Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/614

572* suddenly appear in it; or should he say that he had seen near the ground a mass of cloud which, contracting and getting more dense, assumed the form of an unknown animal, what comment should we make? Simply that he was either deluding himself or trying to delude us. We should show by our ridicule that the idea of a special creation, when brought distinctly before us by alleged cases, is too absurd to be entertained.

See, then, the antithesis. While the hypothesis of organic evolution is indirectly supported by great masses of observed facts, the hypothesis of special creation is not only without indirect support from observed facts, but is indirectly contraindicated by the enormous accumulation of observed facts constituting our daily experience.

Striking as this antithesis is, it becomes still more striking when we contemplate the two hypotheses under another aspect. Lord Salisbury implies that in the absence of observed facts directly proving the formation of a species by natural selection, the hypothesis of natural selection can not be sustained. He says:—"I think Prof. Weismann is justified in saying that we can not, either with more or less ease, imagine the process of natural selection"; and he presently implies that in the absence of positive proof the hypothesis of natural selection is "mere conjecture." Let me in the first place point out that Prof. Weismann's meaning is here seriously misrepresented. In the passage Lord Salisbury refers to, Prof. Weismann says of natural selection:—"We accept it—not because we are able to demonstrate the process in detail; not even because we can with more or less ease imagine it [in detail], but simply because we must, etc." And that this is his meaning is proved by the fact that a previous passage to which he refers by the words "as already indicated," runs as follows:—"For it is really very difficult to imagine this process of natural selection in its details." Surely there is an immense difference between the meaning intended and the meaning ascribed. It is perfectly easy to imagine that a flying cannon-ball will presently fall and do damage, while it may be "very difficult to imagine," "in its details," the damage it will do. But, passing over this, let us now consider whether, in the absence of observed facts proving the production of a species by natural selection, we have warrant for the theory of natural selection.

I have always regretted that Mr. Darwin chose this phrase to describe his hypothesis. The word "selection" connotes a conscious process, and so involves a tacit personalization of Nature. By tacitly personalizing that aggregate of surrounding agencies which we call Nature, it introduces vaguely the idea that Nature may select as a human breeder selects—can select and increase a