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

No case of Agamogenesis is known in which, ‘when A differs widely from B’, it is itself capable of sexual propagation. No case whatever is known in which the progeny of B, by sexual generation, is other than a reproduction of A.

But if this be a true statement of the nature of the process of Agamogenesis, how can it enable us to comprehend the production of new species from already existing ones? Let us suppose Hyaenas to have preceded Dogs, and to have produced the latter in this way. Then the Hyena will represent A, and the Dog, B. The first difficulty that presents itself is that the Hyena must be asexual, or the process will be wholly without analogy in the world of Agamogenesis. But passing over this difficulty, and supposing a male and female Dog to be produced at the same time from the Hyaena stock, the progeny of the pair, if the analogy of the simpler kinds of Agamogenesis* is to be followed, should be a litter, not of puppies, but of young Hyenas. For the Agamogenetic series is always, as we have seen, A: B: A: B, etc.; whereas, for the production of a new species, the series must be A: B: B: B, etc. The production of new species, or genera, is the extreme permanent divergence from the primitive stock. All known Agamogenetic processes, on the other hand, end in a complete return to the primitive stock. How then is the production of new species to be rendered intelligible by the analogy of Agamogenesis?

[footnote] * If, on the contrary, we follow the analogy of the more complex forms of Agamogenesis, such as that exhibited by some ‘Trematoda’ and by the ‘Aphides’, the Hyaena must produce, asexually, a brood of asexual Dogs, from which other sexless Dogs must proceed. At the end of a certain number of terms of the series, the Dogs would acquire sexes and generate young; but these young would be, not Dogs, but Hyaenas. In fact, we have ‘demonstrated’, in Agamogenetic phenomena, that inevitable recurrence to the original type, which is ‘asserted’ to be true of variations in general, by Mr. Darwin’s opponents; and which, if the assertion could be changed into a demonstration would, in fact, be fatal to his hypothesis.

The other alternative put by Professor Kolliker—the passage of fecundated ova in the course of their development into higher forms—would, if it occurred, be merely an extreme case of variation in the Darwinian sense, greater in degree than, but perfectly similar in kind to, that which occurred when the well-known Ancon Ram was developed from an ordinary Ewe’s ovum. Indeed we have always thought that Mr. Darwin has unnecessarily hampered himself by adhering so strictly to his favourite “Natura non facit saltum.” We greatly suspect that she does make considerable jumps in the way of variation now and then, and that these saltations give rise to some of the gaps which appear to exist in the series of known forms.

Strongly and freely as we have ventured to disagree with Professor Kolliker, we have always done so with regret, and we trust without violating that respect which is due, not only to his scientific eminence and to the careful study which he has devoted to the subject, but to the perfect fairness of his argumentation, and the generous appreciation of the worth of Mr. Darwin’s labours which he always displays. It would be satisfactory to be able to say as much for M. Flourens.

But the Perpetual Secretary of the French Academy of Sciences deals with Mr. Darwin as the first Napoleon would have treated an “ideologue;” and while displaying a painful weakness of logic and shallowness of information, assumes a tone of authority, which always touches upon the ludicrous, and sometimes passes the limits of good breeding.

For example (p. 56):—

“M. Darwin continue: ‘Aucune distinction absolue n’a ete et ne pout etre etablie entre les esp_ces et les varietes.’ Je vous ai deja dit que vous vous trompiez; une distinction absolue separe les varietes d’avec les especes.”

“Je vous ai deja dit; moi, M. le Secretaire perpetuel de l’Academie des Sciences: et vous

“‘Qui n’etes rien, Pas meme Academicien;’

what do you mean by asserting the contrary?” Being devoid of the blessings of an Academy in England, we are unaccustomed to see our ablest men treated in this fashion, even by a “Perpetual Secretary.”

Or again, considering that if there is any one quality of Mr. Darwin’s work to which friends and foes have alike borne witness, it is his candour and fairness in admitting and discussing objections, what is to be thought of M. Flourens’ assertion, that

“M. Darwin ne cite que les auteurs qui partagent ses opinions.” (P.

40.)

Once more (p. 65):—

“Enfin l’ouvrage de M. Darwin a paru. On ne peut qu’etre frappe du talent de l’auteur. Mais que d’idees obscures, que d’idees fausses! Quel jargon metaphysique jete mal a propos dans l’histoire naturelle, qui tombe dans le galimatias des qu’elle sort des idees claires, des idees justes! Quel langage pretentieux et vide! Quelles personifications pueriles et surannees! O lucidite! O solidite de l’esprit Francais, que devenez-vous?”

“Obscure ideas,” “metaphysical jargon,” “pretentious and empty language,” “puerile and superannuated personifications.” Mr. Darwin has many and hot opponents on this side of the Channel and in Germany, but we do not recollect to have found precisely these sins in the long catalogue of those hitherto laid to his charge. It is worth while, therefore, to examine into these discoveries effected solely by the aid of the “lucidity and solidity” of the mind of M. Flourens.

