Part 13 (1/2)
The effects of compet.i.tion would, of course, have an extremely important effect upon any creature, in the same way as any other condition of nature under which it lived, must affect its sense of need and its opinions generally. The results of compet.i.tion would be, as it were, the decisions of an arbiter settling the question whether such and such variation was really to the animal's advantage or not--a matter on which the animal will, on the whole, have formed a pretty fair judgement for itself. UNDOUBTEDLY THE PAST DECISIONS OF SUCH AN ARBITER WOULD AFFECT THE CONDUCT OF THE CREATURE, which would have doubtless had its shortcomings and blunders, and would amend them. The creature would shape its course according to its experience of the common course of events, but it would be continually trying and often successfully, to evade the law by all manner of sharp practice. New precedents would thus arise, so that the law would s.h.i.+ft with time and circ.u.mstances; but the law would not otherwise direct the channels into which life would flow, than as laws, whether natural or artificial, have affected the development of the widely differing trades and professions among mankind. These have had their origin rather in the needs and experiences of mankind than in any laws.
To put much the same as the above in different words. a.s.sume that small favourable variations are preserved more commonly, in proportion to their numbers, than is perhaps the case, and a.s.sume that considerable variations occur more rarely than they probably do occur, how account for any variation at all? ”Natural selection”
cannot CREATE the smallest variation unless it acts through perception of its mode of operation, recognised inarticulately, but none the less clearly, by the creature varying. ”Natural selection”
operates on what it finds, and not on what it has made. Animals that have been wise and lucky live longer and breed more than others less wise and lucky. a.s.suredly. The wise and lucky animals transmit their wisdom and luck. a.s.suredly. They add to their powers, and diverge into widely different directions. a.s.suredly. What is the cause of this? Surely the fact that they were capable of feeling needs, and that they differed in their needs and manner of gratifying them, and that they continued to live in successive generations, rather than the fact that when lucky and wise they thrived and bred more descendants. This last is an accessory hardly less important for the DEVELOPMENT of species than the fact of the continuation of life at all; but it is an accessory of much the same kind as this, for if animals continue to live at all, they must live IN SOME WAY, and will find that there are good ways and bad ways of living. An animal which discovers the good way will gradually develop further powers, and so species will get further and further apart; but the origin of this is to be looked for, not in the power which decides whether this or that way was good, but in the cause which determines the creature, consciously or unconsciously, to try this or that way.
But Mr. Darwin might say that this is not a fair way of stating the issue. He might say, ”You beg the question; you a.s.sume that there is an inherent tendency in animals towards progressive development, whereas I say that there is no good evidence of any such tendency. I maintain that the differences that have from time to time arisen have come about mainly from causes so far beyond our ken, that we can only call them spontaneous; and if so, natural selection which you must allow to have at any rate played an important part in the ACc.u.mULATION of variations, must also be allowed to be the nearest thing to the cause of Specific differences, which we are able to arrive at.”
Thus he writes (”Natural Selection,” p. 176, ed. 1876): ”Although we have no good evidence of the existence in organic beings of a tendency towards progressive development, yet this necessarily follows, as I have attempted to show in the fourth chapter, through the continued action of natural selection.” Mr. Darwin does not say that organic beings have no tendency to vary at all, but only that there is no good evidence that they have a tendency to progressive development, which, I take it, means, to see an ideal a long way off, and very different to their present selves, which ideal they think will suit them, and towards which they accordingly make. I would admit this as contrary to all experience. I doubt whether plants and animals have any INNATE TENDENCY TO VARY at all, being led to question this by gathering from ”Plants and Animals under Domestication” that this is Mr. Darwin's own opinion. I am inclined rather to think that they have only an innate POWER TO VARY slightly, in accordance with changed conditions, and an innate capability of being affected both in structure and instinct, by causes similar to those which we observe to affect ourselves. But however this may be, they do vary somewhat, and unless they did, they would not in time have come to be so widely different from each other as they now are.
The question is as to the origin and character of these variations.
We say they mainly originate in a creature through a sense of its needs, and vary through the varying surroundings which will cause those needs to vary, and through the opening up of new desires in many creatures, as the consequence of the gratification of old ones; they depend greatly on differences of individual capacity and temperament; they are communicated, and in the course of time transmitted, as what we call hereditary habits or structures, though these are only, in truth, intense and epitomised memories of how certain creatures liked to deal with protoplasm. The question whether this or that is really good or ill, is settled, as the proof of the pudding by the eating thereof, i.e., by the rigorous compet.i.tive examinations through which most living organisms must pa.s.s.Mr. Darwin says that there is no good evidence in support of any great principle, or tendency on the part of the creature itself, which would steer variation, as it were, and keep its head straight, but that the most marvellous adaptations of structures to needs are simply the result of small and blind variations, acc.u.mulated by the operation of ”natural selection,” which is thus the main cause of the origin of species.
Enough has perhaps already been said to make the reader feel that the question wants reopening; I shall, therefore, here only remark that we may a.s.sume no fundamental difference as regards intelligence, memory, and sense of needs to exist between man and the lowest animals, and that in man we do distinctly see a tendency towards progressive development, operating through his power of profiting by and transmitting his experience, but operating in directions which man cannot foresee for any long distance. We also see this in many of the higher animals under domestication, as with horses which have learnt to canter and dogs which point; more especially we observe it along the line of latest development, where equilibrium of settled convictions has not yet been fully attained. One neither finds nor expects much a priori knowledge, whether in man or beast; but one does find some little in the beginnings of, and throughout the development of, every habit, at the commencement of which, and on every successive improvement in which, deductive and inductive methods are, as it were, fused. Thus the effect, where we can best watch its causes, seems mainly produced by a desire for a definite object--in some cases a serious and sensible desire, in others an idle one, in others, again, a mistaken one; and sometimes by a blunder which, in the hands of an otherwise able creature, has turned up trumps. In wild animals and plants the divergences have been acc.u.mulated, if they answered to the prolonged desires of the creature itself, and if these desires were to its true ultimate good; with plants or animals under domestication they have been acc.u.mulated if they answered a little to the original wishes of the creature, and much, to the wishes of man. As long as man continued to like them, they would be advantageous to the creature; when he tired of them, they would be disadvantageous to it, and would acc.u.mulate no longer.
Surely the results produced in the adaptation of structure to need among many plants and insects are better accounted for on this, which I suppose to be Lamarck's view, namely, by supposing that what goes on amongst ourselves has gone on amongst all creatures, than by supposing that these adaptations are the results of perfectly blind and unintelligent variations.
Let me give two examples of such adaptations, taken from Mr. St.
George Mivart's ”Genesis of Species,” to which work I would wish particularly to call the reader's attention. He should also read Mr.
Darwin's answers to Mr. Mivart (p. 176, ”Natural Selection,” ed.
1876, and onwards).
Mr. Mivart writes:-
”Some insects which imitate leaves extend the imitation even to the very injuries on those leaves made by the attacks of insects or fungi. Thus speaking of the walking-stick insects, Mr. Wallace says, 'One of these creatures obtained by myself in Borneo (ceroxylus laceratus) was covered over with foliaceous excrescences of a clear olive green colour, so as exactly to resemble a stick grown over by a creeping moss or jungermannia. The Dyak who brought it me a.s.sured me it was grown over with moss, though alive, and it was only after a most minute examination that I could convince myself it was not so.'
Again, as to the leaf b.u.t.terfly, he says, 'We come to a still more extraordinary part of the imitation, for we find representations of leaves in every stage of decay, variously blotched, and mildewed, and pierced with holes, and in many cases irregularly covered with powdery black dots, gathered into patches and spots so closely resembling the various kinds of minute fungi that grow on dead leaves, that it is impossible to avoid thinking at first sight that the b.u.t.terflies themselves have been attacked by real fungi.'”
I can no more believe that these artificial fungi in which the moth arrays itself are due to the acc.u.mulation of minute, perfectly blind, and unintelligent variations, than I can believe that the artificial flowers which a woman wears in her hat can have got there without design; or that a detective puts on plain clothes without the slightest intention of making his victim think that he is not a policeman.
Again Mr. Mivart writes:-
”In the work just referred to ('The Fertilisation of Orchids'), Mr.
Darwin gives a series of the most wonderful and minute contrivances, by which the visits of insects are utilised for the fertilisation of orchids--structures so wonderful that nothing could well be more so, except the attribution of their origin to minute, fortuitous, and indefinite variations.
”The instances are too numerous and too long to quote, but in his 'Origin of Species' he describes two which must not be pa.s.sed over.
In one (coryanthes) the orchid has its lower lip enlarged into a bucket, above which stand two water-secreting horns. These latter replenish the bucket, from which, when half-filled, the water overflows by a spout on one side. Bees visiting the flower fall into the bucket and crawl out at the spout. By the peculiar arrangement of the parts of the flower, the first bee which does so, carries away the pollen ma.s.s glued to his back, and then when he has his next involuntary bath in another flower, as he crawls out, the pollen attached to him comes in contact with the stigma of that second flower and fertilises it. In the other example (catasetum), when a bee gnaws a certain part of the flower, he inevitably touches a long delicate projection which Mr. Darwin calls the 'antenna.' 'This antenna transmits a vibration to a membrane which is instantly ruptured; this sets free a spring by which the pollen ma.s.s is shot forth like an arrow in the right direction, and adheres by its viscid extremity to the back of the bee'” (”Genesis of Species,” p. 63).
No one can tell a story so charmingly as Mr. Darwin, but I can no more believe that all this has come about without design on the part of the orchid, and a gradual perception of the advantages it is able to take over the bee, and a righteous determination to enjoy them, than I can believe that a mousetrap or a steam-engine is the result of the acc.u.mulation of blind minute fortuitous variations in a creature called man, which creature has never wanted either mousetraps or steam-engines, but has had a sort of promiscuous tendency to make them, and was benefited by making them, so that those of the race who had a tendency to make them survived and left issue, which issue would thus naturally tend to make more mousetraps and more steam-engines.
Pursuing this idea still further, can we for a moment believe that these additions to our limbs--for this is what they are--have mainly come about through the occasional birth of individuals, who, without design on their own parts, nevertheless made them better or worse, and who, accordingly, either survived and transmitted their improvement, or perished, they and their incapacity together?
When I can believe in this, then--and not till then--can I believe in an origin of species which does not resolve itself mainly into sense of need, faith, intelligence, and memory. Then, and not till then, can I believe that such organs as the eye and ear can have arisen in any other way than as the result of that kind of mental ingenuity, and of moral as well as physical capacity, without which, till then, I should have considered such an invention as the steam-engine to be impossible.
CHAPTER XIV--MR. MIVART AND MR. DARWIN
”A distinguished zoologist, Mr. St. George Mivart,” writes Mr.
Darwin, ”has recently collected all the objections which have ever been advanced by myself and others against the theory of natural selection, as propounded by Mr. Wallace and myself, and has ill.u.s.trated them with admirable art and force (”Natural Selection,”
p. 176, ed. 1876). I have already referred the reader to Mr.