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Thomas Henry Huxley - Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews

T >> Thomas Henry Huxley >> Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews




"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 Koelliker 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 Koelliker 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, Koelliker, 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
Koelliker'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 state, 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 Koelliker replies, with perfect justice, that the
conclusion drawn by Pelzeln does not really follow from Darwin's
premises, 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.
329).

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 a 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 Koelliker'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 Koelliker 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 Koelliker 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 Koelliker's hypothesis
is based upon the supposed existence of a close analogy between the
phaenomena 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 phaenomena of Agamogenesis, stated generally? An
impregnated egg develops into an asexual form, A; this gives rise,
asexually, to a second form or forms, B, more or less different from A.
B may multiply asexually again; in the simpler cases, however, it does
not, but, acquiring sexual characters, produces impregnated eggs from
whence A once more arises.

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
Hyaena will represent A, and the Dog, B. The first difficulty that
presents itself is that the Hyaena 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[67] is to be followed,
should be a litter, not of puppies, but of young Hyaenas. For the
Agamogenetic series is always, as we have seen, A: B: A: B, &c.;
whereas, for the production of a new species, the series must be A: B:
B: B, &c. 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?

The other alternative put by Professor Koelliker--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
Koelliker, 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 peut
etre etablie entre les especes 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 selecting (_pouvoir d'elire_) 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 jonait 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 xix^e ne 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 is
helped and another is impeded; one tends to predominate, another to
disappear; and thus the living world bears within itself, and is
surrounded by, impulses towards incessant change.

But the truths just stated are as certain as any other physical laws,
quite independently of the truth, or falsehood, of the hypothesis which
Mr. Darwin has based upon them; and that M. Flourens, missing the
substance and grasping at a shadow, should be blind to the admirable
exposition of them, which Mr. Darwin has given, and see nothing there
but a "derniere erreur du dernier siecle"--a personification of
Nature--leads us indeed to cry with him: "O lucidite! O solidite de
l'esprit Francais, que devenez-vous?"

M. Flourens has, in fact, utterly failed to comprehend the first
principles of the doctrine which he assails so rudely. His objections to
details are of the old sort, so battered and hackneyed on this side of
the Channel, that not even a Quarterly Reviewer could be induced to pick
them up for the purpose of pelting Mr. Darwin over again. We have Cuvier
and the mummies; M. Roulin and the domesticated animals of America; the
difficulties presented by hybridism and by Palaeontology; Darwinism a
_rifacciamento_ of De Maillet and Lamarck; Darwinism a system without a
commencement, and its author bound to believe in M. Pouchet, &c. &c. How
one knows it all by heart, and with what relief one reads at p. 65--

"Je laisse M. Darwin!"

But we cannot leave M. Flourens without calling our readers' attention
to his wonderful tenth chapter, "De la Preexistence des Germes et de
l'Epigenese," which opens thus:--

"Spontaneous generation is only a chimaera. This point established,
two hypotheses remain: that of _pre-existence_ and that of
_epigenesis_. The one of these hypotheses has as little foundation
as the other." (P. 163.)

"The doctrine of _epigenesis_ is derived from Harvey: following by
ocular inspection the development of the new being in the Windsor
does, he saw each part appear successively, and taking the moment
of _appearance_ for the moment of _formation_ he imagined
_epigenesis_." (P. 165.)

On the contrary, says M. Flourens (p. 167),

"The new being is formed at a stroke (_tout d'un coup_), as a
whole, instantaneously; it is not formed part by part, and at
different times. It is formed at once; it is formed at the single
_individual_ moment at which the conjunction of the male and female
elements takes place."

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