CHAPTER XVI—Mr. Grant Allen's "Charles Darwin"



It is here that Mr. Grant Allen's book fails. It is impossible to believe it written in good faith, with no end in view, save to make something easy which might otherwise be found difficult; on the contrary, it leaves the impression of having been written with a desire to hinder us, as far as possible, from understanding things that Mr. Allen himself understood perfectly well.

After saying that "in the public mind Mr. Darwin is perhaps most commonly regarded as the discoverer and founder of the evolution hypothesis," he continues that "the grand idea which he did really originate was not the idea of 'descent with modification,' but the idea of 'natural selection,'" and adds that it was Mr. Darwin's "peculiar glory" to have shown the "nature of the machinery" by which all the variety of animal and vegetable life might have been produced by slow modifications in one or more original types. "The theory of evolution," says Mr. Allen, "already existed in a more or less shadowy and undeveloped shape;" it was Mr. Darwin's "task in life to raise this theory from the rank of a mere plausible and happy guess to the rank of a highly elaborate and almost universally accepted biological system" (pp. 3-5).

We all admit the value of Mr. Darwin's work as having led to the general acceptance of evolution. No one who remembers average middle-class opinion on this subject before 1860 will deny that it was Mr. Darwin who brought us all round to descent with modification; but Mr. Allen cannot rightly say that evolution had only existed before Mr. Darwin's time in "a shadowy, undeveloped state," or as "a mere plausible and happy guess." It existed in the same form as that in which most people accept it now, and had been carried to its extreme development, before Mr. Darwin's father had been born. It is idle to talk of Buffon's work as "a mere plausible and happy guess," or to imply that the first volume of the "Philosophie Zoologique" of Lamarck was a less full and sufficient demonstration of descent with modification than the "Origin of Species" is. It has its defects, shortcomings, and mistakes, but it is an incomparably sounder work than the "Origin of Species;" and though it contains the deplorable omission of any reference to Buffon, Lamarck does not first grossly misrepresent Buffon, and then tell him to go away, as Mr. Darwin did to the author of the "Vestiges" and to Lamarck. If Mr. Darwin was believed and honoured for saying much the same as Lamarck had said, it was because Lamarck had borne the brunt of the laughing. The "Origin of Species" was possible because the "Vestiges" had prepared the way for it. The "Vestiges" were made possible by Lamarck and Erasmus Darwin, and these two were made possible by Buffon. Here a somewhat sharper line can be drawn than is usually found possible when defining the ground covered by philosophers. No one broke the ground for Buffon to anything like the extent that he broke it for those who followed him, and these broke it for one another.

Mr. Allen says (p. 11) that, "in Charles Darwin's own words, Lamarck 'first did the eminent service of arousing attention to the probability of all change in the organic as well as in the inorganic world being the result of law, and not of miraculous interposition.'" Mr. Darwin did indeed use these words, but Mr. Allen omits the pertinent fact that he did not use them till six thousand copies of his work had been issued, and an impression been made as to its scope and claims which the event has shown to be not easily effaced; nor does he say that Mr. Darwin only pays these few words of tribute in a quasi-preface, which, though prefixed to his later editions of the "Origin of Species," is amply neutralised by the spirit which I have shown to be omnipresent in the body of the work itself. Moreover, Mr. Darwin's statement is inaccurate to an unpardonable extent; his words would be fairly accurate if applied to Buffon, but they do not apply to Lamarck.

Mr. Darwin continues that Lamarck "seems to attribute all the beautiful adaptations in nature, such as the long neck of the giraffe for browsing on the branches of trees," to the effects of habit. Mr. Darwin should not say that Lamarck "seems" to do this. It was his business to tell us what led Lamarck to his conclusions, not what "seemed" to do so. Any one who knows the first volume of the "Philosophie Zoologique" will be aware that there is no "seems" in the matter. Mr. Darwin's words "seem" to say that it really could not be worth any practical naturalist's while to devote attention to Lamarck's argument; the inquiry might be of interest to antiquaries, but Mr. Darwin had more important work in hand than following the vagaries of one who had been so completely exploded as Lamarck had been. "Seem" is to men what "feel" is to women; women who feel, and men who grease every other sentence with a "seem," are alike to be looked on with distrust.

"Still," continues Mr. Allen, "Darwin gave no sign. A flaccid, cartilaginous, unphilosophic evolutionism had full possession of the field for the moment, and claimed, as it were, to be the genuine representative of the young and vigorous biological creed, while he himself was in truth the real heir to all the honours of the situation. He was in possession of the master-key which alone could unlock the bars that opposed the progress of evolution, and still he waited. He could afford to wait. He was diligently collecting, amassing, investigating; eagerly reading every new systematic work, every book of travels, every scientific journal, every record of sport, or exploration, or discovery, to extract from the dead mass of undigested fact whatever item of implicit value might swell the definite co-ordinated series of notes in his own commonplace books for the now distinctly contemplated 'Origin of Species.' His way was to make all sure behind him, to summon up all his facts in irresistible array, and never to set out upon a public progress until he was secure against all possible attacks of the ever- watchful and alert enemy in the rear," &c. (p. 73).

It would not be easy to beat this. Mr. Darwin's worst enemy could wish him no more damaging eulogist.

Of the "Vestiges" Mr. Allen says that Mr. Darwin "felt sadly" the inaccuracy and want of profound technical knowledge everywhere displayed by the anonymous author. Nevertheless, long after, in the "Origin of Species," the great naturalist wrote with generous appreciation of the "Vestiges of Creation"—"In my opinion it has done excellent service in this country in calling attention to the subject, in removing prejudice, and in thus preparing the ground for the reception of analogous views."

I have already referred to the way in which Mr. Darwin treated the author of the "Vestiges," and have stated the facts at greater length in "Evolution Old and New," but it may be as well to give Mr. Darwin's words in full; he wrote as follows on the third page of the original edition of the "Origin of Species":-

"The author of the 'Vestiges of Creation' would, I presume, say that, after a certain unknown number of generations, some bird had given birth to a woodpecker, and some plant to the mistletoe, and that these had been produced perfect as we now see them; but this assumption seems to me to be no explanation, for it leaves the case of the coadaptation of organic beings to each other and to their physical conditions of life untouched and unexplained."

The author of the "Vestiges" did, doubtless, suppose that "SOME bird" had given birth to a woodpecker, or more strictly, that a couple of birds had done so—and this is all that Mr. Darwin has committed himself to—but no one better knew that these two birds would, according to the author of the "Vestiges," be just as much woodpeckers, and just as little woodpeckers, as they would be with Mr. Darwin himself. Mr. Chambers did not suppose that a woodpecker became a woodpecker per saltum though born of some widely different bird, but Mr. Darwin's words have no application unless they convey this impression. The reader will note that though the impression is conveyed, Mr. Darwin avoids conveying it categorically. I suppose this is what Mr. Allen means by saying that he "made all things sure behind him." Mr. Chambers did indeed believe in occasional sports; so did Mr. Darwin, and we have seen that in the later editions of the "Origin of Species" he found himself constrained to lay greater stress on these than he had originally done. Substantially, Mr. Chambers held much the same opinion as to the suddenness or slowness of modification as Mr. Darwin did, nor can it be doubted that Mr. Darwin knew this perfectly well.

What I have said about the woodpecker applies also to the mistletoe. Besides, it was Mr. Darwin's business not to presume anything about the matter; his business was to tell us what the author of the "Vestiges" had said, or to refer us to the page of the "Vestiges" on which we should find this. I suppose he was too busy "collecting, amassing, investigating," &c., to be at much pains not to misrepresent those who had been in the field before him. There is no other reference to the "Vestiges" in the "Origin of Species" than this suave but singularly fraudulent passage.

In his edition of 1860 the author of the "Vestiges" showed that he was nettled, and said it was to be regretted Mr. Darwin had read the "Vestiges" "almost as much amiss as if, like its declared opponents, he had an interest in misunderstanding it;" and a little lower he adds that Mr. Darwin's book "in no essential respect contradicts the 'Vestiges,'" but that, on the contrary, "while adding to its explanations of nature, it expressed the same general ideas." {216a} This is substantially true; neither Mr. Darwin's nor Mr. Chambers's are good books, but the main object of both is to substantiate the theory of descent with modification, and, bad as the "Vestiges" is, it is ingenuous as compared with the "Origin of Species." Subsequently to Mr. Chambers' protest, and not till, as I have said, six thousand copies of the "Origin of Species" had been issued, the sentence complained of by Mr. Chambers was expunged, but without a word of retractation, and the passage which Mr. Allen thinks so generous was inserted into the "brief but imperfect" sketch which Mr. Darwin prefixed—after Mr. Chambers had been effectually snuffed out—to all subsequent editions of his "Origin of Species." There is no excuse for Mr. Darwin's not having said at least this much about the author of the "Vestiges" in his first edition; and on finding that he had misrepresented him in a passage which he did not venture to retain, he should not have expunged it quietly, but should have called attention to his mistake in the body of his book, and given every prominence in his power to the correction.

