The Old Riddle and the Newest Answer

Natural Selection is in truth no selection at all, that is just its weak point, which the title conferred upon it serves to hide. What are called its products owe no more to it than Wellington owed his generalship to the bullets which did not hit him at Seringapatam. If they are not determined to a particular development they can attain it only by Chance.

Of Chance, enough has already been said. It is, however, worth our while to observe how constantly to the last Mr. Darwin was haunted by the consciousness that this was in reality the factor upon which his system must depend, and that it could not possibly account for much that he came across in nature. If, as he confessed, the sight of a peacock's tail-feather made him sick, it was just because its elaborate beauty, to which no commensurate advantage can be supposed to attach, forbade the notion that his theory could account for it. So, of another still more marvellous instance in which Nature exhibits artistic power, namely the ball-and-socket ornament on the wings of the Argus pheasant, he writes:202

No one, I presume, will attribute this shading, which has excited the admiration of many experienced artists, to chance – to the fortuitous concourse of atoms of colouring matter. That these ornaments should have been formed through the selection of many successive variations, not one of which was originally intended to produce the ball-and-socket effect, seems as incredible as that one of Raphael's Madonnas should have been formed by the selection of chance daubs of paints made by a long succession of young artists, not one of whom intended at first to draw the human figure.

Nevertheless, Mr. Darwin proceeds to argue at considerable length that an explanation consistent with his theory is favoured by the occurrence on the same wings of designs exhibiting every stage of gradation from a mere spot to the finished ball-and-socket ocellus; in the same way as the tail feathers of a peacock advance from a mere sketch to the completed design. It is not easy, however, to understand in what way this is supposed to solve the difficulty and not vastly to increase it. That a finished artistic effect should be fortuitously produced at all would be incredible enough. That it should be worked up by Chance through a series of processes, each doing something towards its completion, is surely not less, but far more inconceivable.

In such a mode of explanation, however, is exemplified a feature which must not be forgotten in discussing Darwinism, – namely the fatal facility with which seeming arguments can be procured on its behalf. As Mr. Mivart well remarks:203 "The Darwinian theory has the great advantage of only needing for its support the suggestion of some possible utility, actual or ancestral, in each case – no difficult task for an ingenious, patient, and accomplished thinker." And our North British Reviewer makes a similar comment: "The believer who is at liberty to invent any imaginary circumstances, will very generally be able to conceive some series of transmutations answering his wants."

Or if, as in the above instance of the Argus' eyes, a series is actually found, it is even less difficult to take for granted that it can have but one significance; while such assumptions are too frequently accepted without hesitation or demur, although it would be no easy task to show that they rest upon any solid grounds. When, in addition, either Mr. Darwin himself or some of his leading partisans has declared that some unverified process has undoubtedly occurred, or that they see no reason to doubt its occurrence, or that nothing which we know precludes its possibility, – it appears to be widely supposed that something substantial is thereby added to the scientific evidence, and that the suppositions thus sanctioned may even rank as facts. But however such a method may avail to secure acceptance for a doctrine, it does nothing for its scientific value. Such a style, as Mr. Mivart says,204 is calculated to impress only minds too easily dominated, and not prepared by special studies accurately to weigh the evidence put before them.

Illustrations of this strange method of procedure are furnished in connexion with various points already mentioned. Thus, as we have seen, Mr. Darwin attempts to explain the origin of rational speech, by the conscious utterance of a significant sound by an unusually wise ape-like creature. In favour of this very large suggestion, Mr. Darwin has nothing more substantial to say205 than that "it does not appear altogether incredible," which does not appear to take us very far.206 Yet I have seen this described as an "idyllic scene" shedding an entirely new light on the subject. So again in regard of the evolution of the eye.207 Having summarily enumerated the various stages of development exhibited by this organ as actually existing in various animals, Mr. Darwin goes on to say that when we remember how small the number of living forms must be in comparison with extinct, and the other gradations that may consequently have existed, "the difficulty ceases to be very great" in believing that Natural Selection has connected the most rudimentary with the perfect structure. Similarly, as to the cell-making instinct of the bee,208 having postulated four several suppositions for which evidence is not forthcoming, he concludes: "By such modification of instincts … I believe that the hive bee has acquired, through natural selection, her inimitable architectural powers."209 Similar examples might be multiplied indefinitely.

Not unfrequently the tone of such utterances is more imperious. Thus, of the descent of Man from some animal ancestor Mr. Darwin pronounces210 "The grounds upon which this conclusion rests will never be shaken," and again211 "the possession of exalted mental powers is no insuperable objection to this conclusion" … "It is only [p. 32] our natural prejudice which leads us to demur to this conclusion." He even goes so far as to declare that his view is forced upon every man who is not content to assume the mental attitude of a savage.212

Argumentation of this character, which he finds common with Darwin to other Evolutionists, is judged by de Quatrefages to be one of the weakest and most misleading features of their systems.

