Problems of Life and Mind. Second series by George Henry Lewes (best contemporary novels TXT) 📕

The changes wrought in an organism by these two kinds of conditions determine Varieties and Species. Although many of the changes are due to the process of natural selection brought about in the struggle with competitors and foes, many other changes have no such relation to the external struggle, but are simply the results of the organic affinities. They may or they may not give the organism a greater stability, or a greater advantage over rivals; it is enough that they are no disadvantage to the organism, they will then survive by virtue of the forces which produced them.

119. The position thus reached will be important in our examination of the Theory of Descent by which Mr. Darwin tentatively, and his followers boldly, explain the observed resemblances in structure and function as due to blood-relationship. The doctrine of Evolution affirms that all complex organisms are evolved by differentiation from simpler organisms, as we see the complex organ evolved from simpler forms. But it does not necessarily affirm that the vast variety of organisms had one starting-point—one ancestor; on the contrary, I conceive that the principles of Evolution are adverse to such a view, and insist rather on the necessity of innumerable starting-points. Let us consider the question.

That the Theory of Descent explains many of the facts must be admitted; but there are many which it leaves obscure; and Mr. Darwin, with that noble calmness which distinguishes him, admits the numerous difficulties. Whether these will hereafter be cleared away by an improvement in the Geological Record, now confessedly imperfect, or by more exhaustive exploration of distant countries, none can say; but, to my mind, the probability is, that we shall have to seek our explanation by enlarging the idea of Natural Selection, subordinating it to the laws of Organic Affinity. It does not seem to me, at present, warrantable to assume Descent as the sole principle of morphological uniformities; there are other grounds of resemblance beyond those of blood-relationship; and these have been too much overlooked; yet a brief consideration will disclose that similarity in the physiological laws and the conditions of Organic Affinity must produce similarity in organisms, independently of relationship; just as similarity in the laws and conditions of inorganic affinity will produce identity in chemical species. We do not suppose the carbonates and phosphates found in various parts of the globe, or the families of alkaloids and salts, to have any nearer kinship than that which consists in the similarity of their elements and the conditions of their combination. Hence, in organisms, as in salts, morphological identity may be due to a community of conditions, rather than community of descent. Mr. Darwin justly holds it to be “incredible that individuals identically the same should have been produced through Natural Selection from parents specifically distinct,” but he, since he admits analogous variations, will not deny that identical forms might issue from parents having widely different origins, provided that these parent forms and the conditions of their reproduction were identical, as in the case of vegetable and animal resemblances. To deny this would be to deny the law of causation. And that which is true of identical forms under identical conditions is true of similar forms under similar conditions. When History and Ethnology reveal a striking uniformity in the progression of social phases, we do not thence conclude that the nations are directly related, or that the social forms have a common parentage; we conclude that the social phases are alike because they have had common causes. When chemists point out the uniformity of type which exists in compounds so diverse in many of their properties as water and sulphuretted or selenetted hydrogen, and when they declare phosphoretted hydrogen to be the congener of ammonia, they do not mean that the one is descended from the other, or that any closer link connects them than that of resemblance in their elements.

In the case of vegetal and animal organisms, we observe such a community of elementary substance as of itself to imply a community in their laws of combination; and under similar conditions the evolved forms must be similar. With this community of elementary substance, there are also diversities of substance and of co-operant conditions; corresponding with these diversities there must be differences of form. Thus, although observation reveals that the bond of kinship does really unite many widely divergent forms, and the principle of Descent with Natural Selection will account for many of the resemblances and differences, there is at present no warrant for assuming that all resemblances and differences are due to this one cause, but, on the contrary, we are justified in assuming a deeper principle which may be thus formulated: All the complex organisms are evolved from organisms less complex, as these were evolved from simpler forms; the link which unites all organisms is not always the common bond of heritage, but the uniformity of organized substance acting under similar conditions.

It is therefore consistent with the hypothesis of Evolution to admit a variety of origins or starting-points, though not consistent to admit the sudden appearance of complex Types, such as is implied in the hypothesis of specific creations.