Let us now examine Mr. Allen's record in the matter of natural selection. For years he was one of the foremost apostles of Neo- Darwinism, and any who said a good word for Lamarck were told that this was the "kind of mystical nonsense" from which Mr. Allen "had hoped Mr. Darwin had for ever saved us." {216b} Then in October 1883 came an article in "Mind," from which it appeared as though Mr. Allen had abjured Mr. Darwin and all his works.

"There are only two conceivable ways," he then wrote, "in which any increment of brain power can ever have arisen in any individual. The one is the Darwinian way, by spontaneous variation, that is to say, by variation due to minute physical circumstances affecting the individual in the germ. The other is the Spencerian way, by functional increment, that is to say, by the effect of increased use and constant exposure to varying circumstances during conscious life."

Mr. Allen calls this the Spencerian view, and so it is in so far as that Mr. Spencer has adopted it. Most people will call it Lamarckian. This, however, is a detail. Mr. Allen continues:-

"I venture to think that the first way, if we look it clearly in the face, will be seen to be practically unthinkable; and that we have no alternative, therefore, but to accept the second."

I like our looking a "way" which is "practically unthinkable" "clearly in the face." I particularly like "practically unthinkable." I suppose we can think it in theory, but not in practice. I like almost everything Mr. Allen says or does; it is not necessary to go far in search of his good things; dredge up any bit of mud from him at random and we are pretty sure to find an oyster with a pearl in it, if we look it clearly in the face; I mean, there is sure to be something which will be at any rate "almost" practically unthinkable. But however this may be, when Mr. Allen wrote his article in "Mind" two years ago, he was in substantial agreement with myself about the value of natural selection as a means of modification—by natural selection I mean, of course, the commonly known Charles-Darwinian natural selection from fortuitous variations; now, however, in 1885, he is all for this same natural selection again, and in the preface to his "Charles Darwin" writes (after a handsome acknowledgment of "Evolution Old and New") that he "differs from" me "fundamentally in" my "estimate of the worth of Charles Darwin's distinctive discovery of natural selection."

This he certainly does, for on page 81 of the work itself he speaks of "the distinctive notion of natural selection" as having, "like all true and fruitful ideas, more than once flashed," &c. I have explained usque ad nauseam, and will henceforth explain no longer, that natural selection is no "distinctive notion" of Mr. Darwin's. Mr. Darwin's "distinctive notion" is natural selection from among fortuitous variations.

Writing again (p. 89) of Mr. Spencer's essay in the "Leader," {218a} Mr. Allen says:-

"It contains, in a very philosophical and abstract form, the theory of 'descent with modification' without the distinctive Darwinian adjunct of 'natural selection' or survival of the fittest. Yet it was just that lever dexterously applied, and carefully weighted with the whole weight of his endlessly accumulated inductive instances, that finally enabled our modern Archimedes to move the world."

Again:-

"To account for adaptation, for the almost perfect fitness of every plant and every animal to its position in life, for the existence (in other words) of definitely correlated parts and organs, we must call in the aid of survival of the fittest. Without that potent selective agent, our conception of the becoming of life is a mere chaos; order and organisation are utterly inexplicable save by the brilliant illuminating ray of the Darwinian principle" (p. 93).

And yet two years previously this same principle, after having been thinkable for many years, had become "unthinkable."

Two years previously, writing of the Charles-Darwinian scheme of evolution, Mr. Allen had implied it as his opinion "that all brains are what they are in virtue of antecedent function." "The one creed," he wrote—referring to Mr Darwin's—"makes the man depend mainly upon the accidents of molecular physics in a colliding germ cell and sperm cell; the other makes him depend mainly on the doings and gains of his ancestors as modified and altered by himself."

This second creed is pure Erasmus-Darwinism and Lamarck.

Again:-

"It seems to me easy to understand how survival of the fittest may result in progress STARTING FROM SUCH FUNCTIONALLY PRODUCED GAINS (italics mine), but impossible to understand how it could result in progress, if it had to start in mere accidental structural increments due to spontaneous variation alone." {219a}

Which comes to saying that it is easy to understand the Lamarckian system of evolution, but not the Charles-Darwinian. Mr. Allen concluded his article a few pages later on by saying

"The first hypothesis" (Mr. Darwin's) "is one that throws no light upon any of the facts. The second hypothesis" (which is unalloyed Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck) "is one that explains them all with transparent lucidity." Yet in his "Charles Darwin" Mr. Allen tells us that though Mr. Darwin "did not invent the development theory, he made it believable and comprehensible" (p. 4).

In his "Charles Darwin" Mr. Allen does not tell us how recently he had, in another place, expressed an opinion about the value of Mr. Darwin's "distinctive contribution" to the theory of evolution, so widely different from the one he is now expressing with characteristic appearance of ardour. He does not explain how he is able to execute such rapid changes of front without forfeiting his claim on our attention; explanations on matters of this sort seem out of date with modern scientists. I can only suppose that Mr. Allen regards himself as having taken a brief, as it were, for the production of a popular work, and feels more bound to consider the interests of the gentleman who pays him than to say what he really thinks; for surely Mr. Allen would not have written as he did in such a distinctly philosophical and scientific journal as "Mind" without weighing his words, and nothing has transpired lately, apropos of evolution, which will account for his present recantation. I said in my book "Selections," &c., that when Mr. Allen made stepping-stones of his dead selves, he jumped upon them to some tune. I was a little scandalised then at the completeness and suddenness of the movement he executed, and spoke severely; I have sometimes feared I may have spoken too severely, but his recent performance goes far to warrant my remarks.

If, however, there is no dead self about it, and Mr. Allen has only taken a brief, I confess to being not greatly edified. I grant that a good case can be made out for an author's doing as I suppose Mr. Allen to have done; indeed I am not sure that both science and religion would not gain if every one rode his neighbour's theory, as at a donkey-race, and the least plausible were held to win; but surely, as things stand, a writer by the mere fact of publishing a book professes to be giving a bona fide opinion. The analogy of the bar does not hold, for not only is it perfectly understood that a barrister does not necessarily state his own opinions, but there exists a strict though unwritten code to protect the public against the abuses to which such a system must be liable. In religion and science no such code exists—the supposition being that these two holy callings are above the necessity for anything of the kind. Science and religion are not as business is; still, if the public do not wish to be taken in, they must be at some pains to find out whether they are in the hands of one who, while pretending to be a judge, is in reality a paid advocate, with no one's interests at heart except his client's, or in those of one who, however warmly he may plead, will say nothing but what springs from mature and genuine conviction.

The present unsettled and unsatisfactory state of the moral code in this respect is at the bottom of the supposed antagonism between religion and science. These two are not, or never ought to be, antagonistic. They should never want what is spoken of as reconciliation, for in reality they are one. Religion is the quintessence of science, and science the raw material of religion; when people talk about reconciling religion and science they do not mean what they say; they mean reconciling the statements made by one set of professional men with those made by another set whose interests lie in the opposite direction—and with no recognised president of the court to keep them within due bounds this is not always easy.

Mr. Allen says:-

"At the same time it must be steadily remembered that there are many naturalists at the present day, especially among those of the lower order of intelligence, who, while accepting evolutionism in a general way, and therefore always describing themselves as Darwinians, do not believe, and often cannot even understand, the distinctive Darwinian addition to the evolutionary doctrine—namely, the principle of natural selection. Such hazy and indistinct thinkers as these are still really at the prior stage of Lamarckian evolution" (p. 199).

Considering that Mr. Allen was at that stage himself so recently, he might deal more tenderly with others who still find "the distinctive Darwinian adjunct" "unthinkable." It is perhaps, however, because he remembers his difficulties that Mr. Allen goes on as follows:-

"It is probable that in the future, while a formal acceptance of Darwinism becomes general, the special theory of natural selection will be thoroughly understood and assimilated only by the more abstract and philosophical minds."

By the kind of people, in fact, who read the Spectator and are called thoughtful; and in point of fact less than a twelvemonth after this passage was written, natural selection was publicly abjured as "a theory of the origin of species" by Mr. Romanes himself, with the implied approval of the Times.

