It will be asked how it comes to pass, if the Darwinian system really lies open to so many objections, that it occupies so large a place in scientific estimation. To this we must reply that, in spite of its great name, its success has throughout been popular rather than truly scientific, and that as time went on it has lost ground among the class of men best qualified to judge. Evolutionists there are in plenty,—but very few genuine Darwinists, and amongst these can by no means be reckoned all who adopt the title, for not a few of them—as Romanes and Weismann—profess doctrines which cannot be reconciled with those of Darwin himself. Meanwhile, an increasing volume of scientific opinion sets definitely against Darwinism as an adequate explanation of the philosophy of life, and falls into the view expressed long ago by Charles Robin[234] who, as a freethinker, had no antecedent objections against it, "Darwinism is a fiction, a poetical accumulation of probabilities without proof, and of attractive explanations without demonstration."[{199}]
It would be tedious to cite testimonies at length, but, in addition to M. de Quatrefages who has made a full and careful study of the whole question, [Charles Darwin et ses précurseurs Français, and Les Emules de Darwin] may be mentioned such continental scholars as Blanchard [La vie des êtres animés], Wigand [Der Darwinismus und die Naturforschung, etc.], Wolff [Beiträge zur Kritik der darwinschen Lehre], Hamann [Entwicklungslehre und Darwinismus], Pauly [Wahres und Falsches an Darwins Lehre], Driesch [Biologisches Zentralblatt, 1896 and 1902], Plate [Bedeutung und Tragweite des Darwinschen Selektionsprincip], Hertwig [Address to Naturalist Congress, Aachen, 1900], Heer [Urwelt der Schweiz], Kölliker [Ueber die darwin'sche Schöpfungstheorie], Eimer [Entstehung der Arten], Von Hartmann [Wahrheit und Irrthum im Darwinismus], Schilde [Antidarwinistisches im Ausland], Du Bois-Reymond [Conference, August 2, 1881, etc.], Virchow [Freiheit der Wissenschaft, etc.], Nägeli [Mechanisch-physiologische Theorie der Abstammungslehre], Schaafhausen [Ueber die anthropologischen Fragen], Fechner [Ideen zur Schöpfungs-und Entwicklungsgeschichte der Organismen], Jakob [Der Mensch, etc.], Diebolder [Darwins Grundprinzip, etc.], Huber [Die Lehre Darwins kritisch betrachtet], Joseph Ranke, and Von Bauer,—all of whom either reject Darwinism altogether, or admit it only with fatal reservations.
Special weight must attach to the adverse verdict of M. Fabre, styled by Darwin himself "that inimitable[{200}] observer," who declares that he cannot reconcile the theory with the facts he encounters.[235]
It must be sufficient to quote one or two of our own countrymen, whose utterances will enable us to form an opinion as to the true scientific status of the doctrine.
We may begin with Huxley, the great popular champion of Darwinism, who did more than any other man to spread the new doctrine. Yet, strange to say, he seems never to have really accepted its fundamental tenet himself, always appearing very shy of Natural Selection, and carefully abstaining from committing himself to any responsibility for it. Thus in his treatise on Man's Place in Nature, he thus explains his position in its regard:
Mr. Darwin's hypothesis is not, so far as I am aware, inconsistent with any biological fact; on the contrary, if admitted, the facts of Development, of Comparative Anatomy, of Geographical Distribution, and of Palæontology, become connected together, and exhibit a meaning such as they never possessed before; and I, for one, am firmly convinced, that if not precisely true, that hypothesis is as near an approximation to the truth as, for example, the Copernican hypothesis was to the true theory of the planetary motions. But for all this, our acceptance of the Darwinian hypothesis must be provisional so long as one link in the chain of[{201}] evidence is wanting; and so long as all the animals and plants certainly produced by selective breeding from a common stock are fertile with one another, the link will be wanting. For, so long, selective breeding will not be proved to be competent to do all that is required of it to produce natural species.
This missing link, like various others, has never been supplied, and in consequence Professor Huxley never abandoned his attitude of reserve. On the contrary, when, in 1880, he delivered an address to celebrate "the Coming of Age of the Origin of Species" he discharged the task without once mentioning Natural Selection, which is to that work as the Prince of Denmark is to Hamlet.
But there is one passage in the said address, which deserves to be specially remembered:
History warns us that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions; and, as matters now stand, it is hardly rash to anticipate that, in another twenty years, the new generation, educated under the influences of the present day, will be in danger of accepting the main doctrines of the Origin of Species, with as little reflection, and it may be with as little justification, as so many of our contemporaries, twenty years ago, rejected them.
In 1886, Professor Romanes pronounced as follows:[236]