119 a. The analogies of organic forms and functions demand a more exhaustive scrutiny than has yet been given them. Why is it that vessels, nerves, and bones ramify like branches, and why do these branches take on the aspect of many crystalline forms? Why is it that cavities are constantly prolonged in ducts, e. g. the mouth succeeded by the œsophagus, the stomach by the intestines, the bladder by the urethra, the heart by the aorta, the ovary by the oviduct, and so on? Why are there never more than four limbs attached to a vertebral column, and these always attached to particular vertebræ? Why is there a tendency in certain tissues to form tubes, and in these tubes commonly to assume a muscular coat?64 To some of these queries an answer might be suggested which would bring them under known physical laws. I merely notice them here for the sake of emphasizing the fact that such analogies lie deeply imbedded in the laws of evolution, and that what has been metaphorically called organic crystallization will account for many similarities in form, without forcing us to have recourse to kinship. To take a very simple case. No one will maintain that the crystalline forms of snow have any kinship with the plants which they often resemble. Mr. Spencer has noticed the development of a wing-bearing branch from a wing of the Ptilota plumosa, when its nutrition is in excess. “This form, so strikingly like that of the feathery crystallizations of many inorganic substances, proves to us that in such crystallizations the simplicity or complexity of structure at any place depends on the quantity of matter that has to be polarized at that place in a given time. How the element of time modifies the result, is shown by the familiar fact that crystals rapidly formed are small, and that they become larger when they are formed more slowly.”65

It may be objected, and justly, that in the resemblance between crystals and organisms the analogy is purely that of form, and usually confined to one element, whereas between organisms there is resemblance of substance no less than of form, and usually the organisms are alike in several respects. The answer to this objection is, that wherever there is a similarity in the causal conditions (substance and history) there must be a corresponding similarity in the results; if this similarity extends to only a few of the conditions, the analogy will be slight; if to several, deep. But whether slight or deep we are not justified, simply on the ground of resemblance, in assuming, short of evidence, that because they are alike, two organisms are related by descent from a common ancestor.

120. Let us glance at a few illustrations. It has been urged as a serious objection to Mr. Darwin’s hypothesis,66 that it fails to explain the existence of phosphorescent organs in a few insects; and certainly, when one considers the widely different orders in which these organs appear, and their absence in nearly related forms, it is a difficulty. In noctilucæ, earthworms, molluscs, scolopendra, and fireflies, we may easily suppose the presence of similar organic conditions producing the luminosity; but it requires a strong faith to assign Descent as the cause.67 We may say the same of the electric organs possessed by seven species of fish, belonging to five widely separated genera. Although each species appears to have a limited geographical range, one or the other is found in almost every part of the globe. These organs occupy different positions, being now on each side of the head, now along the body, and now along the tail; and in different species they are innervated from different sources. Their intimate structure also varies; as appears from the remarkable investigations of Max Schultze.68 They cannot, therefore, be homologous. How could they have arisen? Not by the slow accumulations of Natural Selection, because, until the organs were fully formed, they could be of no advantage in the struggle; hence the slow growth of the organ must have proceeded without the aid of an advantage in the struggle—in each case from some analogous conditions which produced a differentiation in certain muscles. The fundamental resemblance to muscles was pointed out by Carus long ago. It has been insisted on by Leydig:69 and Owen says, “The row of compressed cells constituting the electric prism of the Torpedo offers some analogy to the row of microscopic discs of which the elementary muscle fibre appears to consist.”70 We must not, however, forget that these resemblances are merely such as suggest that the electric organ is a differentiation of the substance which elsewhere becomes muscular, and that Dr. Davy was justified in denying the organ to be muscular.71 That it is substituted for muscle cannot be doubted. Now, although we are entirely ignorant of the conditions which cause this differentiation of substance which elsewhere becomes muscular, but here becomes electric organs, we can understand that, when once such a development had taken place, if it in any way profited the fish in its struggle for existence, Natural Selection would tend to its further increase and propagation. So far Mr. Darwin carries us with him; but we decline proceeding further. The development of these organs in fishes so widely removed, does not imply an ancestral community. It is interpretable as mere growth on a basis once laid; and therefore would occur with or without any advantage in the struggle with rivals. The similarity in concurrent conditions is quite enough to account for the resemblance in structure. This, with his accustomed candor, Mr. Darwin admits. “If the electric organs,” he says, “had been inherited from one ancient progenitor thus provided, we might have expected that all electric fishes would be specially related to each other. Nor does Geology at all lead to the belief that formerly most fishes had electric organs which most of their modified descendants have lost.”

121. It may seem strange that he should urge a difficulty against his hypothesis when it could be avoided by the simple admission that even among nearly allied animals great differences in development are observable, and the electric organs might be ranged under such diversities. But Mr. Darwin has so thoroughly wrought out his scheme, that he foresees most objections, and rightly suspects that