:

Origin and Adaptation.

243

The formation, according to law, of varieties and species from the common type of animal structure, is called "The Natural Origin of Species." The dying of unfavourable and the continuance of favourable specimens are designated "Natural Selection." As to plants and flowers. Leaves become sepals and petals; sepals and petals grow into stamens, nectaries, ovaries. There is, however, a limit to varieties and to those which are strictly species—“ Each of them always remains separated from the others by an interval which Nature cannot overstep.": "It is one of the clearest facts in the animal as in the vegetable world; all races gradually reproduce and perpetuate themselves without mingling or confounding one with the other." It is put yet more forcibly-"No race will amalgamate with another they die out, or seem slowly to be becoming extinct." 3 Professor Huxley states-"To sum up our knowledge of the ethnological past of man; so far as the light is bright, it shows him substantially the same as now, and when it grows dim, it permits us to see no sign that he was other than he is now.' "4 In the same address he says "Admit that Negroes and Australians, Negritoes and Mongols are distinct species, a distinct genus, if you will, and you may yet, with perfect consistency, be the strictest of monogenists, and even believe in Adam and Eve as the primeval parents of all mankind." So we may say with Sir Charles Lyell "There is no valid objection to the doctrine of the human race springing from a single pair.'

Goethe was the first, Professor Helmholtz says, who laid down with precision and confidence, that all differences in the structure of animals must be looked upon as variations of a single primitive type, induced by coalescence, alteration, increase, diminution, or even the complete removal of single parts of the structure; the very principle, in fact, which has become the leading idea of comparative anatomy in its present stage. Dr. Darwin thinks "there is grandeur in this view of life, with its 1 Isidore Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire, "Historie Naturelle Generale," iii. p. 210.

2 Prichard, "Natural History of Man," i. p. 17.

3 Ethnological Journal, p. 98.

"Method and Results of Ethnology."

8 66 Antiquity of Man," xx. p. 385.
• Goethe's "Scientific Researches."

several powers, having been originally breathed by the
Creator into a few forms or into one."1 Professor Huxley
says "All existing species are the result of the modification
of pre-existing species, and those of their predecessors; and
it is probable, though not a necessary consequence of this
hypothesis, that all living creatures have arisen from a single
stock.... The vast series of extinct animals is not divisible,
as was once supposed, into distinct groups, separated by
sharply marked boundaries. There are no great gulfs
between epochs and formations-no successive periods
marked by the appearance of plants, of water animals, and
of land animals en masse.' 11 2
It is conceivable, though no
case is certainly known of any animal or plant assuming
the characters of a new species; that species may have been
so constructed as, after a certain number of generations, to
undergo either abrupt or gradual changes similar to those in
embryological growth. In any case, it is better to think that
no life is overlaid and smothered; but capable of receiving
and acting upon impulses toward the higher and more lovely.
The theory of Lamarck groups organic matter under
simple forms. Their first outlines, altered by time and
circumstances, successively give birth to radiated creatures,
to the inferior molluscs, to articulate animals, to the lowest
fishes, then to man. "Exercising an organ gains develop-
ment and extension which insensibly change it, until it
becomes wholly different. On the contrary, the faulty use
of an organ impoverishes it gradually, and ends by destroy-
ing it." Birds, ceasing to fly, lose the power of flight.
&
"This atrophy reaches its climax in the snakes, . . . by the
ribs and intercostal muscles having undertaken the work of
the limbs." Mr. Owen writes-"I am constrained by
evidence to affirm that in the vertebrate, as in the inverte-
brate series, there is manifested a principle of development
through polar relations, working by repetition of act, and
by multiplication of life-parts, controlled by an opposite
tendency to diversify the construction, and enrich it with all
possible forms, proportions, and modifications of parts, con-
ducive to the fulfilment of a pre-ordained purpose and a final

1 66 Origin of Species," Edit. 4, p. 576.
2 "Criticism on the Origin of Species."
3 "Organisation des Corps vivants."

"The Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism: " Oscar Schmidt.

Variations from Primitive Type. 245

aim; these opposite yet reciprocally complemental factors co-operating to the ultimate result, with different degrees of disturbance, yet without destruction of the evidence of the typical unity." Evidence may be multiplied to any extent. "Every cell, like every individual plant or animal, is the product of a previous organism of the same kind." "Unity

1

3

of plan everywhere lies hidden under the mask of diversity of structure." In plainer words-"To study the succession of animals in time, and their distribution in space, is to become acquainted with the ideas of God Himself." "There is," says Dr. George Combe, "scarcely a single page in my three physiological works in which God was not present to my mind. I regard the whole laws of animal economy, and of the universe, as the direct dictates of the Deity; and in urging compliance with them, it is with the earnestness and reverence due to a Divine command that I do it. I almost lose the consciousness of self in the anxiety to attain the end, and when I see clearly a law of God in our own nature I rely upon its efficacy for good, with a faith and peace which no storm can shake."

