SOME POPULAR MISCONCEPTIONS OF

DARWINISM.

BY REV. S. FLETCHER WILLIAMS.

Or the words spoken during the last quarter of a century none has produced more violent agitation, none has been more bitterly opposed, none has been subjected to more silly abuse, none has gone more rapidly towards conquest, none has produced a wider change in human thinking, than the word "Darwinism." It is only twenty-two years since the Origin of Species was published, and already the philosophy of that book has conquered the great intellectual centres in the old world and the new. Its author has kept the honours of the discussion; and why? Because behind the power of the book is the power, of the man. Mr. Darwin is now everywhere recognised as an earnest man of transcendent scientific knowledge, with a love of truth for the truth's sake that is as fascinating as the breadth and thoroughness of his learning, with a temper the balance of which is one of the sources of his strength. He is no mere iconoclast, a vandal, a speculative adventurer; but a self-poised apostle of science, distinguished for a patient industry that rebukes the haste with which we rush to conclusions, and for a dignity of candour that puts all dogmatism to shame. His veracity, his fairness, his cautiousness of method are so evident, his willingness to re-consider his positions is so marked, his modesty is so sincere, as to disarm all but the most determined prepossession. Nevertheless, the philosophy so attractively presented, and so widely accepted by students and interpreters of the laws of life, is still hotly opposed in many quarters, and the opposition is often based upon misconceptions of what Darwin and his fellow-teachers claim,

It is worth while, then, to examine some of these misconceptions, and to show wherein I think they are misconceptions.

What is Darwinism? The earth is covered by numberless clusters of organised beings-men, birds, beasts, fishes, and plants. Very loosely speaking, we may say that each cluster of which the individuals reproduce other individuals having the common characteristics of the cluster is called a species. The question is how these streams of life, which, though in some cases intimately connected, seem now permanently severed one from the other, first came into existence.

Previously to the appearance of the Origin of Species the majority of naturalists and religious persons had-to put the statement guardedly-maintained that no evidence had been adduced to prove that species in the animal world had descended from other species by ordinary generation; since the publication of the Origin of Species a continually increasing majority of naturalists and a number of the most formative minds in theology have believed that evidence has been brought forward, sufficient in nature and in amount, to prove that proposition. In other words, the old theory was that each species was created separately-that, for example, each species of thrush, of finch, of shark, of tiger, of grass, of reed, of fungus was called into existence by a distinct creative fiat. The new theory is that every existent form of life has been evolved from some other, that all the thrushes had a common ancestor, all the families of birds one still more remote, all the vertebrate animals one removed still further into the dark backward and abysm of time. I am not, at present, expressing an opinion as to which of these theories is the correct one. My object is to state distinctly what the Darwinian theory is, and what the revolution in scientific opinion which Mr. Darwin has effected amounts to. How many comprehend this? Mr. Ruskin, for example,

one of the most acute of men and a great reader of natural history, speaks, in his Queen of the Air, as if Darwinians held that a bird could develop from a fish. The bird is separated from the fish by the entire family of reptiles, and a Darwinian feels, more intensely than a naturalist of any other school can feel, that the overleaping of this enormous gap is an impossibility in the nature of things. He does not recognise, throughout the vast series, one instance of "overleaping." He maintains that the evolution took place by means of infinite gradations and countless variations, each so minute as to be hardly observable. His real difficulty is not to account for such differences as those between a salmon and an elephant-a difficulty which no one whose knowledge of science exceeds that of a popular jester or an Athenæum reviewer would propose-but to find explicit proof that any one well-defined species, such as the missel-thrush, sprang by ordinary generation and natural selection from any closely-allied species, such as the common thrush or blackbird. This difficulty is well and honestly put by Professor Huxley. "After much consideration," he writes-at least he wrote this eleven years ago, and I am not aware that he has retracted it-" After much consideration, and with assuredly no bias against Mr. Darwin's views, it is our clear conviction that, as the evidence stands, it is not absolutely proven that a group of animals, having all the characteristics exhibited by species, has ever been originated by selection, whether artificial or natural. Groups having the morphological character of species, distinct and permanent races, in fact, have been so produced over and over again; but there is no positive evidence, at present, that any group of animals has, by variation and selective breeding, given rise to another group which was even in the least degree infertile from the first. Mr. Darwin is perfectly aware of this weak point, and brings forward a multitude of

ingenious and important arguments to diminish the force of the objection. We admit the value of these arguments to their fullest extent-nay, we will go so far as to express our belief that experiments conducted by a skilful physiologist would very probably obtain the desired production of mutually more or less infertile breeds from a common stock, in a comparatively few years; but still, as the case stands at present, this little rift within the lute' is not to be disguised nor overlooked." 1 Mr. Alfred Russell Wallace has mentioned some facts which bear directly on this difficulty. In certain districts lying widely apart from each other in South America he found butterflies which, though closely-allied species, had the characteristic specified by Professor Huxley, that they were mutually infertile. But in the districts between their respective localities there were several varieties intermediate between these two, and with these the species at, so to speak, each end of the line, were fertile. Under these circumstances it is easy to see that two species, which mutually repelled each other and were infertile, might be connected by ties of relationship through varieties intermediate between them. The passage I have quoted from Professor Huxley, and this illustration from Mr. Wallace, enable us to realise how exquisitely slight is the dividing line across which sound Darwinians believe it to be possible for one species to pass into another.

1. Mr. Darwin maintains that this barrier has been passed in a continuous series for millions of years, and that thus the countless varieties of the animal world have arisen. Yet, notwithstanding the array of evidence in favour of this conclusion, there is a prevalent misconception that Darwinism is a mere dream, an idle fancy, a baseless speculation, having no facts in its favour. But the facts which point

1 Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews. By T. H. Huxley, 1870.

p. 323-4.

towards Darwinism are numerous and significant.

Students

in natural history had observed these facts long before Mr. Darwin's day, and had to some extent formed theories to account for them. It was the existence of these facts in botany and zoology that first led Mr. Darwin to his famous theory.

2

It is hardly possible to put into a brief paper arguments which shall be deemed decisive in favour of the general doctrine of Darwinism; the force of the appeal which the process of reasoning makes depends so largely upon a somewhat wide acquaintance with the facts of natural history and geology, and upon the habit of mind which is formed by the constant recognition of facts which tend with more or less of directness to the same conclusion. Two or three lines of the argument may, however, be indicated.

There is, first of all, the discovery which every student of botany or zoology is continually making, that forms which his manuals teach him to regard as specifically distinct are linked together by varieties which he cannot rank with confidence in this or that class, but which rather seem as stepping-stones between classes. The first idea suggested to him is that of a "rectification of boundaries; " the increase or the diminution of species so that his varieties may find their proper resting-place. The study of teratology may for a time confirm him in this belief. He finds, for instance, that variations within species may be produced by an excess or by a lack of nourishment; and that when the conditions are equalised the varieties disappear. But there are variations

2 But the theory of natural selection was first announced by Lamarck, in the year of Mr. Darwin's birth, in 1809; while Leopold Von Buch, in 1825, Geoffrey St. Hilaire and Von Baer in 1823, Oken in 1842, Mr. Herbert Spencer in 1852, and Mr. Alfred Russell Wallace in 1858, are the more prominent thinkers among many who had discussed natural selection in plants and animals since Lamarck announced the idea, and before Mr. Darwin published the Origin of Species.

L