Page:George Archdall Reid 1896 The present evolution of man.djvu/93

Rh this respect, other things equal, must therefore have contributed, as in the horns of deer, to the ability to leave offspring, and thus led to the evolution of spurs—an evolution slow at first, but afterwards more rapid as the spurs increased in size and importance.

Again and again in the literature of biology we may find objections to the theory of evolution by the accumulation of inborn variations alone, founded on the assumption that such evolution must depend on the perpetuation and accentuation of abnormal variations; that is, of variations which far transcend the specific mean, or which are entirely new structures, and therefore practically speaking deformities, and which occur in only one individual in a thousand, or in ten thousand, or in ten million. Of course if such an assumption is made, it is easy enough to demolish the theory founded on it, and then to declare that, since evolution certainly has occurred, and since the accumulation of inborn traits is inadequate to account for it, it must be due in part at least to the accumulation of acquired traits. Lord Salisbury made this assumption in his speech delivered before the British Association at Oxford in 1894, and going beyond Mr. Spencer, came to the conclusion, remarkable in a President of that learned body, which has done so much to elucidate the sciences of Paleontology and Embryology, from which are drawn decisive proofs of the theory, that on this account, and because mathematicians deny that the globe has been habitable for so long a period as, in the opinion of geologists, is necessary for the evolution of highest life from lowest life, it (the theory of evolution) must be taken as "not proven."

It is not too much to say that Lord Salisbury entirely mistook the point at issue. It is not now doubted by the majority, the immense majority of those acquainted with the facts, that the organic world