The facts on which we may rely are:-Life was evolved from no life-God evolved it; organisms arise from inorganic matter. Distinct natural history provinces existed very early; but we are unable to explain why vast numbers of highly organised species simultaneously struggle into existence in one age and disappear in another. Whatever alterations arose, whether in fauna or flora, were due to concurrent forces, and determinations of force, to geographical and climatic conditions; not to automatism; but to aid that energy which all phenomena manifest. In some organisms has been little or no change. Globigerinæ, little builders of the vast chalk formations, were as those now found in depths of the Atlantic Ocean. The lizards of to-day are no better than some of the Permian period. The Labyrinthodonts were more majestic than the higher and more specialised types of the living salamander and triton. The Devonian ganoids are near akin to Polypterus and to Lepidosiren. We are not warranted in asserting that all the earlier types

1 66 'Anatomy of Vertebrates," Introd. p. xxi.: Richard Owen, M.A., F.R.S.

2.66 Comparative Physiology," p. 347: Dr. Carpenter F.R.S. 8 "Prin. Zool.," c. xiv.: Agassiz,

were more degraded or embryonic in structure than their modern representatives. A long-winged bird will sometimes hatch a longer-winged; a changing climate and variable conditions produce adaptations; where there is dry land not many aquatic creatures will be found; and those mechanical instruments, ape hands, horse hoofs, whale fins, mole trowels, the wings of the bat, must obey the behests of animal will in their different elements; but that rumination comes to an animal through long sitting, or that wings, trowels, fins, hoof, hands, are interchangeable by animal will, is not credible. Every life conditions its own form; and the power of adaptation, from within and from without, has reflex forcible action: but the persistent types, both of animals and plants, have sustained little change from their first appearance to the present time. In those which are not persistent, there is a resemblance of arrangement, and character, in the succession. The wonder is that the changes were so small; not that they have been so great. No merely physical theory embraces the whole plan. The visible universe is a vast theatre for display of energy coming from the Unseen, and thither returning.

66

Professor Huxley states that science fails to show positively any sort of progressive modification towards a less embryonic, or less generalised type, in a great many groups of animals of long-continued geological existence. In these groups there is abundant evidence of variation-none of what is understood as progression; and, if the well-known geological record is to be regarded as even any considerable fragment of the whole, it is inconceivable that any theory of a necessarily progressive development can stand, for the numerous orders and families cited afford no trace of such a process.' An impartial survey of ascertained truths negatives, as necessary, progress from more or less embryonic forms, or from more to less generalised types: there have been periods of rapid production and of quick decay—“ If the earliest fossiliferous rocks now known are coeval with the commencement of life, and if their contents give us any just conception of the nature and the extent of the earliest fauna and flora, the insignificant amount of modification which can be demonstrated to have taken place in any group of animals or plants, is quite incompatible with the hypothesis 1 "Persistent Types of Life: " Prof. Huxley.

Embryonic Development.

247

that all living forms are the results of a necessary process of progressive development; entirely comprised within the time represented by the fossiliferous rocks. Contrariwise, any admissible hypothesis of progressive modification must be compatible with persistence without progression, through infinite periods."1 Very well: evolution is not an adequate interpretation of biology.

With regard to the time claimed for development of the higher organisms: no great length is needed. The human organism arises from a simple cellular state through many transformations; from a seed, like a plant, into structure like some of the lower fishes, thence into amphibious kind; in a very short time. Then it passes at once into the mammalian type, and shows itself to be human when half an inch in length. The embryonic development is a rapid succession, in general outlines, of advancing forms; but there is not such exactness that the embryonic man is a plant or a fish, he is neither. The leading characteristics are said to require myriads of ages in the plant, and in the fish; but that myriads of ages are required for the production of man through many bestial conditions, of beast through vegetable stages, and of the higher through lower vegetable organisation, is disproved by every child. Symbol of Christ, that further manifestation of God Bodily: Christ being in heart and hands, human soul and Divine Spirit, a vision of the God-man whom we ourselves are to become (Rev. iii. 21).

Similarity of number, structure, parts in organism, and like phases in the embryonic state, are so correlated and adjusted; that, whether abrupt or gradual, all tend to culmination in man himself; whose frame contains the elements and essence of former life. The lower organisms are living figures of much in the human part and state: but only figures. As for animal and vegetable characteristics, they so intermingle that in the lowest forms no separation. seems to exist; nevertheless, an invisible essential difference does exist. In those organisms, the Monera, Amoeba, etc., which change their form, we are as little able to point out a definite fundamental form, as we are to find it in shapeless, formless anorgana, such as non-crystallised stones: nevertheless, though we cannot find any essential difference in the 1 "Persistent Types of Life: " Prof. Huxley.