"Thus," continues Mr. Allen, "the name of Darwin will often no doubt be tacked on to what are in reality the principles of Lamarck."

It requires no great power of prophecy to foretell this, considering that it is done daily by nine out of ten who call themselves Darwinians. Ask ten people of ordinary intelligence how Mr. Darwin explains the fact that giraffes have long necks, and nine of them will answer "through continually stretching them to reach higher and higher boughs." They do not understand that this is the Lamarckian view of evolution, not the Darwinian; nor will Mr. Allen's book greatly help the ordinary reader to catch the difference between the two theories, in spite of his frequent reference to Mr. Darwin's "distinctive feature," and to his "master-key." No doubt the British public will get to understand all about it some day, but it can hardly be expected to do so all at once, considering the way in which Mr. Allen and so many more throw dust in its eyes, and will doubtless continue to throw it as long as an honest penny is to be turned by doing so. Mr. Allen, then, is probably right in saying that "the name of Darwin will no doubt be often tacked on to what are in reality the principles of Lamarck," nor can it be denied that Mr. Darwin, by his practice of using "the theory of natural selection" as though it were a synonym for "the theory of descent with modification," contributed to this result.

I do not myself doubt that he intended to do this, but Mr. Allen would say no less confidently he did not. He writes of Mr. Darwin as follows:-

"Of Darwin's pure and exalted moral nature no Englishman of the present generation can trust himself to speak with becoming moderation."

He proceeds to trust himself thus:-

"His love of truth, his singleness of heart, his sincerity, his earnestness, his modesty, his candour, his absolute sinking of self and selfishness—these, indeed are all conspicuous to every reader on the very face of every word he ever printed."

This "conspicuous sinking of self" is of a piece with the "delightful unostentatiousness WHICH EVERY ONE MUST HAVE NOTICED" about which Mr. Allen writes on page 65. Does he mean that Mr. Darwin was "ostentatiously unostentatious," or that he was "unostentatiously ostentatious"? I think we may guess from this passage who it was that in the old days of the Pall Mall Gazelle called Mr. Darwin "a master of a certain happy simplicity."

Mr. Allen continues:-

"Like his works themselves, they must long outlive him. But his sympathetic kindliness, his ready generosity, the staunchness of his friendship, the width and depth and breadth of his affections, the manner in which 'he bore with those who blamed him unjustly without blaming them again'—these things can never be so well known to any other generation of men as to the three generations that walked the world with him" (pp. 174, 175).

Again:-

"He began early in life to collect and arrange a vast encyclopaedia of facts, all finally focussed with supreme skill upon the great principle he so clearly perceived and so lucidly expounded. He brought to bear upon the question an amount of personal observation, of minute experiment, of world-wide book knowledge, of universal scientific ability, such as never, perhaps, was lavished by any other man upon any other department of study. His conspicuous and beautiful love of truth, his unflinching candour, his transparent fearlessness and honesty of purpose, his childlike simplicity, his modesty of demeanour, his charming manner, his affectionate disposition, his kindliness to friends, his courtesy to opponents, his gentleness to harsh and often bitter assailants, kindled in the minds of men of science everywhere throughout the world a contagious enthusiasm only equalled perhaps among the disciples of Socrates and the great teachers of the revival of learning. His name became a rallying-point for the children of light in every country" (pp. 196, 197).

I need not quote more; the sentence goes on to talk about "firmly grounding" something which philosophers and speculators might have taken a century or two more "to establish in embryo;" but those who wish to see it must turn to Mr. Allen's book.

If I have formed too severe an estimate of Mr. Darwin's work and character—and this is more than likely—the fulsomeness of the adulation lavished on him by his admirers for many years past must be in some measure my excuse. We grow tired even of hearing Aristides called just, but what is so freely said about Mr. Darwin puts us in mind more of what the people said about Herod—that he spoke with the voice of a God, not of a man. So we saw Professor Ray Lankester hail him not many years ago as the "greatest of living men." {224a}

It is ill for any man's fame that he should be praised so extravagantly. Nobody ever was as good as Mr. Darwin looked, and a counterblast to such a hurricane of praise as has been lately blowing will do no harm to his ultimate reputation, even though it too blow somewhat fiercely. Art, character, literature, religion, science (I have named them in alphabetical order), thrive best in a breezy, bracing air; I heartily hope I may never be what is commonly called successful in my own lifetime—and if I go on as I am doing now, I have a fair chance of succeeding in not succeeding.



CHAPTER XVII—Professor Ray Lankester and Lamarck



Being anxious to give the reader a sample of the arguments against the theory of natural selection from among variations that are mainly either directly or indirectly functional in their inception, or more briefly against the Erasmus-Darwinian and Lamarckian systems, I can find nothing more to the point, or more recent, than Professor Ray Lankester's letter to the Athenaeum of March 29, 1884, to the latter part of which, however, I need alone call attention. Professor Ray Lankester says:-

"And then we are introduced to the discredited speculations of Lamarck, which have found a worthy advocate in Mr. Butler, as really solid contributions to the discovery of the verae causae of variation! A much more important attempt to do something for Lamarck's hypothesis, of the transmission to offspring of structural peculiarities acquired by the parents, was recently made by an able and experienced naturalist, Professor Semper of Wurzburg. His book on 'Animal Life,' &c., is published in the 'International Scientific Series.' Professor Semper adduces an immense number and variety of cases of structural change in animals and plants brought about in the individual by adaptation (during its individual life-history) to new conditions. Some of these are very marked changes, such as the loss of its horny coat in the gizzard of a pigeon fed on meat; BUT IN NO SINGLE INSTANCE COULD PROFESSOR SEMPER SHOW—although it was his object and desire to do so if possible—that such change was transmitted from parent to offspring. Lamarckism looks all very well on paper, but, as Professor Semper's book shows, when put to the test of observation and experiment it collapses absolutely."

I should have thought it would have been enough if it had collapsed without the "absolutely," but Professor Ray Lankester does not like doing things by halves. Few will be taken in by the foregoing quotation, except those who do not greatly care whether they are taken in or not; but to save trouble to readers who may have neither Lamarck nor Professor Semper at hand, I will put the case as follows:-

Professor Semper writes a book to show, we will say, that the hour- hand of the clock moves gradually forward, in spite of its appearing stationary. He makes his case sufficiently clear, and then might have been content to leave it; nevertheless, in the innocence of his heart, he adds the admission that though he had often looked at the clock for a long time together, he had never been able actually to see the hour-hand moving. "There now," exclaims Professor Ray Lankester on this, "I told you so; the theory collapses absolutely; his whole object and desire is to show that the hour-hand moves, and yet when it comes to the point, he is obliged to confess that he cannot see it do so." It is not worth while to meet what Professor Ray Lankester has been above quoted as saying about Lamarckism beyond quoting the following passage from a review of "The Neanderthal Skull on Evolution" in the "Monthly Journal of Science" for June, 1885 (p. 362):-

"On the very next page the author reproduces the threadbare objection that the 'supporters of the theory have never yet succeeded in observing a single instance in all the millions of years invented (!) in its support of one species of animal turning into another.' Now, ex hypothesi, one species turns into another not rapidly, as in a transformation scene, but in successive generations, each being born a shade different from its progenitors. Hence to observe such a change is excluded by the very terms of the question. Does Mr. Saville forget Mr. Herbert Spencer's apologue of the ephemeron which had never witnessed the change of a child into a man?"

The apologue, I may say in passing, is not Mr. Spencer's; it is by the author of the "Vestiges," and will be found on page 161 of the 1853 edition of that book; but let this pass. How impatient Professor Ray Lankester is of any attempt to call attention to the older view of evolution appears perhaps even more plainly in a review of this same book of Professor Semper's that appeared in "Nature," March 3, 1881. The tenor of the remarks last quoted shows that though what I am about to quote is now more than five years old, it may be taken as still giving us the position which Professor Ray Lankester takes on these matters. He wrote:-

"It is necessary," he exclaims, "to plainly and emphatically state" (Why so much emphasis? Why not "it should be stated"?) "that Professor Semper and a few other writers of similar views" {227a} (I have sent for the number of "Modern Thought" referred to by Professor Ray Lankester but find no article by Mr. Henslow, and do not, therefore, know what he had said) "are not adding to or building on Mr. Darwin's theory, but are actually opposing all that is essential and distinctive in that theory, by the revival of the exploded notion of 'directly transforming agents' advocated by Lamarck and others."

