Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/117

 supposed to prevail at all in at least one whole department of animal life—the aquatic," or "that the struggle for life could have no scope for exercise among the lower forms of life," etc., etc.? The truth can only be that this writer has either never read Darwin at all, or that he has forgotten the most distinctive principles of which Darwinism consists. For, it would be needless to tell nine persons out of ten who may read this reply, that Darwin is most explicit in assigning a very subordinate place to the function of actual contest in the struggle for existence; he supposes a host of other agencies to be of far more importance in determining the fitness of the survivors—a host, indeed, which it is literally true that no man can number. Doubtless the poetic force of Mr. Darwin's metaphor has ludicrously misled his critic; and, if the latter were to substitute for it some such term as Competition for Life, it is impossible that we could hear anything more even from the "feeblest" unfortunate among the strugglers against evolution, about being unable to understand how the principle could apply to the lower forms of life.

The remarks, then, which I have quoted concerning natural selection clearly prove that that writer has either never read, or has entirely forgotten, the "Origin of Species." His remarks simultaneously quoted concerning sexual selection further prove that he has either never read, or has entirely forgotten, the "Descent of Man." Otherwise it would have been impossible for him to write, with all the added emphasis supplied by a mark of admiration, "Surely there is but scant room for the hypothesis of a 'struggle for life,' and still less for that of 'selection in relation to sex,' among fishes!" A reviewer has a perfect right to differ to any extent he pleases with the writer whom he reviews, provided that he gives some evidence of having read the works of that writer; but a man who, "listening to the suggestions of his own mind," thinks that he is making a strong point by propounding, as a reductio ad absurdum, a belief which the author he reviews has brought a large quantity of evidence to support—such a man can only be deemed a foolish adventurer in the province of criticism. Whether or not sexual selection obtains among fish may properly be regarded as an open question, and the supposition that it does may, perhaps, seem to some persons unlikely, even after they have read all that Darwin has to say upon the subject. But any dubiousness of the doctrine itself does not affect the evidence, which is supplied by the reductio ad absurdum form, that the reviewer is ignorant that Darwin has seriously advocated the possibility of sexual selection occurring among certain aquatic animals.

Having spoken of the reviewer's ignorance of the "Origin of Species" and the "Descent of Man," I may next allude to his ignorance of the "Variation of Plants and Animals under Domestication." Here, at least, total ignorance of the work he names is the most charitable construction that we can put upon the following passage: