"The process by which a mimetic analogy is brought about in nature is a problem which involves that of the origin of all species and all adaptations."—H. W. Bates, 1861.
"With mimesis, above all, it is wise, when the law says that a thing is black, first to inquire whether it does not happen to be white."—Henri Fabre.
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
It is now more than fifty years since Darwin gave the theory of natural selection to the world, and the conception of a gradual evolution has long ago become part of the currency of thought. Evolution for Darwin was brought about by more than one factor. He believed in the inherited effects of the use and disuse of parts, and he also regarded sexual selection as operating at any rate among the higher animals. Yet he looked upon the natural selection of small favourable variations as the principal factor in evolutionary change. Since Darwin's time the trend has been to magnify natural selection at the expense of the other two factors. The doctrine of the inherited effects of use and disuse, vigorously challenged by Weismann, failed to make good its case, and it is to-day discredited by the great majority of biologists. Nor perhaps does the hypothesis of sexual selection command the support it originally had. At best it only attempted to explain those features, more especially among the higher animals, in which the sexes differ from one another in pattern, ornament, and the like. With the lapse of time there has come about a tendency to
find in natural selection alone a complete explanation of the process of evolution, and to regard it as the sole factor by which all evolutionary change is brought about. Evolution on this view is a gradual process depending upon the slow accumulation by natural selection of small variations, which are more or less inherited, till at last a well-marked change of type is brought about. Could we have before us all the stages through which a given form has passed as natural selection transforms it into another, they would constitute a continuous series such that even refined scrutiny might fail to distinguish between any two consecutive terms. If the slight variations are not of service they will get no favour from natural selection and so can lead to nothing. But if of use in the struggle for existence natural selection preserves them and subsequent variations in the same direction until at length man recognises the accumulation as a new form. Moreover when the perfect thing is once elaborated natural selection will keep it perfect by discouraging any tendency to vary from perfection.
Upon this view, of which the most distinguished protagonist was Weismann, natural selection is the sole arbiter of animal and plant form. Through it and it alone the world has come to be what it is. To it must be ascribed all righteousness, for it alone is the maker. Such in its extreme form is the modern development of Darwin's great contribution to philosophy.
But is it true? Will natural selection really serve to explain all? Must all the various characters of
plants and animals be supposed to owe their existence to the gradual operation of this factor working upon small variations?