It may be presumed that these writers know they are not "adding to or building on" Mr. Darwin's theory, and do not wish to build on it, as not thinking it a sound foundation. Professor Ray Lankester says they are "actually opposing," as though there were something intolerably audacious in this; but it is not easy to see why he should be more angry with them for "actually opposing" Mr. Darwin than they may be with him, if they think it worth while, for "actually defending" the exploded notion of natural selection—for assuredly the Charles-Darwinian system is now more exploded than Lamarck's is.

What Professor Ray Lankester says about Lamarck and "directly transforming agents" will mislead those who take his statement without examination. Lamarck does not say that modification is effected by means of "directly transforming agents;" nothing can be more alien to the spirit of his teaching. With him the action of the external conditions of existence (and these are the only transforming agents intended by Professor Ray Lankester) is not direct, but indirect. Change in surroundings changes the organism's outlook, and thus changes its desires; desires changing, there is corresponding change in the actions performed; actions changing, a corresponding change is by-and-by induced in the organs that perform them; this, if long continued, will be transmitted; becoming augmented by accumulation in many successive generations, and further modifications perhaps arising through further changes in surroundings, the change will amount ultimately to specific and generic difference. Lamarck knows no drug, nor operation, that will medicine one organism into another, and expects the results of adaptive effort to be so gradual as to be only perceptible when accumulated in the course of many generations. When, therefore, Professor Ray Lankester speaks of Lamarck as having "advocated directly transforming agents," he either does not know what he is talking about, or he is trifling with his readers. Professor Ray Lankester continues:-

"They do not seem to be aware of this, for they make no attempt to examine Mr. Darwin's accumulated facts and arguments." Professor Ray Lankester need not shake Mr. Darwin's "accumulated facts and arguments" at us. We have taken more pains to understand them than Professor Ray Lankester has taken to understand Lamarck, and by this time know them sufficiently. We thankfully accept by far the greater number, and rely on them as our sheet-anchors to save us from drifting on to the quicksands of Neo-Darwinian natural selection; few of them, indeed, are Mr. Darwin's, except in so far as he has endorsed them and given them publicity, but I do not know that this detracts from their value. We have paid great attention to Mr. Darwin's facts, and if we do not understand all his arguments—for it is not always given to mortal man to understand these—yet we think we know what he was driving at. We believe we understand this to the full as well as Mr. Darwin intended us to do, and perhaps better. Where the arguments tend to show that all animals and plants are descended from a common source we find them much the same as Buffon's, or as those of Erasmus Darwin or Lamarck, and have nothing to say against them; where, on the other hand, they aim at proving that the main means of modification has been the fact that if an animal has been "favoured" it will be "preserved"—then we think that the animal's own exertions will, in the long run, have had more to do with its preservation than any real or fancied "favour." Professor Ray Lankester continues:-

"The doctrine of evolution has become an accepted truth" (Professor Ray Lankester writes as though the making of truth and falsehood lay in the hollow of Mr. Darwin's hand. Surely "has become accepted" should be enough; Mr. Darwin did not make the doctrine true) "entirely in consequence of Mr. Darwin's having demonstrated the mechanism." (There is no mechanism in the matter, and if there is, Mr. Darwin did not show it. He made some words which confused us and prevented us from seeing that "the preservation of favoured races" was a cloak for "luck," and that this was all the explanation he was giving) "by which the evolution is possible; it was almost universally rejected, while such undemonstrable agencies as those arbitrarily asserted to exist by Professor Semper and Mr. George Henslow were the only means suggested by its advocates."

Undoubtedly the theory of descent with modification, which received its first sufficiently ample and undisguised exposition in 1809 with the "Philosophie Zoologique" of Lamarck, shared the common fate of all theories that revolutionise opinion on important matters, and was fiercely opposed by the Huxleys, Romaneses, Grant Allens, and Ray Lankesters of its time. It had to face the reaction in favour of the Church which began in the days of the First Empire, as a natural consequence of the horrors of the Revolution; it had to face the social influence and then almost Darwinian reputation of Cuvier, whom Lamarck could not, or would not, square; it was put forward by one who was old, poor, and ere long blind. What theory could do more than just keep itself alive under conditions so unfavourable? Even under the most favourable conditions descent with modification would have been a hard plant to rear, but, as things were, the wonder is that it was not killed outright at once. We all know how large a share social influences have in deciding what kind of reception a book or theory is to meet with; true, these influences are not permanent, but at first they are almost irresistible; in reality it was not the theory of descent that was matched against that of fixity, but Lamarck against Cuvier; who can be surprised that Cuvier for a time should have had the best of it?

And yet it is pleasant to reflect that his triumph was not, as triumphs go, long lived. How is Cuvier best known now? As one who missed a great opportunity; as one who was great in small things, and stubbornly small in great ones. Lamarck died in 1831; in 1861 descent with modification was almost universally accepted by those most competent to form an opinion. This result was by no means so exclusively due to Mr. Darwin's "Origin of Species" as is commonly believed. During the thirty years that followed 1831 Lamarck's opinions made more way than Darwinians are willing to allow. Granted that in 1861 the theory was generally accepted under the name of Darwin, not under that of Lamarck, still it was Lamarck and not Darwin that was being accepted; it was descent, not descent with modification by means of natural selection from among fortuitous variations, that we carried away with us from the "Origin of Species." The thing triumphed whether the name was lost or not. I need not waste the reader's time by showing further how little weight he need attach to the fact that Lamarckism was not immediately received with open arms by an admiring public. The theory of descent has become accepted as rapidly, if I am not mistaken, as the Copernican theory, or as Newton's theory of gravitation.

When Professor Ray Lankester goes on to speak of the "undemonstrable agencies" "arbitrarily asserted" to exist by Professor Semper, he is again presuming on the ignorance of his readers. Professor Semper's agencies are in no way more undemonstrable than Mr. Darwin's are. Mr. Darwin was perfectly cogent as long as he stuck to Lamarck's demonstration; his arguments were sound as long as they were Lamarck's, or developments of, and riders upon, Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck, and almost incredibly silly when they were his own. Fortunately the greater part of the "Origin of Species" is devoted to proving the theory of descent with modification, by arguments against which no exception would have been taken by Mr. Darwin's three great precursors, except in so far as the variations whose accumulation results in specific difference are supposed to be fortuitous—and, to do Mr. Darwin justice, the fortuitousness, though always within hail, is kept as far as possible in the background.

"Mr. Darwin's arguments," says Professor Ray Lankester, "rest on the PROVED existence of minute, many-sided, irrelative variations NOT produced by directly transforming agents." Mr. Darwin throughout the body of the "Origin of Species" is not supposed to know what his variations are or are not produced by; if they come, they come, and if they do not come, they do not come. True, we have seen that in the last paragraph of the book all this was changed, and the variations were ascribed to the conditions of existence, and to use and disuse, but a concluding paragraph cannot be allowed to override a whole book throughout which the variations have been kept to hand as accidental. Mr. Romanes is perfectly correct when he says {232a} that "natural selection" (meaning the Charles-Darwinian natural selection) "trusts to the chapter of accidents in the matter of variation" this is all that Mr. Darwin can tell us; whether they come from directly transforming agents or no he neither knows nor says. Those who accept Lamarck will know that the agencies are not, as a rule, directly transforming, but the followers of Mr. Darwin cannot.

"But showing themselves," continues Professor Ray Lankester, "at each new act of reproduction, as part of the phenomena of heredity such minute 'sports' or 'variations' are due to constitutional disturbance" (No doubt. The difference, however, between Mr. Darwin and Lamarck consists in the fact that Lamarck believes he knows what it is that so disturbs the constitution as generally to induce variation, whereas Mr. Darwin says he does not know), "and appear not in individuals subjected to new conditions" (What organism can pass through life without being subjected to more or less new conditions? What life is ever the exact fac-simile of another? And in a matter of such extreme delicacy as the adjustment of psychical and physical relations, who can say how small a disturbance of established equilibrium may not involve how great a rearrangement?), "but in the offspring of all, though more freely in the offspring of those subjected to special causes of constitutional disturbance. Mr. Darwin has further proved that these slight variations can be transmitted and intensified by selective breeding."

Mr. Darwin did, indeed, follow Buffon and Lamarck in at once turning to animals and plants under domestication in order to bring the plasticity of organic forms more easily home to his readers, but the fact that variations can be transmitted and intensified by selective breeding had been so well established and was so widely known long before Mr. Darwin was born, that he can no more be said to have proved it than Newton can be said to have proved the revolution of the earth on its own axis. Every breeder throughout the world had known it for centuries. I believe even Virgil knew it.

