Volume I Part 53 (1/2)
”In regard to this last subject [the changes froetable species to another]you remember what Herschel said in his letter to me If I had stated as plainly as he has done the possibility of the introduction or origination of fresh species being a natural, in contradistinction to a miraculous process, I should have raised a host of prejudices against me, which are unfortunately opposed at every step to any philosopher who attempts to address the public on these wick, January 12, 1838 ii
page 35) He goes on to refer to the criticisround that, by leaving species to be originated by miracle, he is inconsistent with his own doctrine of uniformitarianism; and he leaves it to be understood that he had not replied, on the ground of his general objection to controversy
Lyell's conte of his esoteric doctrine Whewell's 'History of the Inductive Sciences,' whatever its philosophical value, is alorth reading and always interesting, if under no other aspect than that of an evidence of the speculative liht, at that tie at will In the course of his discussion of uniformitarianism, the encyclopaedic Master of Trinity observes:--
”Mr Lyell, indeed, has spoken of an hypothesis that 'the successive creation of species ular part of the economy of nature,' but he has nowhere, I think, so described this process as to make it appear in what department of science we are to place the hypothesis Are these new species created by the production, at long intervals, of an offspring different in species from the parents? Or are the species so created produced without parents? Are they gradually evolved froround, as in the creation of the poet?
”Some selection of one of these forms of the hypothesis, rather than the others, with evidence for the selection, is requisite to entitle us to place it ae, which in this chapter we are considering The bare conviction that a creation of species has taken place, whether once or anical sciences, is a tenet of Natural Theology rather than of Physical Philosophy” (Whewell's 'History,' volue 639-640 (Edition 2, 1847))
The earlier part of this criticism appears perfectly just and appropriate; but, froines that by ”creation” Lyell means a preternatural intervention of the Deity; whereas the letter to Herschel shows that, in his own mind, Lyell meant natural causation; and I see no reason to doubt (The following passages in Lyell's letters appear to me decisive on this point):--
To Darwin, October 3, 1859 (ii, 325), on first reading the 'Origin'
”I have long seen most clearly that if any concession is es will follow
”It is this which hasthat the case of Man and his Races, and of other animals, and that of plants, is one and the same, and that if a vera causa be adinary one, such as the word 'creation,' all the consequences e 365)
”I remember that it was the conclusion he [Laainst the great iureater because Constant Prevost, a pupil of Cuvier's forty years ago, told ht species not real, but that science could not advance without assu that they were so'”
To Hooker, March 9, 1863 (volu about the 'Antiquity of Man'
”He [Darwin] seeo farther with him, or do not speak out more I can only say that I have spoken out to the full extent of my present convictions, and even beyond my state of FEELING as to man's unbroken descent fro not a feere in arainst Huxley” He speaks of having had to abandon ”old and long cherished ideas, which constituted the charm to me of the theoretical part of the science in my earlier day, when I believed with Pascal in the theory, as Hallael ruined'”
See the sae 363:--
”I think the old 'creation' is almost as much required as ever, but of course it takes a new form if Lamarck's views improved by yours are adopted” that, if Sir Charles could have avoided the inevitable corollary of the pithecoid origin of man--for which, to the end of his life, he entertained a profound antipathy--he would have advocated the efficiency of causes now in operation to bring about the condition of the organic world, as stoutly as he chaanic nature
The fact is, that a discerning eye ht have seen that some form or other of the doctrine of transmutation was inevitable, from the time when the truth enunciated by William Smith that successive strata are characterised by different kinds of fossil remains, became a firmly established law of nature No one has set forth the speculative consequences of this generalisation better than the historian of the 'Inductive Sciences':--
”But the study of geology opens to us the spectacle of roups of species which have, in the course of the earth's history, succeeded each other at vast intervals of ti, as it would seem, from the face of our planet, and others, which did not before exist, becolobe
And the dilemma then presents itself to us anew:--either we must accept the doctrine of the transanized species of one geological epoch were transency of natural causes; or else, we must believe in many successive acts of creation and extinction of species, out of the common course of nature; acts which, therefore, we may properly call miraculous” (Whewell's 'History of the Inductive Sciences' Edition ii, 1847, volues 638- 39)
Dr Whewell decides in favour of the latter conclusion And if any one had plied him with the four questions which he puts to Lyell in the passage already cited, all that can be said now is that he would certainly have rejected the first But would he really have had the courage to say that a Rhinoceros tichorhinus, for instance, ”was produced without parents;” or was ”evolved from some eround like Milton's lion ”pawing to get free his hinder parts” I permit myself to doubt whether even the Master of Trinity's well-tried courage--physical, intellectual, and moral--would have been equal to this feat No doubt the sudden concurrence of half-a-ton of inorganic molecules into a live rhinoceros is conceivable, and therefore may be possible But does such an event lie sufficiently within the bounds of probability to justify the belief in its occurrence on the strength of any attainable, or, indeed, iinable, evidence?
In view of the assertion (often repeated in the early days of the opposition to Darwin) that he had added nothing to La to observe that the possibility of a fifth alternative, in addition to the four he has stated, has not dawned upon Dr Whewell's estion that new species may result from the selective action of external conditions upon the variations from their specific type which individuals present--and which we call ”spontaneous,”
because we are ignorant of their causation--is as wholly unknown to the historian of scientific ideas as it was to biological specialists before 1858 But that suggestion is the central idea of the 'Origin of Species,' and contains the quintessence of Darwinis back into the past, it seems to me that my own position of critical expectancy was just and reasonable, and rounds, by assiz told me that the forlobe were the incarnations of successive thoughts of the Deity; and that he had wiped out one set of these eical catastrophe as soon as His ideas took a more advanced shape, I found myself not only unable to admit the accuracy of the deductions fro hypothesis was founded, but I had to confessthe correctness of his explanation of them And besides that, I could by no means see what the explanation explained Neither did it help me to be told by an eminent anatomist that species had succeeded one another in time, in virtue of ”a continuously operative creational law” That see that species had succeeded one another, in the for resolution, with ”law” to please the man of science, and ”creational” to draw the orthodox So I took refuge in that ”thatige Skepsis” which Goethe has so well defined; and, reversing the apostolic precept to be all things to all men, I usually defended the tenability of the received doctrines, when I had to do with the transmutationists; and stood up for the possibility of trans an already current, but quite undeserved, reputation for needless combativeness