.

If it is difficult and in many cases practically impossible to fix the

limits of species, it is still more so to fix those of genera; and those of

tribes and families are still less susceptible of exact natural

circumscription. Intermediate forms occur, connecting one group with

another in a manner sadly perplexing to systematists, except to those who

have ceased to expect absolute limitations in Nature. All this blending

could hardly fail to suggest a former material connection among allied

forms, such as that which the hypothesis of derivation demands.

Here it would not be amiss to consider the general principle of gradation

throughout organic Nature--a principle which answers in a general way to the

Law of Continuity in the inorganic world, or rather is so analogous to it

that both may fairly be expressed by the Leibnitzian axiom, Natura non agit

saltatim. As an axiom or philosophical principle, used to test modal laws

or hypotheses, this in strictness belongs only to physics. In the

investigation of Nature at large, at least in the organic world, nobody

would undertake to apply this principle as a test of the validity of any

theory or supposed law. But naturalists of enlarged views will not fail to

infer the principle from the phenomena they investigate--to perceive that

the rule holds, under due qualifications and altered forms, throughout the

realm of Nature; although we do not suppose that Nature in the organic

world makes no distinct steps, but only short and serial steps--not

infinitely fine gradations, but no long leaps, or few of them.

To glance at a few illustrations out of many that present themselves. It

would be thought that the distinction between the two organic kingdoms was

broad and absolute. Plants and animals belong to two very different

categories, fulfill opposite offices and, as to the mass of them are so

unlike that the difficulty of the ordinary observer would be to find points

of comparison Without entering into details which would fill an article, we

may safely say that the difficulty with the naturalist is all the other

way--that all these broad differences vanish one by one as we approach the

lower confines of the two kingdoms, and that no absolute distinction

whatever is now known between them. It is quite possible that the same

organism may be both vegetable and animal, or may be first the one and then

the other. If some organisms may be said to be at first vegetables and then

animals, others, like the spores and other reproductive bodies of many of

the lower Algae, may equally claim to have first a characteristically

animal, and then an unequivocally vegetable existence. Nor is the gradation

restricted to these simple organisms. It appears in general functions, as

in that of reproduction, which is reducible to the same formula in both

kingdoms, while it exhibits close approximations in the lower forms; also

in a common or similar ground of sensibility in the lowest forms of both, a

common faculty of effecting movements tending to a determinate end, traces

of which pervade the vegetable kingdom--while, on the other hand, this

indefinable principle, this vegetable

"Animula vagula, blandula,

Hospes comesque corporis,"

graduates into the higher sensitiveness of the lower class of animals. Nor

need we hesitate to recognize the fine gradations from simple sensitiveness

and volition to the higher instinctive and to the other psychical

manifestations of the higher brute animals. The gradation is undoubted,

however we may explain it.

Again, propagation is of one mode in the higher animals, of two in all

plants; but vegetative propagation, by budding or offshoots, extends

through the lower grades of animals. In both kingdoms there may be

separation of the offshoots, or indifference in this respect, or continued

and organic union with the parent stock; and this either with essential

independence of the offshoots, or with a subordination of these to a common

whole; or finally with such subordination and amalgamation, along with

specialization of function, that the same parts, which in other cases can

be regarded only as progeny, in these become only members of an individual.

This leads to the question of individuality, a subject quite too large and

too recondite for present discussion. The conclusion of the whole matter,

however, is, that individuality--that very ground of being as distinguished

from thing--is not attained in Nature at one leap. If anywhere truly

exemplified in plants, it is only in the lowest and simplest, where the

being is a structural unit, a single cell, member-less and organless,

though organic--the same thing as those cells of which all the more complex

plants are built up, and with which every plant and (structurally) every

animal began its development. In the ascending gradation of the vegetable

kingdom individuality is, so to say, striven after, but never attained; in

the lower animals it is striven after with greater though incomplete

success; it is realized only in animals of so high a rank that vegetative

multiplication or offshoots are out of the question, where all parts are

strictly members and nothing else, and all subordinated to a common nervous

centre--is fully realized only in a conscious person.

So, also, the broad distinction between reproduction by seeds or ova and

propagation by buds, though perfect in some of the lowest forms of life,

becomes evanescent in others; and even the most absolute law we know in the

physiology of genuine reproduction--that of sexual cooperation--has its

exceptions in both kingdoms in parthenogenesis, to which in the vegetable

kingdom a most curious and intimate series of gradations leads. In plants,

likewise, a long and finely graduated series of transitions leads from

bisexual to unisexual blossoms; and so in various other respects. Everywhere

we may perceive that Nature secures her ends, and makes her distinctions on

the whole manifest and real but everywhere without abrupt breaks We need

not wonder therefore that gradations between species and varieties should

occur; the more so, since genera, tribes, and other groups into which the

naturalist collocates species, are far from being always absolutely limited

in Nature, though they are necessarily represented to be so in systems.

>From the necessity of the case, the classifications of the naturalist

abruptly define where Nature more or less blends. Our systems are nothing,

if not definite. They express differences, and some of the coarser

gradations. But this evinces not their perfection, but their imperfection.

Even the best of them are to the system of Nature what consecutive patches

of the seven colors are to the rainbow.

Now the principle of gradation throughout organic Nature may, of course, be

interpreted upon other assumptions than those of Darwin's

hypothesis--certainly upon quite other than those of a materialistic

philosophy, with which we ourselves have no sympathy. Still we conceive it

not only possible, but probable, that this gradation, as it has its natural

ground, may yet have its scientific explanation. In any case, there is no

need to deny that the general facts correspond well with an hypothesis like

Darwin's, which is built upon fine gradations.

We have contemplated quite long enough the general presumptions in favor of

an hypothesis of the derivation of species. We cannot forget, however,

while for the moment we overlook, the formidable difficulties which all

hypotheses of this class have to encounter, and the serious implications

which they seem to involve. We feel, moreover, that Darwin's particular

hypothesis is exposed to some special objections. It requires no small

strength of nerve steadily to conceive, not only of the diversification, but

of the formation of the organs of an animal through cumulative variation

and natural selection. Think of such an organ as the eye, that most perfect

of optical instruments, as so produced in the lower animals and perfected

in the higher! A friend of ours, who accepts the new doctrine, confesses

that for a long while a cold chill came over him whenever he thought of the

eye. He has at length got over that stage of the complaint, and is now in

the fever of belief, perchance to be succeeded by the sweating stage, during

which sundry peccant humors may be eliminated from the system. For

ourselves, we dread the chill, and have some misgivings about the

consequences of the reaction. We find ourselves in the "singular position"

acknowledged by Pictet--that is, confronted with a theory which, although

it can really explain much, seems inadequate to the heavy task it so boldly

assumes, but which, nevertheless, appears better fitted than any other that

has been broached to explain, if it be possible to explain, somewhat of the

manner in which organized beings may have arisen and succeeded each other.

In this dilemma we might take advantage of Mr. Darwin's candid admission,

that he by no means expects to convince old and experienced people, whose

minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all regarded during a long

course of years from the old point of view. This is nearly our case. So,

owning no call to a larger faith than is expected of us, but not prepared to

pronounce the whole hypothesis untenable, under such construction as we

should put upon it, we naturally sought to attain a settled conviction

through a perusal of several proffered refutations of the theory. At least,

this course seemed to offer the readiest way of bringing to a head the

various objections to which the theory is exposed. On several accounts some

of these opposed reviews especially invite examination. We propose,

accordingly, to conclude our task with an article upon "Darwin and his

Reviewers."

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 man's 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 Darwin's 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 Darwin's

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. Pictet's 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.