According to M. Flourens, Mr. Darwin’s great error is that he has personified Nature (p. 10), and further that he has

“imagined a natural selection: he imagines afterwards that this power of selection (pouvoir d’_lire) which he gives to Nature is similar to the power of man. These two suppositions admitted, nothing stops him: he plays with Nature as he likes, and makes her do all he pleases.” (P. 6.)

And this is the way M. Flourens extinguishes natural selection:

“Voyons donc encore une fois, ce qu’il peut y avoir de fonde dans ce qu’on nomme election naturelle.

“L’election naturelle n’est sous un autre nom que la nature. Pour un etre organise, la nature n’est que l’organisation, ni plus ni moins.

“Il faudra donc aussi personnifier l’organisation, et dire que l’organisation choisit l’organisation. L’election naturelle est cette forme substantielle dont on jouait autrefois avec tant de facilite. Aristote disait que ‘Si l’art de batir etait dans le bois, cet art agirait comme la nature.’ A la place de l’art de batir M. Darwin met l’election naturelle, et c’est tout un: l’un n’est pas plus chimerique que l’autre.” (P.31.)

And this is really all that M. Flourens can make of Natural Selection. We have given the original, in fear lest a translation should be regarded as a travesty; but with the original before the reader, we may try to analyse the passage. “For an organized being, Nature is only organization, neither more nor less.”

Organized beings then have absolutely no relation to inorganic nature: a plant does not, depend on soil or sunshine, climate, depth in the ocean, height above it; the quantity of saline matters in water have no influence upon animal life; the substitution of carbonic acid for oxygen in our atmosphere would hurt nobody! That these are absurdities no one should know better than M. Flourens; but they are logical deductions from the assertion just quoted, and from the further statement that natural selection means only that “organization chooses and selects organization.”

For if it be once admitted (what no sane man denies) that the chances of life of any given organism are increased by certain conditions (A) and diminished by their opposites (B), then it is mathematically certain that any change of conditions in the direction of (A) will exercise a selective influence in favour of that organism, tending to its increase and multiplication, while any change in the direction of (B) will exercise a selective influence against that organism, tending to its decrease and extinction.

Or, on the other hand, conditions remaining the same, let a given organism vary (and no one doubts that they do vary) in two directions: into one form (a) better fitted to cope with these conditions than the original stock, and a second (b) less well adapted to them. Then it is no less certain that the conditions in question must exercise a selective influence in favour of (a) and against ( b), so that (a) will tend to predominance, and (b) to extirpation.

That M. Flourens should be unable to perceive the logical necessity of these simple arguments, which lie at the foundation of all Mr. Darwin’s reasoning; that he should confound an irrefragable deduction from the observed relations of organisms to the conditions which lie around them, with a metaphysical “forme substantielle,” or a chimerical personification of the powers of Nature, would be incredible, were it not that other passages of his work leave no room for doubt upon the subject.

“On imagine une ‘election naturelle’ que, pour plus de menagement, on me dit etre inconsciente, sans s’apercevoir que le contre-sens litteral est precisement la: ‘election inconsciente’.” (P. 52.)

“J’ai deja dit ce qu’il faut penser de ‘l’election naturelle’. Ou ‘l’election naturelle’ n’est rien, ou c’est la nature: mais la nature douee ‘d’election’, mais la nature personnifiee: derniere erreur du dernier siecle: Le xixe fait plus de personnifications.” (P. 53.)

M. Flourens cannot imagine an unconscious selection—it is for him a contradiction in terms. Did M. Flourens ever visit one of the prettiest watering-places of “la belle France,” the Baie d’Arcachon? If so, he will probably have passed through the district of the Landes, and will have had an opportunity of observing the formation of “dunes” on a grand scale. What are these “dunes”? The winds and waves of the Bay of Biscay have not much consciousness, and yet they have with great care “selected,” from among an infinity of masses of silex of all shapes and sizes, which have been submitted to their action, all the grains of sand below a certain size, and have heaped them by themselves over a great area. This sand has been “unconsciously selected” from amidst the gravel in which it first lay with as much precision as if man had “consciously selected” it by the aid of a sieve. Physical Geology is full of such selections—of the picking out of the soft from the hard, of the soluble from the insoluble, of the fusible from the infusible, by natural agencies to which we are certainly not in the habit of ascribing consciousness.

But that which wind and sea are to a sandy beach, the sum of influences, which we term the “conditions of existence,” is to living organisms. The weak are sifted out from the strong. A frosty night “selects” the hardy plants in a plantation from among the tender ones as effectually as if it were the wind, and they, the sand and pebbles, of our illustration; or, on the other hand, as if the intelligence of a gardener had been operative in cutting the weaker organisms down. The thistle, which has spread over the Pampas, to the destruction of native plants, has been more effectually “selected” by the unconscious operation of natural conditions than if a thousand agriculturists had spent their time in sowing it.

It is one of Mr. Darwin’s many great services to Biological science that he has demonstrated the significance of these facts. He has shown that—given variation and given change of conditions—the inevitable result is the exercise of such an influence upon organisms that one