"They have," continues Professor Ray Lankester, "in reference to breeding, a remarkably tenacious, persistent character, as might be expected from their origin in connection with the reproductive process."

The variations do not normally "originate in connection with the reproductive process," though it is during this process that they receive organic expression. They originate mainly, so far as anything originates anywhere, in the life of the parent or parents. Without going so far as to say that no variation can arise in connection with the reproductive system—for, doubtless, striking and successful sports do occasionally so arise—it is more probable that the majority originate earlier. Professor Ray Lankester proceeds:-

"On the other hand, mutilations and other effects of directly transforming agents are rarely, if ever, transmitted." Professor Ray Lankester ought to know the facts better than to say that the effects of mutilation are rarely, if ever, transmitted. The rule is, that they will not be transmitted unless they have been followed by disease, but that where disease has supervened they not uncommonly descend to offspring. {234a} I know Brown-Sequard considered it to be the morbid state of the nervous system consequent upon the mutilation that is transmitted, rather than the immediate effects of the mutilation, but this distinction is somewhat finely drawn.

When Professor Ray Lankester talks about the "other effects of directly transforming agents" being rarely transmitted, he should first show us the directly transforming agents. Lamarck, as I have said, knows them not. "It is little short of an absurdity," he continues, "for people to come forward at this epoch, when evolution is at length accepted solely because of Mr. Darwin's doctrine, and coolly to propose to replace that doctrine by the old notion so often tried and rejected."

Whether this is an absurdity or no, Professor Lankester will do well to learn to bear it without showing so much warmth, for it is one that is becoming common. Evolution has been accepted not "because of" Mr. Darwin's doctrine, but because Mr. Darwin so fogged us about his doctrine that we did not understand it. We thought we were backing his bill for descent with modification, whereas we were in reality backing it for descent with modification by means of natural selection from among fortuitous variations. This last really is Mr. Darwin's theory, except in so far as it is also Mr. A. R. Wallace's; descent, alone, is just as much and just as little Mr. Darwin's doctrine as it is Professor Ray Lankester's or mine. I grant it is in great measure through Mr. Darwin's books that descent has become so widely accepted; it has become so through his books, but in spite of, rather than by reason of, his doctrine. Indeed his doctrine was no doctrine, but only a back-door for himself to escape by in the event of flood or fire; the flood and fire have come; it remains to be seen how far the door will work satisfactorily.

Professor Ray Lankester, again, should not say that Lamarck's doctrine has been "so often tried and rejected." M. Martins, in his edition of the "Philosophie Zoologique," {235a} said truly that Lamarck's theory had never yet had the honour of being seriously discussed. It never has—not at least in connection with the name of its propounder. To mention Lamarck's name in the presence of the conventional English society naturalist has always been like shaking a red rag at a cow; he is at once infuriated; "as if it were possible," to quote from Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire, whose defence of Lamarck is one of the best things in his book, {235b} "that so great labour on the part of so great a naturalist should have led him to 'a fantastic conclusion' only—to 'a flighty error,' and, as has been often said, though not written, to 'one absurdity the more.' Such was the language which Lamarck heard during his protracted old age, saddened alike by the weight of years and blindness; this was what people did not hesitate to utter over his grave, yet barely closed, and what, indeed, they are still saying— commonly too, without any knowledge of what Lamarck maintained, but merely repeating at second hand bad caricatures of his teaching.

"When will the time come when we may see Lamarck's theory discussed, and I may as well at once say refuted, in some important points, with at any rate the respect due to one of the most illustrious masters of our science? And when will this theory, the hardihood of which has been greatly exaggerated, become freed from the interpretations and commentaries by the false light of which so many naturalists have formed their opinion concerning it? If its author is to be condemned, let it, at any rate, not be before he has been heard."

Lamarck was the Lazarus of biology. I wish his more fortunate brethren, instead of intoning the old Church argument that he has "been refuted over and over again," would refer us to some of the best chapters in the writers who have refuted him. My own reading has led me to become moderately well acquainted with the literature of evolution, but I have never come across a single attempt fairly to grapple with Lamarck, and it is plain that neither Isidore Geoffroy nor M. Martins knows of such an attempt any more than I do. When Professor Ray Lankester puts his finger on Lamarck's weak places, then, but not till then, may he complain of those who try to replace Mr. Darwin's doctrine by Lamarck's.

Professor Ray Lankester concludes his note thus:-

"That such an attempt should be made is an illustration of a curious weakness of humanity. Not infrequently, after a long contested cause has triumphed, and all have yielded allegiance thereto, you will find, when few generations have passed, that men have clean forgotten what and who it was that made that cause triumphant, and ignorantly will set up for honour the name of a traitor or an impostor, or attribute to a great man as a merit deeds and thoughts which he spent a long life in opposing."

Exactly so; that is what one rather feels, but surely Professor Ray Lankester should say "in trying to filch while pretending to oppose and to amend." He is complaining here that people persistently ascribe Lamarck's doctrine to Mr. Darwin. Of course they do; but, as I have already perhaps too abundantly asked, whose fault is this? If a man knows his own mind, and wants others to understand it, it is not often that he is misunderstood for any length of time. If he finds he is being misapprehended in a way he does not like, he will write another book and make his meaning plainer. He will go on doing this for as long time as he thinks necessary. I do not suppose, for example, that people will say I originated the theory of descent by means of natural selection from among fortunate accidents, or even that I was one of its supporters as a means of modification; but if this impression were to prevail, I cannot think I should have much difficulty in removing it. At any rate no such misapprehension could endure for more than twenty years, during which I continued to address a public who welcomed all I wrote, unless I myself aided and abetted the mistake. Mr. Darwin wrote many books, but the impression that Darwinism and evolution, or descent with modification, are identical is still nearly as prevalent as it was soon after the appearance of the "Origin of Species;" the reason of this is, that Mr. Darwin was at no pains to correct us. Where, in any one of his many later books, is there a passage which sets the matter in its true light, and enters a protest against the misconception of which Professor Ray Lankester complains so bitterly? The only inference from this is, that Mr. Darwin was not displeased at our thinking him to be the originator of the theory of descent with modification, and did not want us to know more about Lamarck than he could help. If we wanted to know about him, we must find out what he had said for ourselves, it was no part of Mr. Darwin's business to tell us; he had no interest in our catching the distinctive difference between himself and that writer; perhaps not; but this approaches closely to wishing us to misunderstand it. When Mr. Darwin wished us to understand this or that, no one knew better how to show it to us.

We were aware, on reading the "Origin of Species," that there was a something about it of which we had not full hold; nevertheless we gave Mr. Darwin our confidence at once, partly because he led off by telling us that we must trust him to a great extent, and explained that the present book was only an instalment of a larger work which, when it came out, would make everything perfectly clear; partly, again, because the case for descent with modification, which was the leading idea throughout the book, was so obviously strong, but perhaps mainly because every one said Mr. Darwin was so good, and so much less self-heeding than other people; besides, he had so "patiently" and "carefully" accumulated "such a vast store of facts" as no other naturalist, living or dead, had ever yet even tried to get together; he was so kind to us with his, "May we not believe?" and his "Have we any right to infer that the Creator?" &c. "Of course we have not," we exclaimed, almost with tears in our eyes— "not if you ask us in that way." Now that we understand what it was that puzzled us in Mr. Darwin's work we do not think highly either of the chief offender, or of the accessories after the fact, many of whom are trying to brazen the matter out, and on a smaller scale to follow his example.



CHAPTER XVIII—Per Contra



"'The evil that men do lives after them" {239a} is happily not so true as that the good lives after them, while the ill is buried with their bones, and to no one does this correction of Shakespeare's unwonted spleen apply more fully than to Mr. Darwin. Indeed it was somewhat thus that we treated his books even while he was alive; the good, descent, remained with us, while the ill, the deification of luck, was forgotten as soon as we put down his work. Let me now, therefore, as far as possible, quit the ungrateful task of dwelling on the defects of Mr. Darwin's work and character, for the more pleasant one of insisting upon their better side, and of explaining how he came to be betrayed into publishing the "Origin of Species" without reference to the works of his predecessors.

In the outset I would urge that it is not by any single book that Mr. Darwin should be judged. I do not believe that any one of the three principal works on which his reputation is founded will maintain with the next generation the place it has acquired with ourselves; nevertheless, if asked to say who was the man of our own times whose work had produced the most important, and, on the whole, beneficial effect, I should perhaps wrongly, but still both instinctively and on reflection, name him to whom I have, unfortunately, found myself in more bitter opposition than to any other in the whole course of my life. I refer, of course, to Mr. Darwin.

