Criticisms on Origin of Species by Thomas Henry Huxley (cheapest way to read ebooks TXT) 📕

And finally, as if to prevent all possible misconception, Mr. Darwin concludes his Chapter on Variation with these pregnant words:—

“Whatever the cause may be of each slight difference in the offspring from their parents—and a cause for each must exist—it is the steady accumulation, through natural selection of such differences, when beneficial to the individual, that gives rise to all the more important modifications of structure which the innumerable beings on the face of the earth are enabled to struggle with each other, and the best adapted to survive.”

We have dwelt at length upon this subject, because of its great general importance, and because we believe that Professor Kolliker’s criticisms on this head are based upon a misapprehension of Mr. Darwin’s views—substantially they appear to us to coincide with his own. The other objections which Professor Kolliker enumerates and discusses are the following*:—

[footnote] *Space will not allow us to give Professor Kolliker’s arguments in detail; our readers will find a full and accurate version of them in the ‘Reader’ for August 13th and 20th, 1864.

“1. No transitional forms between existing species are known; and known varieties, whether selected or spontaneous, never go so far as to establish new species.”

To this Professor Kolliker appears to attach some weight. He makes the suggestion that the short-faced tumbler pigeon may be a pathological product.

“2. No transitional forms of animals are met with among the organic remains of earlier epochs.”

Upon this, Professor Kolliker remarks that the absence of transitional forms in the fossil world, though not necessarily fatal to Darwin’s views, weakens his case.

“3. The struggle for existence does not take place.”

To this objection, urged by Pelzeln, Kolliker, very justly, attaches no weight.

“4. A tendency of organisms to give rise to useful varieties, and a natural selection, do not exist.

“The varieties which are found arise in consequence of manifold external influences, and it is not obvious why they all, or partially, should be particularly useful. Each animal suffices for its own ends, is perfect of its kind, and needs no further development. Should, however, a variety be useful and even maintain itself, there is no obvious reason why it should change any further. The whole conception of the imperfection of organisms and the necessity of their becoming perfected is plainly the weakest side of Darwin’s Theory, and a ‘pis aller’ (Nothbehelf) because Darwin could think of no other principle by which to explain the metamorphoses which, as I also believe, have occurred.”

Here again we must venture to dissent completely from Professor Kolliker’s conception of Mr. Darwin’s hypothesis. It appears to us to be one of the many peculiar merits of that hypothesis that it involves no belief in a necessary and continual progress of organisms.

Again, Mr. Darwin, if we read him aright, assumes no special tendency of organisms to give rise to useful varieties, and knows nothing of needs of development, or necessity of perfection. What he says is, in substance: All organisms vary. It is in the highest degree improbable that any given variety should have exactly the same relations to surrounding conditions as the parent stock. In that case it is either better fitted (when the variation may be called useful), or worse fitted, to cope with them. If better, it will tend to supplant the parent stock; if worse, it will tend to be extinguished by the parent stock.

If (as is hardly conceivable) the new variety is so perfectly adapted to the conditions that no improvement upon it is possible,—it will persist, because, though it does not cease to vary, the varieties will be inferior to itself.

If, as is more probable, the new variety is by no means perfectly adapted to its conditions, but only fairly well adapted to them, it will persist, so long as none of the varieties which it throws off are better adapted than itself.

On the other hand, as soon as it varies in a useful way, i.e. when the variation is such as to adapt it more perfectly to its conditions, the fresh variety will tend to supplant the former.

So far from a gradual progress towards perfection forming any necessary part of the Darwinian creed, it appears to us that it is perfectly consistent with indefinite persistence in one estate, or with a gradual retrogression. Suppose, for example, a return of the glacial epoch and a spread of polar climatal conditions over the whole globe. The operation of natural selection under these circumstances would tend, on the whole, to the weeding out of the higher organisms and the cherishing of the lower forms of life. Cryptogamic vegetation would have the advantage over Phanerogamic; Hydrozoa over Corals; Crustacea over Insecta, and Amphipoda and Isopoda over the higher Crustacea; Cetaceans and Seals over the Primates; the civilization of the Esquimaux over that of the European.

“5. Pelzeln has also objected that if the later organisms have proceeded from the earlier, the whole developmental series, from the simplest to the highest, could not now exist; in such a case the simpler organisms must have disappeared.”

To this Professor Kolliker replies, with perfect justice, that the conclusion drawn by Pelzeln does not really follow from Darwin’s premisses, and that, if we take the facts of Palaeontology as they stand, they rather support than oppose Darwin’s theory.

“6. Great weight must be attached to the objection brought forward by Huxley, otherwise a warm supporter of Darwin’s hypothesis, that we know of no varieties which are sterile with one another, as is the rule among sharply distinguished animal forms.