Personal conviction [he writes],213 mere possibility, are offered as proofs, or at least as arguments in favour of the theory. Can we admit their validity? Obviously not. The human mind can conceive many things: is that a reason for accepting them all?.. Obviously more serious proofs are needed. After all, save where a contradiction is involved, everything is possible… If adopting, under the shadow of Oken's great name, his principle of the repetition of phenomena, a naturalist should maintain that each of the planets has its own Europe, its England, and its Darwin expounding to the Jovians and Saturnians the origin of species, I do not quite see how one would set about showing him that he was wrong. Unquestionably the thing is possible. Are we to draw the conclusion that it is a fact?

Again,214 the same distinguished naturalist, having quoted Darwin's very elaborate explanation of a difficulty, remarks:

We see how with Darwin, as with his precursors, one hypothesis necessitates another. But can he, at least, by means of these subsidiary theories, these comparisons, these metaphors, account for all the facts? No, he himself honestly confesses more than once that he cannot. It is true that he adds "I am convinced that the objections have little weight, and the difficulties are not insoluble." But is this conviction of his a proof, or even an argument?

M. Blanchard likewise comments vigorously on this mode of argumentation. Speaking of the Mole and Darwin's explanation of its blindness, namely that having taken to living under-ground it lost its eyes through disuse – which he considers a most preposterous supposition, – M Blanchard continues:215

The realms of fancy are boundless; but the observer who is concerned with realities can only have recourse to the facts of science. Fossil remains discovered in very ancient strata show that the underground animal of present times does not differ from his geological counterpart. The Mole belongs to a very peculiar type, and has no nearer European relatives than the Hedgehog and the Shrew. Can we imagine a common ancestor of Shrews, Hedgehogs, and Moles? On this point Mr. Darwin expresses no opinion, – which should not be, for when confronted by forms clearly differentiated, he is wont to extricate himself from difficulties with matchless facility. The intermediate links, he will say, were doubtless less fitted to live than were the others, and so have disappeared. After that the Evolutionists consider any one quite out of date who does not consider himself entirely satisfied with so felicitous an explanation.

M. de Quatrefages denounces another fatal defect often observable in the method of proof.

Mr. Darwin frequently complains that our actual knowledge is incomplete. But instead of discovering in our lack of precise and extensive information a motive for caution, he appears to derive from it only greater daring. Doctrines based on the instability of species have often been combated by geologists and palæontologists. In reply to their objections Darwin devotes a whole chapter to shewing the imperfection of the geological record. "For my part," he concludes, "I look at the geological record as a history of the world imperfectly kept and written in a changing dialect; of this history we possess the last volume alone, relating only to two or three countries. Of this volume, only here and there a short chapter has been preserved; and of each page, only here and there a few lines. Each word of the slowly-changing language, more or less different in the successive chapters, may represent the forms of life, which are entombed in our consecutive formations, and which falsely appear to have been abruptly introduced. On this view, the difficulties above discussed are greatly diminished, or even disappear."

On my part [continues M. de Quatrefages] I will ask whether such a conclusion is the correct one. No doubt, Darwin is right in refusing to certain naturalists the right to dogmatize on the strength of uncompleted studies, or scanty and isolated observations. Is he therefore entitled to allege as proofs on his own behalf the very gaps of science, appealing to the lost volumes and leaves of Nature's chronicle? Clearly not. But the slightest reflection suffices to recognize that this appeal to the unknown, so frankly evidenced in the above passage, lies at the root of all argumentation analogous to that which I have tried to describe – that of Maillet, Lamarck, and Geoffroy,216 as well as Darwin. Only the unknown, in sooth, can open the boundless region of speculation, where the possible replaces the actual, and where, despite the widest knowledge and the soundest intelligence, one comes as by a fatality to find a conclusive proof on one's own side, precisely in that of which we profess to know nothing.

So again, speaking of a certain conclusion of Professor Haeckel's concerning the embryology of lemurs, which MM. Grandidier and Alphonse Edwards afterwards proved experimentally to be altogether erroneous, de Quatrefages writes:217

Haeckel will perhaps answer that the publication of his book preceded the observation of the French savants. But such a plea itself discloses a method of procedure which is common to the majority of evolutionists, and of which, it must be added, Darwin set the example. When confronted by a question about which nobody knows anything, they appeal precisely to this want of knowledge, and draw arguments from their very ignorance.

In like manner speaks the Reviewer already cited more than once. Thus:218

The peculiarities of geographical distribution seem very difficult of explanation on any theory. Darwin calls in alternately winds, tides, birds, beasts, all animated nature, as the diffusers of species, and then a good many of the same agencies as impenetrable barriers… With these facilities of hypothesis there seems to be no particular reason why many theories should not be true. However an animal may have been produced, it must have been produced somewhere, and it must either have spread very widely or not have spread, and Darwin can give good reasons for both results.

