I. Progressive Change.—Every individual animal body—say man’s—has become what it now is by a gradual process. Commencing as a microscopic spherule of living but apparently unorganized protoplasm, it gradually added cell to cell, tissue to tissue, organ to organ, and function to function; thus becoming more and more complex in the mutual action of its correlated parts, as it passed successively through the stages of germ, egg, embryo, and infant, to maturity. This ascending series of genetically connected stages is called the embryonic or Ontogenic series.[2]
There is another series the terms of which are coexistent, and which, therefore, is not in any sense a genetic or development series, but which it is important to mention, because to some degree similar to and illustrative of the last. Commencing with the lowest unicelled microscopic organisms, and passing up to the animal scale, as it now exists, we find a series of forms similar, though not identical, with the last. Here, again, we find cell added to cell, tissue to tissue, organ to organ, and function to function, the animal body becoming more and more complex in structure, in the mutual action of its correlated parts, and the mutual action with the environment, until we reach the highest complexity of structure and of internal and external relations only in the highest animals. This ascending series may be called the natural history series; or, the classification or Taxonomic series.[3] The terms of this series are, of course, not genetically connected; at least, not directly so connected. In what way they are connected, and how the series comes to be similar to the last, we shall see by-and-by.
Finally, there is still a third series, the grandest and most fundamental of all, but only recently recognized, and therefore still imperfectly known. Commencing with the earliest organisms, the very dawn of life, in the very lowest rocks, and passing onward and upward through Eozoic, Palæozoic, Mesozoic, Cenozoic, to the Psychozoic or present time, we again find first the lowest forms, and then successively forms more and more complex in structure, in the interaction of correlated parts and in interaction with the environment, until we reach the most complex internal and external relations, and therefore the highest structure only in the present time.[4] This series we will call the geological or phylogenic series.[5] According to the evolution theory, the terms of this series also are genetically connected. It is, therefore, an evolution series. Furthermore, it is the most fundamental of the three series, because it is the cause of the other two. The Ontogenic series is like it because it is a brief recapitulation, through heredity, as it were from memory, of its main points. The Taxonomic series is like it because the rate of advance along different lines was different in every degree, and therefore every stage of the advance is still represented in a general way among existing forms. Some of these points will be explained more fully in future chapters, in connection with the evidences of the truth of evolution.
It will be admitted, then, that we find progressive change in organic forms throughout geological times. This is the first point in the definition of evolution.
II. Change according to Certain Laws.—We have shown continuously progressive change in organic forms during the whole geologic history of the earth, similar in a general way to that observed in embryonic development. We wish now to show that the laws of change are similar in the two cases. What, then, are the laws of succession of organic forms in geologic times? I have been accustomed to formulate them thus: a. The law of differentiation; b. The law of progress of the whole; c. The law of cyclical movement.[6] We will take up these and explain them successively, and then, afterward, show that they are also the laws of embryonic development, and therefore the laws of evolution.
a. Law of Differentiation.—It is a most significant fact, to which attention was first strongly directed by Louis Agassiz, that the earliest representatives of any group, whether class, order, or family, were not what we would now call typical representatives of that group; but, on the contrary, they were, in a wonderful degree, connecting links; that is, that along with their distinctive classic, ordinal, or family characters they possessed also other characters which connected them closely with other classes, orders, or families, now widely distinct, without connecting links or intermediate forms. For example: The earliest vertebrates were fishes, but not typical fishes. On the contrary, they were fishes so closely connected by many characters with amphibian reptiles, that we hardly know whether to call some of them reptilian fishes, or fish-like reptiles. From these, as from a common vertebrate stem, were afterward separated, by slow changes from generation to generation, in two directions, the typical fishes and the true reptiles. So, also, to take another example, the first birds were far different from typical birds as we now know them. They were, on contrary, birds so reptilian in character, that there is still some doubt whether bird-characters or reptilian characters predominate in the mixture, and therefore whether they ought to be called reptilian birds or bird-like reptiles. From this common stem, the more specialized modern reptiles branched off in one direction and typical birds in another, and intermediate forms became extinct; until now, the two classes stand widely apart, without apparent genetic connection. This subject will be more fully treated hereafter, and other examples given. These two will be sufficient now to make the idea clear.