“If Darwin is right, it must be demonstrated that forms may be produced by selection, which, like the present sharply distinguished animal forms, are infertile, when coupled with one another, and this has not been done.”

The weight of this objection is obvious; but our ignorance of the conditions of fertility and sterility, the want of carefully conducted experiments extending over long series of years, and the strange anomalies presented by the results of the cross-fertilization of many plants, should all, as Mr. Darwin has urged, be taken into account in considering it.

The seventh objection is that we have already discussed (‘supra’, p.

178).

The eighth and last stands as follows:—

“8. The developmental theory of Darwin is not needed to enable us to understand the regular harmonious progress of the complete series of organic forms from the simpler to the more perfect.

“The existence of general laws of Nature explains this harmony, even if we assume that all beings have arisen separately and independent of one another. Darwin forgets that inorganic nature, in which there can be no thought of genetic connexion of forms, exhibits the same regular plan, the same harmony, as the organic world; and that, to cite only one example, there is as much a natural system of minerals as of plants and animals.”

We do not feel quite sure that we seize Professor Kolliker’s meaning here, but he appears to suggest that the observation of the general order and harmony which pervade inorganic nature, would lead us to anticipate a similar order and harmony in the organic world. And this is no doubt true, but it by no means follows that the particular order and harmony observed among them should be that which we see. Surely the stripes of dun horses, and the teeth of the foetal ‘Balaena’, are not explained by the “existence of general laws of Nature.” Mr. Darwin endeavours to explain the exact order of organic nature which exists; not the mere fact that there is some order.

And with regard to the existence of a natural system of minerals; the obvious reply is that there may be a natural classification of any objects—of stones on a sea-beach, or of works of art; a natural classification being simply an assemblage of objects in groups, so as to express their most important and fundamental resemblances and differences. No doubt Mr. Darwin believes that those resemblances and differences upon which our natural systems or classifications of animals and plants are based, are resemblances and differences which have been produced genetically, but we can discover no reason for supposing that he denies the existence of natural classifications of other kinds.

And, after all, is it quite so certain that a genetic relation may not underlie the classification of minerals? The inorganic world has not always been what we see it. It has certainly had its metamorphoses, and, very probably, a long “Entwickelungsgeschichte” out of a nebular blastema. Who knows how far that amount of likeness among sets of minerals, in virtue of which they are now grouped into families and orders, may not be the expression of the common conditions to which that particular patch of nebulous fog, which may have been constituted by their atoms, and of which they may be, in the strictest sense, the descendants, was subjected?

It will be obvious from what has preceded, that we do not agree with Professor Kolliker in thinking the objections which he brings forward so weighty as to be fatal to Darwin’s view. But even if the case were otherwise, we should be unable to accept the “Theory of Heterogeneous Generation” which is offered as a substitute. That theory is thus stated:—

“The fundamental conception of this hypothesis is, that, under the influence of a general law of development, the germs of organisms produce others different from themselves. This might happen (1) by the fecundated ova passing, in the course of their development, under particular circumstances, into higher forms; (2) by the primitive and later organisms producing other organisms without fecundation, out of germs or eggs (Parthenogenesis).”

In favour of this hypothesis, Professor Kolliker adduces the well-known facts of Agamogenesis, or “alternate generation”; the extreme dissimilarity of the males and females of many animals; and of the males, females, and neuters of those insects which live in colonies: and he defines its relations to the Darwinian theory as follows:—

“It is obvious that my hypothesis is apparently very similar to Darwin’s, inasmuch as I also consider that the various forms of animals have proceeded directly from one another. My hypothesis of the creation of organisms by heterogeneous generation, however, is distinguished very essentially from Darwin’s by the entire absence of the principle of useful variations and their natural selection: and my fundamental conception is this, that a great plan of development lies at the foundation of the origin of the whole organic world, impelling the simpler forms to more and more complex developments. How this law operates, what influences determine the development of the eggs and germs, and impel them to assume constantly new forms, I naturally cannot pretend to say; but I can at least adduce the great analogy of the alternation of generations. If a ‘Bipinnaria’, a ‘Brachialaria’, a ‘Pluteus’, is competent to produce the Echinoderm, which is so widely different from it; if a hydroid polype can produce the higher Medusa; if the vermiform Trematode ‘nurse’ can develop within itself the very unlike ‘Cercaria’, it will not appear impossible that the egg, or ciliated embryo, of a sponge, for once, under special conditions, might become a hydroid polype, or the embryo of a Medusa, an Echinoderm.”

It is obvious, from these extracts, that Professor Kolliker’s hypothesis is based upon the supposed existence of a close analogy between the phenomena of Agamogenesis and the production of new species from pre-existing ones. But is the analogy a real one? We think that it is not, and, by the hypothesis, cannot be.

For what are the phenomena of Agamogenesis, stated generally? An impregnated egg develops into an asexual form, A; this gives rise, asexually, to