And again:219

We are asked to believe all these maybes happening on an enormous scale, in order that we may believe the final Darwinian "maybe" as to the origin of species. The general form of his argument is as follows: – "All these things may have been, therefore my theory is possible, and since my theory is a possible one, all those hypotheses which it requires are rendered probable." There is little direct evidence that any of these maybes actually have been.

In no respect, moreover, have Darwin's followers more closely imitated their master than in the construction of such hypotheses, which would appear to constitute in the eyes of many the most important work of Science. Attention has very largely been diverted from Nature as actually existing, which seems to be studied more for the light it can be supposed to throw upon evolutionary history, than simply for itself, and it seems to be thought that to imagine the mode of an evolutionary process is equivalent to establishing the facts which that process supposes. By this method lengthy and learned papers are written concerning the transformation of one species into another, which in reality do no more than describe in minute detail all the changes which must have taken place, if the said transformation really occurred. That Science is thus benefited, is not the opinion of some at least who are well entitled to speak on her behalf, for as the President of the Linnean Society recently observed,220 as one grows older, it becomes more and more apparent that facts alone are of any serious interest, and that speculations however ingenious and attractive are best left to the constructive and destructive energies of the young. So too, a few years ago, the President of the Microscopical Society complained that interest in living creatures is largely supplanted by dead ones.221

We read much [he said] of the animal's organs: we see plates showing that its bristles have been counted, and its muscular fibres traced to the last thread; we have the structure of its tissues analyzed to their very elements; we have long discussions on its title to rank with this group or that; and sometimes even disquisitions on the probable form and habits of some extremely remote, but quite hypothetical, ancestor, who is made to degrade in this way, or to advance in that, or who is credited with one organ or deprived of another, just as the ever-varying necessities of a desperate hypothesis require…

There is another aspect of the question which must by no means be overlooked. It has to be assumed that Natural Selection, or the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence, necessarily tends to the benefit of the race and moreover to its farther development on the upward grade, towards a more perfect and more specialized organization; – in Mr. Herbert Spencer's words, to progression from a relatively indefinite incoherent homogeneity, to a relatively definite, coherent heterogeneity. But here many questions occur.

In the first place, a consideration presents itself, which appears to furnish the most formidable of all difficulties in the way of Mr. Darwin's hypothesis. How can this struggle for existence be supposed to have any tendency to promote organic development to ever higher and more perfect types, in the orderly sequence which has in fact occurred? The "Survival of the fittest" means only the survival of the fittest to survive, – of such as can find means of living where others cannot. Unless it can be shown that increased complexity of organization necessarily brings with it such increased vitality, Natural Selection can do nothing for organic development. If the mere power of living be the only factor in the process, as on Mr. Darwin's showing it is, a man is only a more complicated and delicate machine for securing the same object which can equally well, or better, be attained by a mole, a cockroach, or a microbe. And who will say that, so far as this particular end is concerned, he is better equipped than creatures which all the resources of civilization are powerless to exterminate?

That practical advantage in the struggle for existence must necessarily accompany increased specialization of organs, and thus produce a "higher" organization, was a prime point of Mr. Darwin's argument, though at the same time he found himself compelled to encumber it with qualifications which go very far to neutralize its force; for he had to explain the obvious fact that so many creatures which represent the lowest and least specialized forms of life, have survived down to our own time. Thus he writes:222

The degree of differentiation and specialization of the parts in organic beings, when arrived at maturity, is the best standard, as yet suggested, of their degree of perfection or highness. As the specialization of parts is an advantage to each being, so natural selection will tend to render the organization of each being more specialized and perfect, and in this sense higher; not but that it may leave many creatures with simple and unimproved structures fitted for simple conditions of life, and in some cases will even degrade or simplify the organization, yet leaving such degraded beings better fitted for their new walks of life.

By this fundamental test of victory in the battle of life, as well as by the standard of the specialization of organs, modern forms ought, on the theory of Natural Selection, to stand higher than ancient forms. Is this the case? A large number of palæontologists would answer in the affirmative; and it seems that this answer must be admitted as true, though difficult of proof.

That is to say, Natural Selection is just as ready to degrade as to elevate a creature, according to the actual requirements of the circumstances in which it is placed, and how far progress has been the rule, rather than stability or retrogression, is a question for geological history to determine. This we shall have to consider in our next chapter.

It is likewise obvious that so far as the mere struggle for existence is concerned, a species each of whose individual members is but poorly furnished, may nevertheless flourish unimpaired on the mere strength of its fecundity. It is thus, says M. Blanchard,223 that the lower forms of life continue to hold their own despite the enormous ravages to which they are subject. The herring, for example, affords food to all the fowls of the air and fish of the sea, over and above the myriads annually requisitioned by man. Yet its hosts show no sign of being exterminated or even reduced. Much the same is the case of the cod; but a tribe one individual of which has been known to produce nine million eggs does not require much in the way of coherent heterogeneity to ensure its survival.