Such early forms combining the characters of two or more groups, now widely separated, were called by Agassiz connecting types, combining types, synthetic types, and sometimes prophetic types; by Dana, comprehensive types; and by Huxley, generalized types. They are most usually known now as generalized types, and their widely-separated outcomes specialized types. Thus, in general, we may say that the widely-separated groups of the present day, when traced back in geological times, approach one another more and more until they finally unite to form common stems, and these in their turn unite to form a common trunk. From such a common trunk, by successive branching and rebranching, each branch taking a different direction, and all growing wider and wider apart (differentiation), have been gradually generated all the diversified forms which we see at the present day. The last leafy ramifications—flower-bearing and fruit-bearing—of this tree of life, are the fauna and flora of the present epoch. The law might be called a law of ramification, of specialization of the parts, and diversification of the whole.
b. Law of Progress of the Whole.—Many imagine that progress is the one law of evolution; in fact, that evolution and progress are coextensive and convertible terms. They imagine that in evolution the movement must be upward and onward in all parts; that degeneration is the opposite of evolution. This is far from the truth. There is, doubtless, in evolution, progress to higher and higher planes; but not along every line, nor in every part; for this would be contrary to the law of differentiation. It is only progress of the whole organic kingdom in its entirety. We can best make this clear by an illustration. A growing tree branches and again branches in all directions, some branches going upward some sidewise, and some downward—anywhere, everywhere, for light and air; but the whole tree grows ever taller in its higher branches, larger in the circumference of its outstretching arms, and more diversified in structure. Even so the tree of life, by the law of differentiation, branches and rebranches continually in all directions—some branches going upward to higher planes (progress), some pushing horizontally; neither rising nor sinking, but only going farther from the generalized origin (specialization); some going downward (degeneration), anywhere, everywhere, for an unoccupied place in the economy of Nature, but the whole tree grows ever higher in its highest parts, grander in its proportions, and more complexly diversified in its structure.
It may be well to pause here a moment to show how this mistaken identification of evolution with progress alone, without modification by the more fundamental laws of differentiation, has given rise to misconceptions in the popular and even in the scientific mind. The biologist is continually met with the question, “Do you mean to say that any one of the invertebrates, such, for instance, as a spider, may eventually, in the course of successive generations, become a vertebrate, or that a dog or a monkey is on the highway to become a man?” By no means. There is but one straight and narrow way to the highest in evolution as in all else, and few there be that have found it—in fact, probably two or three only at every step. The animals mentioned above have diverged from that way. In their ancestral history, they have missed the golden opportunity, if they ever had it. It is easy to go on in the way they have chosen, but impossible to get back on the ascending trunk-line. To compare again with the growing tree, only one straight trunk-line leads upward to the terminal bud. A branch once separated must grow its own way, if it grow at all.
Of the same nature is the mistake of some extreme evolutionists, such as Dr. Bastian and Professor Haeckel, and of nearly all anti-evolutionists, viz., that of imagining that the truth of evolution and that of spontaneous generation must stand or fall together. On the contrary, if life did once arise spontaneously from any lower forces, physical or chemical, by natural process, the conditions necessary for so extraordinary a change could hardly be expected to occur but once in the history of the earth. They are, therefore, now, not only unreproducible, but unimaginable. Such golden opportunities do not recur. Evolution goes only onward. Therefore, the impossibility of the derivation of life from non-life now, is no more an argument against such a derivation once, than is the hopelessness of a worm ever becoming a vertebrate now, an argument against the derivative origin of vertebrates. Doubtless if life were now extinguished from the face of the earth, it could not again be rekindled by any natural process known to us; but the same is probably true of every step of evolution. If any class—for example, mammals—were now destroyed, it could not be re-formed from any other class now living. It would be necessary to go back to the time and conditions of the separation of this class from the reptilian stem. Therefore, the falseness of the doctrine of abiogenesis,[7] so far from being any argument against evolution, is exactly what a true conception of evolution and knowledge of its laws would lead us to expect.