Page:The Times, Origin of Species.djvu/3

 modify any given kind of animal or plant in such a manner as to give rise to another kind,  which would be admitted by naturalists as a distinct species. Lamarck imagined that he had discovered this vera causa in the admitted facts  that some organs may be modified by exercise; and that modifications,  once produced, are capable of hereditary transmission. It does not seem to have occurred to him to inquire whether there is any reason to  believe that there are any limits to the amount of modification  producible, or to ask how long an animal is likely to endeavour to  gratify an impossible desire. The bird, in our example, would surely have renounced fish dinners long before it had produced the least effect  on leg or neck. Since Lamarck's time, almost all competent naturalists have left speculations on the origin of species to such dreamers as the author of  the "Vestiges," by whose well-intentioned efforts the Lamarckian theory  received its final condemnation in the minds of all sound thinkers. Notwithstanding this silence, however, the transmutation theory, as it has been called, has been a "skeleton in the closet" to many an honest  zoologist and botanist who had a soul above the mere naming of dried  plants and skins. Surely, has such an one thought, nature is a mighty and consistent whole, and the providential order established in the  world of life must, if we could only see it rightly, be consistent with  that dominant over the multiform shapes of brute matter. But what is the history of astronomy, of all the branches of physics, of chemistry,  of medicine, but a narration of the steps by which the human mind has  been compelled, often sorely against its will, to recognize the  operation of secondary causes in events where ignorance beheld an  immediate intervention of a higher power? And when we know that living things are formed of the same elements as the inorganic world, that they  act and react upon it, bound by a thousand ties of natural piety, is it  probable, nay is it possible, that they, and they alone, should have no  order in their seeming disorder, no unity in their seeming  multiplicity, should suffer no explanation by the discovery of some  central and sublime law of mutual connexion? Questions of this kind have assuredly often arisen, but it might have been long before they received such expression as would have commanded  the respect and attention of the scientific world, had it not been for  the publication of the work which prompted this article. Its author, Mr. Darwin, inheritor of a once celebrated name, won his spurs in  science when most of those now distinguished were young men, and has  for the last 20 years held a place in the front ranks of British  philosophers. After a circumnavigatory voyage, undertaken solely for the love of his science, Mr. Darwin published a series of researches  which at once arrested the attention of naturalists and geologists; his  generalizations have since received ample confirmation, and now command  universal assent, nor is it questionable that they have had the most  important influence on the progress of science. More recently Mr. Darwin, with a versatility which is among the rarest of gifts, turned his attention to a most difficult question of zoology and minute  anatomy; and no living naturalist and anatomist has published a better  monograph than that which resulted from his labours. Such a man, at all events, has not entered the sanctuary with unwashed hands, and when  he lays before us the results of 20 years' investigation and reflection  we must listen even though we be disposed to strike. But, in reading his work it must be confessed that the attention which might at first  be dutifully, soon becomes willingly, given, so clear is the author's  thought, so outspoken his conviction, so honest and fair the candid  expression of his doubts. Those who would judge the book must read it; we shall endeavour only to make its line of argument and its  philosophical position intelligible to the general reader in our own  way. The Baker-street Bazaar has just been exhibiting its familiar annual spectacle. Straight-backed, small-headed, big-barrelled oxen, as dissimilar from any wild species as can well be imagined, contended for  attention and praise with sheep of half-a-dozen different breeds and  styes of bloated preposterous pigs, no more like a wild boar or sow than  a city alderman is like an ourang-outang. The cattle show has been, and perhaps may again be, succeeded by a poultry show, of whose crowing  and clucking prodigies it can only be certainly predicated that they  will be very unlike the aboriginal Phasianus gallus. If the seeker after animal anomalies is not satisfied, a turn or two in Seven Dials  will convince him that the breeds of pigeons are quite as extraordinary  and unlike one another and their parent stock, while the Horticultural  Society will provide him with any number of corresponding vegetable  aberrations from nature's types. He will learn with no little surprise, too, in the course of his travels, that the proprietors and producers  of these animal and vegetable anomalies regard them as distinct  species, with a firm belief, the strength of which is exactly  proportioned to their ignorance of scientific biology, and which is the  more remarkable as they are all proud of their skill in originating such "species." On careful inquiry it is found that all these, and the many other artificial breeds or races of animals and plants, have been produced by  one method. The breeder—and a skilful one must be a person of much sagacity and natural or acquired perceptive faculty—notes some slight  difference, arising he knows not how, in some individuals of his stock. If he wish to perpetuate the difference, to form a breed with the peculiarity in question strongly marked, he selects such male and  female individuals as exhibit the desired character, and breeds from  them. Their offspring are then carefully examined, and those which exhibit the peculiarity the most distinctly are selected for breeding,  and this operation is repeated until the desired amount of divergence  from the primitive stock is reached. It is then found that by continuing the process of selection—always breeding, that is, from  well-marked forms, and allowing no impure crosses to interfere,—a race  may be formed, the tendency of which to reproduce itself is exceedingly  strong; nor is the limit to the amount of divergence which may be thus  produced known, but one thing is certain, that, if certain breeds of  dogs, or of pigeons, or of horses, were known only in a fossil state,  no naturalist would hesitate in regarding them as distinct species. But, in all these cases we have human interference. Without the breeder there would be no selection, and without the selection no  race. Before admitting the possibility of natural species having originated in any similar way, it must be proved that there is in nature  some power which takes the place of man, and performs a selection sua  sponte. It is the claim of Mr. Darwin that he professes to have discovered the existence and the modus operandi of this natural  selection, as he terms it; and, if he be right, the process is perfectly  simple and comprehensible, and irresistibly deducible from very  familiar but well nigh forgotten facts. Who, for instance, has duly reflected upon all the consequences of the marvellous struggle for existence which is daily and hourly going on  among living beings? Not only does every animal live at the expense of some other animal or plant, but the very plants are at war. The ground is full of seeds that cannot rise into seedlings; the seedlings rob one  another of air, light and water, the strongest robber winning the day,  and extinguishing his competitors. Year after year, the wild animals with which man never interferes are, on the average, neither more nor  less numerous than they were; and yet we know that the annual produce of  every pair is from one to perhaps a million young,—so that it is  mathematically certain that, on the average, as many are killed by  natural causes as are born every year, and those only escape which  happen to be a little better fitted to resist destruction than those  which die. The individuals of a species are like the crew of a foundered ship, and none but good swimmers have a chance of reaching  the land. Such being unquestionably the necessary conditions under which living creatures exist, Mr. Darwin discovers in them the instrument of natural selection. Suppose that in the midst of this incessant competition some individuals of a species (A) present accidental  variations which happen to fit them a little better than their fellows  for the struggle in which they are engaged, then the chances are in  favour, not only of these individuals being better nourished than the  others, but of their predominating over their fellows in other ways, and  of having a better chance of leaving offspring, which will of course  tend to reproduce the peculiarities of their parents. Their offspring will, by a parity of reasoning, tend to predominate over their  contemporaries, and there being (suppose) no room for more than one  species such as A, the weaker variety will eventually be destroyed by  the new destructive influence which is thrown into the scale, and the  stronger will take its place. Sur-