Thus it appears that of itself Darwinism affords no explanation whatever of the regular progression of life forms from lower to higher, to which the records of Nature bear witness, and which is the one solid fact suggesting the idea of Evolution.

Such are some of the reasons which, on purely rational grounds, appear amply to justify those who decline to pledge their faith to Darwinism, in spite of the popularity it enjoys. But what is to be said of the phenomena cited as furnishing positive and unimpeachable evidence in its favour, which were mentioned above in our sketch of its main features?

First as to the rudimentary, fragmentary, or vestigial organs so common in Nature. These, it is said, being of no possible advantage to their possessors, and often a serious disadvantage, can be explained only by supposing that they were serviceable in the past to the ancestral race whence these possessors are derived, and have since been superseded by other modifications of structure, so as to dwindle away by disuse. This, no doubt, seems a very plausible explanation, but it does not follow that we ought immediately to adopt it as a certainty, instead of setting ourselves to examine how it accords with all the facts. Nothing is more dangerous and less scientific than to be in a hurry to conclude that everything is certain which seems to ourselves probable, especially if it suits a theory of our own. Unfortunately, this law is too frequently more honoured in the breach than the observance. In the present instance, Professor Haeckel himself furnishes an example. He is quite sure that the rudimentary structures can have but one significance, and that they are fatal to the idea of purpose in Nature, the object of his special aversion, and so he has proposed a new term, "Dysteleology," to embody this idea, of which he says,224

Dysteleology, or the theory of purposelessness [is] the name I have given to the science of rudimentary organs, of suppressed and degenerated, aimless and inactive, parts of the body; one of the most important and most interesting branches of comparative anatomy, which, when rightly estimated, is alone sufficient to refute the fundamental error of the teleological and dualistic conception of Nature, and to serve as the foundation of the mechanical and monistic conception of the universe.

It will be sufficient to quote Professor Huxley's remarks upon this passage, taken from the very laudatory review he wrote of the work in which it occurs.225

Professor Haeckel has invented a new and convenient name, "Dysteleology," for the study of the "purposelessnesses" which are observable in living organisms – such as the multitudinous cases of rudimentary and apparently useless structures. I confess, however, that it has often appeared to me that the facts of Dysteleology cut two ways. If we are to assume, as evolutionists in general do, that useless organs atrophy, such cases as the existence of lateral rudiments of toes in the foot of a horse place us in a dilemma. For, either these rudiments are of no use to the animal, in which case, considering that the horse has existed in its present form since the Pliocene epoch, they surely ought to have disappeared; or they are of some use to the animal, in which case they are of no use as arguments against Teleology. A similar, but stronger argument may be based upon the existence of teats, and even functional mammary glands in male mammals… There can be little doubt that the mammary gland was as apparently useless in the remotest male mammalian ancestor of man as in living men, and yet it has not disappeared. Is it then still profitable to the male organism to retain it? Possibly; but in that case its dysteleological value is gone.

In later editions Professor Huxley further observed: "The recent discovery of the important part played by the Thyroid gland should be a warning to all speculators about useless organs."226

It seems, therefore, the wiser part to refrain from basing any vital conclusions upon these organs until we can assure ourselves that our knowledge warrants our so doing. As the same Professor Huxley intimated, it might be well for palæontologists, and doubtless for biologists likewise,227 "To learn a little more carefully that scientific 'ars artium,' the art of saying 'I don't know.'"

So again as to the phenomena of embryology. No doubt they are very striking and impressive. That the most highly developed creatures, and man himself, should in the first stages of existence exhibit the characteristics of lower forms, is an exemplification of development no less signal than the succession of ascending types witnessed to by the rocks. It is not easy to see, however, why it should be taken for granted that this can only signify genetic descent from all such forms, and that these embryo animals are engaged in climbing up their genealogical trees. Yet this is usually assumed as a matter of course, and any one who ventures to question the validity of such an inference, must be prepared to find himself accused of dogmatizing.

And yet, after all, upon what grounds does the assumption rest? That such a recapitulation of racial experiences forms no essential feature of Evolution is sufficiently evident from the case of the vegetable world, – for plants do not climb their genealogical trees, or pass in the seed through a series of botanical phases. And as to animals, since through all varieties of form, each always arrives at the required term, it is obvious that, apart from any archaic associations, and on Darwinian principles themselves, these forms must be the best for the purpose at each respective stage, – perhaps the only ones by which the term could be reached. It is therefore, to say the least, quite conceivable, that we have here the whole explanation and need go no further.