"At present it would be impossible to find any working naturalist who supposes that survival of[{202}] the fittest is competent to explain all the phenomena of species-formation."
As to the actual position now occupied in Scientific opinion by Mr. Darwin's hypotheses, we may content ourselves with the declaration of Professor S. H. Vines in his Presidential address to the Linnean Society, May 24, 1902.
1. It is established that Natural Selection, though it may have perpetuated species, cannot have originated any.
2. It is still a mystery why Evolution should tend from the lower to the higher, from simple to complex organisms.
3. The facts seem to admit of no other interpretation than that variation is not [as Darwin supposed] indeterminate, but that there is in living matter an inherent determination in favour of variation in the higher direction.
That is to say, Darwin's Origin of Species does not explain the Origin of Species; and as to the laws which govern Evolution we can be sure only that they are not those which he assigned.
In like manner, Sir Oliver Lodge pronounces:[237]
Take the origin of species by the persistence of favourable variations; how is the appearance of these same favourable variations accounted for? Except by artificial selection not at all. Given their appearance, their development by struggle and inheritance and survival can be explained; but that they arose spontaneously,[{203}] by random changes without purpose, is an assertion which cannot be made.
We are thus in a position to form our own judgment as to the claim made on behalf of Mr. Darwin, with which we started this chapter—namely, that he has eliminated all mystery from the organic world by the discovery of natural mechanical laws by which all its operations are governed. It is, indeed, difficult to understand how Darwinists themselves can suppose their system to make any such claim, for, as M. Paul Vignon truly observes,[238] "La science darwinnienne s'imaginait avoir triomphé du Sphinx, alors qu'elle avait simplement décomposé le problème dans une monnaie d'énigmes moins rébarbatives en apparence." As has been said, it is far more on account of the vast consequences professedly based upon it, as a sure foundation stone, than for its own sake, that it has seemed advisable to devote so much attention to the study of Darwinism, quite apart from which the whole question of organic Evolution still demands consideration.
It seems far more just to conclude with M. Fabre:[239]