His claim upon us lies not so much in what is actually found within the four corners of any one of his books, as in the fact of his having written them at all—in the fact of his having brought out one after another, with descent always for its keynote, until the lesson was learned too thoroughly to make it at all likely that it will be forgotten. Mr. Darwin wanted to move his generation, and had the penetration to see that this is not done by saying a thing once for all and leaving it. It almost seems as though it matters less what a man says than the number of times he repeats it, in a more or less varied form. It was here the author of the "Vestiges of Creation" made his most serious mistake. He relied on new editions, and no one pays much attention to new editions—the mark a book makes is almost always made by its first edition. If, instead of bringing out a series of amended editions during the fifteen years' law which Mr. Darwin gave him, Mr. Chambers had followed up the "Vestiges" with new book upon new book, he would have learned much more, and, by consequence, not have been snuffed out so easily once for all as he was in 1859 when the "Origin of Species" appeared.

The tenacity of purpose which appears to have been one of Mr. Darwin's most remarkable characteristics was visible even in his outward appearance. He always reminded me of Raffaelle's portrait of Pope Julius the Second, which, indeed, would almost do for a portrait of Mr. Darwin himself. I imagine that these two men, widely as the sphere of their action differed, must have been like each other in more respects than looks alone. Each, certainly, had a hand of iron; whether Pope Julius wore a velvet glove or no, I do not know; I rather think not, for, if I remember rightly, he boxed Michael Angelo's ears for giving him a saucy answer. We cannot fancy Mr. Darwin boxing any one's ears; indeed there can be no doubt he wore a very thick velvet glove, but the hand underneath it was none the less of iron. It was to his tenacity of purpose, doubtless, that his success was mainly due; but for this he must inevitably have fallen before the many inducements to desist from the pursuit of his main object, which beset him in the shape of ill health, advancing years, ample private means, large demands upon his time, and a reputation already great enough to satisfy the ambition of any ordinary man.

I do not gather from those who remember Mr. Darwin as a boy, and as a young man, that he gave early signs of being likely to achieve greatness; nor, as it seems to me, is there any sign of unusual intellectual power to be detected in his earliest book. Opening this "almost" at random I read—"Earthquakes alone are sufficient to destroy the prosperity of any country. If, for instance, beneath England the now inert subterraneous forces should exert those powers which most assuredly in former geological ages they have exerted, how completely would the entire condition of the country be changed! What would become of the lofty houses, thickly-packed cities, great manufacturies (sic), the beautiful public and private edifices? If the new period of disturbance were to commence by some great earthquake in the dead of night, how terrific would be the carnage! England would be at once bankrupt; all papers, records, and accounts would from that moment be lost. Government being unable to collect the taxes, and failing to maintain its authority, the hand of violence and rapine would go uncontrolled. In every large town famine would be proclaimed, pestilence and death following in its train." {240a} Great allowance should be made for a first work, and I admit that much interesting matter is found in Mr. Darwin's journal; still, it was hardly to be expected that the writer who at the age of thirty-three could publish the foregoing passage should twenty years later achieve the reputation of being the profoundest philosopher of his time.

I have not sufficient technical knowledge to enable me to speak certainly, but I question his having been the great observer and master of experiment which he is generally believed to have been. His accuracy was, I imagine, generally to be relied upon as long as accuracy did not come into conflict with his interests as a leader in the scientific world; when these were at stake he was not to be trusted for a moment. Unfortunately they were directly or indirectly at stake more often than one could wish. His book on the action of worms, however, was shown by Professor Paley and other writers {242a} to contain many serious errors and omissions, though it involved no personal question; but I imagine him to have been more or less hebete when he wrote this book. On the whole I should doubt his having been a better observer of nature than nine country gentlemen out of ten who have a taste for natural history.

Presumptuous as I am aware it must appear to say so, I am unable to see more than average intellectual power even in Mr. Darwin's later books. His great contribution to science is supposed to have been the theory of natural selection, but enough has been said to show that this, if understood as he ought to have meant it to be understood, cannot be rated highly as an intellectual achievement. His other most important contribution was his provisional theory of pan-genesis, which is admitted on all hands to have been a failure. Though, however, it is not likely that posterity will consider him as a man of transcendent intellectual power, he must be admitted to have been richly endowed with a much more valuable quality than either originality or literary power—I mean with savoir faire. The cards he held—and, on the whole, his hand was a good one—he played with judgment; and though not one of those who would have achieved greatness under any circumstances, he nevertheless did achieve greatness of no mean order. Greatness, indeed, of the highest kind- -that of one who is without fear and without reproach—will not ultimately be allowed him, but greatness of a rare kind can only be denied him by those whose judgment is perverted by temper or personal ill-will. He found the world believing in fixity of species, and left it believing—in spite of his own doctrine—in descent with modification.

I have said on an earlier page that Mr. Darwin was heir to a discredited truth, and left behind him an accredited fallacy. This is true as regards men of science and cultured classes who understood his distinctive feature, or thought they did, and so long as Mr. Darwin lived accepted it with very rare exceptions; but it is not true as regards the unreading, unreflecting public, who seized the salient point of descent with modification only, and troubled themselves little about the distinctive feature. It would almost seem as if Mr. Darwin had reversed the usual practice of philosophers and given his esoteric doctrine to the world, while reserving the exoteric for his most intimate and faithful adherents. This, however, is a detail; the main fact is, that Mr. Darwin brought us all round to evolution. True, it was Mr. Darwin backed by the Times and the other most influential organs of science and culture, but it was one of Mr. Darwin's great merits to have developed and organised this backing, as part of the work which he knew was essential if so great a revolution was to be effected.

This is an exceedingly difficult and delicate thing to do. If people think they need only write striking and well-considered books, and that then the Times will immediately set to work to call attention to them, I should advise them not to be too hasty in basing action upon this hypothesis. I should advise them to be even less hasty in basing it upon the assumption that to secure a powerful literary backing is a matter within the compass of any one who chooses to undertake it. No one who has not a strong social position should ever advance a new theory, unless a life of hard fighting is part of what he lays himself out for. It was one of Mr. Darwin's great merits that he had a strong social position, and had the good sense to know how to profit by it. The magnificent feat which he eventually achieved was unhappily tarnished by much that detracts from the splendour that ought to have attended it, but a magnificent feat it must remain.

Whose work in this imperfect world is not tarred and tarnished by something that detracts from its ideal character? It is enough that a man should be the right man in the right place, and this Mr. Darwin pre-eminently was. If he had been more like the ideal character which Mr. Allen endeavours to represent him, it is not likely that he would have been able to do as much, or nearly as much, as he actually did; he would have been too wide a cross with his generation to produce much effect upon it. Original thought is much more common than is generally believed. Most people, if they only knew it, could write a good book or play, paint a good picture, compose a fine oratorio; but it takes an unusually able person to get the book well reviewed, persuade a manager to bring the play out, sell the picture, or compass the performance of the oratorio; indeed, the more vigorous and original any one of these things may be, the more difficult will it prove to even bring it before the notice of the public. The error of most original people is in being just a trifle too original. It was in his business qualities—and these, after all, are the most essential to success, that Mr. Darwin showed himself so superlative. These are not only the most essential to success, but it is only by blaspheming the world in a way which no good citizen of the world will do, that we can deny them to be the ones which should most command our admiration. We are in the world; surely so long as we are in it we should be of it, and not give ourselves airs as though we were too good for our generation, and would lay ourselves out to please any other by preference. Mr. Darwin played for his own generation, and he got in the very amplest measure the recognition which he endeavoured, as we all do, to obtain.

His success was, no doubt, in great measure due to the fact that he knew our little ways, and humoured them; but if he had not had little ways of his own, he never could have been so much au fait with ours. He knew, for example, we should be pleased to hear that he had taken his boots off so as not to disturb his worms when watching them by night, so he told us of this, and we were delighted. He knew we should like his using the word "sag," so he used it, {245a} and we said it was beautiful. True, he used it wrongly, for he was writing about tesselated pavement, and builders assure me that "sag" is a word which applies to timber only, but this is not to the point; the point was, that Mr. Darwin should have used a word that we did not understand; this showed that he had a vast fund of knowledge at his command about all sorts of practical details with which he might have well been unacquainted. We do not deal the same measure to man and to the lower animals in the matter of intelligence; the less we understand these last, the less, we say, not we, but they can understand; whereas the less we can understand a man, the more intelligent we are apt to think him. No one should neglect by-play of this description; if I live to be strong enough to carry it through, I mean to play "cambre," and I shall spell it "camber." I wonder Mr. Darwin never abused this word. Laugh at him, however, as we may for having said "sag," if he had not been the kind of man to know the value of these little hits, neither would he have been the kind of man to persuade us into first tolerating, and then cordially accepting, descent with modification. There is a correlation of mental as well as of physical growth, and we could not probably have had one set of Mr. Darwin's qualities without the other. If he had been more faultless, he might have written better books, but we should have listened worse. A book's prosperity is like a jest's—in the ear of him that hears it.

Mr. Spencer would not—at least one cannot think he would—have been able to effect the revolution which will henceforth doubtless be connected with Mr. Darwin's name. He had been insisting on evolution for some years before the "Origin of Species" came out, but he might as well have preached to the winds, for all the visible effect that had been produced. On the appearance of Mr. Darwin's book the effect was instantaneous; it was like the change in the condition of a patient when the right medicine has been hit on after all sorts of things have been tried and failed. Granted that it was comparatively easy for Mr. Darwin, as having been born into the household of one of the prophets of evolution, to arrive at conclusions about the fixity of species which, if not so born, he might never have reached at all; this does not make it any easier for him to have got others to agree with him. Any one, again, may have money left him, or run up against it, or have it run up against him, as it does against some people, but it is only a very sensible person who does not lose it. Moreover, once begin to go behind achievement and there is an end of everything. Did the world give much heed to or believe in evolution before Mr. Darwin's time? Certainly not. Did we begin to attend and be persuaded soon after Mr. Darwin began to write? Certainly yes. Did we ere long go over en masse? Assuredly. If, as I said in "Life and Habit," any one asks who taught the world to believe in evolution, the answer to the end of time must be that it was Mr. Darwin. And yet the more his work is looked at, the more marvellous does its success become. It seems as if some organisms can do anything with anything. Beethoven picked his teeth with the snuffers, and seems to have picked them sufficiently to his satisfaction. So Mr. Darwin with one of the worst styles imaginable did all that the clearest, tersest writer could have done. Strange, that such a master of cunning (in the sense of my title) should have been the apostle of luck, and one so terribly unlucky as Lamarck, of cunning, but such is the irony of nature. Buffon planted, Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck watered, but it was Mr. Darwin who said, "That fruit is ripe," and shook it into his lap.

With this Mr. Darwin's best friends ought to be content; his admirers are not well advised in representing him as endowed with all sorts of qualities which he was very far from possessing. Thus it is pretended that he was one of those men who were ever on the watch for new ideas, ever ready to give a helping hand to those who were trying to advance our knowledge, ever willing to own to a mistake and give up even his most cherished ideas if truth required them at his hands. No conception can be more wantonly inexact. I grant that if a writer was sufficiently at once incompetent and obsequious Mr. Darwin was "ever ready," &c. So the Emperors of Austria wash a few poor people's feet on some one of the festivals of the Church, but it would not be safe to generalise from this yearly ceremony, and conclude that the Emperors of Austria are in the habit of washing poor people's feet. I can understand Mr. Darwin's not having taken any public notice, for example, of "Life and Habit," for though I did not attack him in force in that book, it was abundantly clear that an attack could not be long delayed, and a man may be pardoned for not doing anything to advertise the works of his opponents; but there is no excuse for his never having referred to Professor Hering's work either in "Nature," when Professor Ray Lankester first called attention to it (July 13, 1876), or in some one of his subsequent books. If his attitude towards those who worked in the same field as himself had been the generous one which his admirers pretend, he would have certainly come forward, not necessarily as adopting Professor Hering's theory, but still as helping it to obtain a hearing.

His not having done so is of a piece with his silence about Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck in the early editions of the "Origin of Species," and with the meagre reference to them which is alone found in the later ones. It is of a piece also with the silence which Mr. Darwin invariably maintained when he saw his position irretrievably damaged, as, for example, by Mr. Spencer's objection already referred to, and by the late Professor Fleeming Jenkin in the North British Review (June 1867). Science, after all, should form a kingdom which is more or less not of this world. The ideal scientist should know neither self nor friend nor foe—he should be able to hob-nob with those whom he most vehemently attacks, and to fly at the scientific throat of those to whom he is personally most attached; he should be neither grateful for a favourable review nor displeased at a hostile one; his literary and scientific life should be something as far apart as possible from his social; it is thus, at least, alone that any one will be able to keep his eye single for facts, and their legitimate inferences. We have seen Professor Mivart lately taken to task by Mr. Romanes for having said {248a} that Mr. Darwin was singularly sensitive to criticism, and made it impossible for Professor Mivart to continue friendly personal relations with him after he had ventured to maintain his own opinion. I see no reason to question Professor Mivart's accuracy, and find what he has said to agree alike with my own personal experience of Mr. Darwin, and with all the light that his works throw upon his character.

The most substantial apology that can be made for his attempt to claim the theory of descent with modification is to be found in the practice of Lamarck, Mr. Patrick Matthew, the author of the "Vestiges of Creation," and Mr. Herbert Spencer, and, again, in the total absence of complaint which this practice met with. If Lamarck might write the "Philosophie Zoologique" without, so far as I remember, one word of reference to Buffon, and without being complained of, why might not Mr. Darwin write the "Origin of Species" without more than a passing allusion to Lamarck? Mr. Patrick Matthew, again, though writing what is obviously a resume of the evolutionary theories of his time, makes no mention of Lamarck, Erasmus Darwin, or Buffon. I have not the original edition of the "Vestiges of Creation" before me, but feel sure I am justified in saying that it claimed to be a more or less Minerva-like work, that sprang full armed from the brain of Mr. Chambers himself. This at least is how it was received by the public; and, however violent the opposition it met with, I cannot find that its author was blamed for not having made adequate mention of Lamarck. When Mr. Spencer wrote his first essay on evolution in the Leader (March 20, 1852) he did indeed begin his argument, "Those who cavalierly reject the doctrine of Lamarck," &c., so that his essay purports to be written in support of Lamarck; but when he republished his article in 1858, the reference to Lamarck was cut out.

I make no doubt that it was the bad example set him by the writers named in the preceding paragraph which betrayed Mr. Darwin into doing as they did, but being more conscientious than they, he could not bring himself to do it without having satisfied himself that he had got hold of a more or less distinctive feature, and this, of course, made matters worse. The distinctive feature was not due to any deep-laid plan for pitchforking mind out of the universe, or as part of a scheme of materialistic philosophy, though it has since been made to play an important part in the attempt to further this; Mr. Darwin was perfectly innocent of any intention of getting rid of mind, and did not, probably, care the toss of sixpence whether the universe was instinct with mind or no—what he did care about was carrying off the palm in the matter of descent with modification, and the distinctive feature was an adjunct with which his nervous, sensitive, Gladstonian nature would not allow him to dispense.

And why, it may be asked, should not the palm be given to Mr. Darwin if he wanted it, and was at so much pains to get it? Why, if science is a kingdom not of this world, make so much fuss about settling who is entitled to what? At best such questions are of a sorry personal nature, that can have little bearing upon facts, and it is these that alone should concern us. The answer is, that if the question is so merely personal and unimportant, Mr. Darwin may as well yield as Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck; Mr. Darwin's admirers find no difficulty in appreciating the importance of a personal element as far as he is concerned; let them not wonder, then, if others, while anxious to give him the laurels to which he is entitled, are somewhat indignant at the attempt to crown him with leaves that have been filched from the brows of the great dead who went before him. Palmam qui meruit ferat. The instinct which tells us that no man in the scientific or literary world should claim more than his due is an old and, I imagine, a wholesome one, and if a scientific self-denying ordinance is demanded, we may reply with justice, Que messieurs les Charles-Darwinies commencent. Mr. Darwin will have a crown sufficient for any ordinary brow remaining in the achievement of having done more than any other writer, living or dead, to popularise evolution. This much may be ungrudgingly conceded to him, but more than this those who have his scientific position most at heart will be well advised if they cease henceforth to demand.



CHAPTER XIX—Conclusion



And now I bring this book to a conclusion. So many things requiring attention have happened since it was begun that I leave it in a very different shape to the one which it was originally intended to bear. I have omitted much that I had meant to deal with, and have been tempted sometimes to introduce matter the connection of which with my subject is not immediately apparent. Such however, as the book is, it must now go in the form into which it has grown almost more in spite of me than from malice prepense on my part. I was afraid that it might thus set me at defiance, and in an early chapter expressed a doubt whether I should find it redound greatly to my advantage with men of science; in this concluding chapter I may say that doubt has deepened into something like certainty. I regret this, but cannot help it.

Among the points with which it was most incumbent upon me to deal was that of vegetable intelligence. A reader may well say that unless I give plants much the same sense of pleasure and pain, memory, power of will, and intelligent perception of the best way in which to employ their opportunities that I give to low animals, my argument falls to the ground. If I declare organic modification to be mainly due to function, and hence in the closest correlation with mental change, I must give plants, as well as animals, a mind, and endow them with power to reflect and reason upon all that most concerns them. Many who will feel little difficulty about admitting that animal modification is upon the whole mainly due to the secular cunning of the animals themselves will yet hesitate before they admit that plants also can have a reason and cunning of their own.

Unwillingness to concede this is based principally upon the error concerning intelligence to which I have already referred—I mean to our regarding intelligence not so much as the power of understanding as that of being understood by ourselves. Once admit that the evidence in favour of a plant's knowing its own business depends more on the efficiency with which that business is conducted than either on our power of understanding how it can be conducted, or on any signs on the plant's part of a capacity for understanding things that do not concern it, and there will be no further difficulty about supposing that in its own sphere a plant is just as intelligent as an animal, and keeps a sharp look-out upon its own interests, however indifferent it may seem to be to ours. So strong has been the set of recent opinion in this direction that with botanists the foregoing now almost goes without saying, though few five years ago would have accepted it.

To no one of the several workers in this field are we more indebted for the change which has been brought about in this respect than to my late valued and lamented friend Mr. Alfred Tylor. Mr. Tylor was not the discoverer of the protoplasmic continuity that exists in plants, but he was among the very first to welcome this discovery, and his experiments at Carshalton in the years 1883 and 1884 demonstrated that, whether there was protoplasmic continuity in plants or no, they were at any rate endowed with some measure of reason, forethought, and power of self-adaptation to varying surroundings. It is not for me to give the details of these experiments. I had the good fortune to see them more than once while they were in progress, and was present when they were made the subject of a paper read by Mr. Sydney B. J. Skertchly before the Linnean Society, Mr. Tylor being then too ill to read it himself. The paper has since been edited by Mr. Skertchly, and published. {253a} Anything that should be said further about it will come best from Mr. Skertchly; it will be enough here if I give the resume of it prepared by Mr. Tylor himself.

In this Mr. Tylor said:- "The principles which underlie this paper are the individuality of plants, the necessity for some co- ordinating system to enable the parts to act in concert, and the probability that this also necessitates the admission that plants have a dim sort of intelligence.

"It is shown that a tree, for example, is something more than an aggregation of tissues, but is a complex being performing acts as a whole, and not merely responsive to the direct influence of light, &c. The tree knows more than its branches, as the species know more than the individual, the community than the unit.

"Moreover, inasmuch as my experiments show that many plants and trees possess the power of adapting themselves to unfamiliar circumstances, such as, for instance, avoiding obstacles by bending aside before touching, or by altering the leaf arrangement, it seems probable that at least as much voluntary power must be accorded to such plants as to certain lowly organised animals.

"Finally, a connecting system by means of which combined movements take place is found in the threads of protoplasm which unite the various cells, and which I have now shown to exist even in the wood of trees.

"One of the important facts seems to be the universality of the upward curvature of the tips of growing branches of trees, and the power possessed by the tree to straighten its branches afterwards, so that new growth shall by similar means be able to obtain the necessary light and air.

"A house, to use a sanitary analogy, is functionally useless without it obtains a good supply of light and air. The architect strives so to produce the house as to attain this end, and still leave the house comfortable. But the house, though dependent upon, is not produced by, the light and air. So a tree is functionally useless, and cannot even exist without a proper supply of light and air; but, whereas it has been the custom to ascribe the heliotropic and other motions to the direct influence of those agents, I would rather suggest that the movements are to some extent due to the desire of the plant to acquire its necessaries of life."

The more I have reflected upon Mr. Tylor's Carshalton experiments, the more convinced I am of their great value. No one, indeed, ought to have doubted that plants were intelligent, but we all of us do much that we ought not to do, and Mr. Tylor supplied a demonstration which may be henceforth authoritatively appealed to.

I will take the present opportunity of insisting upon a suggestion which I made in "Alps and Sanctuaries" (New edition, pp. 152, 153), with which Mr. Tylor was much pleased, and which, at his request, I made the subject of a few words that I ventured to say at the Linnean Society's rooms after his paper had been read. "Admitting," I said, "the common protoplasmic origin of animals and plants, and setting aside the notion that plants preceded animals, we are still faced by the problem why protoplasm should have developed into the organic life of the world, along two main lines, and only two—the animal and the vegetable. Why, if there was an early schism—and this there clearly was—should there not have been many subsequent ones of equal importance? We see innumerable sub-divisions of animals and plants, but we see no other such great subdivision of organic life as that whereby it ranges itself, for the most part readily, as either animal or vegetable. Why any subdivision?—but if any, why not more than two great classes?"

The two main stems of the tree of life ought, one would think, to have been formed on the same principle as the boughs which represent genera, and the twigs which stand for species and varieties. If specific differences arise mainly from differences of action taken in consequence of differences of opinion, then, so ultimately do generic; so, therefore, again, do differences between families; so therefore, by analogy, should that greatest of differences in virtue of which the world of life is mainly animal, or vegetable. In this last case as much as in that of specific difference, we ought to find divergent form the embodiment and organic expression of divergent opinion. Form is mind made manifest in flesh through action: shades of mental difference being expressed in shades of physical difference, while broad fundamental differences of opinion are expressed in broad fundamental differences of bodily shape.

Or to put it thus:-

If form and habit be regarded as functionally interdependent, that is to say, if neither form nor habit can vary without corresponding variation in the other, and if habit and opinion concerning advantage are also functionally interdependent, it follows self- evidently that form and opinion concerning advantage (and hence form and cunning) will be functionally interdependent also, and that there can be no great modification of the one without corresponding modification of the other. Let there, then, be a point in respect of which opinion might be early and easily divided—a point in respect of which two courses involving different lines of action presented equally-balanced advantages—and there would be an early subdivision of primordial life, according as the one view or the other was taken.

It is obvious that the pros and cons for either course must be supposed very nearly equal, otherwise the course which presented the fewest advantages would be attended with the probable gradual extinction of the organised beings that adopted it, but there being supposed two possible modes of action very evenly balanced as regards advantage and disadvantages, then the ultimate appearance of two corresponding forms of life is a sequitur from the admission that form varies as function, and function as opinion concerning advantage. If there are three, four, five, or six such opinions tenable, we ought to have three, four, five, or six main subdivisions of life. As things are, we have two only. Can we, then, see a matter on which opinion was likely to be easily and early divided into two, and only two, main divisions—no third course being conceivable? If so, this should suggest itself as the probable source from which the two main forms of organic life have been derived.

I submit that we can see such a matter in the question whether it pays better to sit still and make the best of what comes in one's way, or to go about in search of what one can find. Of course we, as animals, naturally hold that it is better to go about in search of what we can find than to sit still and make the best of what comes; but there is still so much to be said on the other side, that many classes of animals have settled down into sessile habits, while a perhaps even larger number are, like spiders, habitual liers in wait rather than travellers in search of food. I would ask my reader, therefore, to see the opinion that it is better to go in search of prey as formulated, and finding its organic expression, in animals; and the other—that it is better to be ever on the look-out to make the best of what chance brings up to them—in plants. Some few intermediate forms still record to us the long struggle during which the schism was not yet complete, and the halting between two opinions which it might be expected that some organisms should exhibit.

"Neither class," I said in "Alps and Sanctuaries," "has been quite consistent. Who ever is or can be? Every extreme—every opinion carried to its logical end—will prove to be an absurdity. Plants throw out roots and boughs and leaves; this is a kind of locomotion; and, as Dr. Erasmus Darwin long since pointed out, they do sometimes approach nearly to what may be called travelling; a man of consistent character will never look at a bough, a root, or a tendril without regarding it as a melancholy and unprincipled compromise" (New edition, p. 153).

Having called attention to this view, and commended it to the consideration of my readers, I proceed to another which should not have been left to be touched upon only in a final chapter, and which, indeed, seems to require a book to itself—I refer to the origin and nature of the feelings, which those who accept volition as having had a large share in organic modification must admit to have had a no less large share in the formation of volition. Volition grows out of ideas, ideas from feelings. What, then, is feeling, and the subsequent mental images or ideas?