Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation

by Robert Chambers

The reader has seen physical conditions several times referred to, as to be presumed to have in some way governed the progress of the development of the zoological circle. This language may seem vague, and, it may be asked,—can any particular physical condition be adduced as likely to have affected development? To this it may be answered, that air and light are probably amongst the principal agencies of this kind which operated in educing the various forms of being. Light is found to be essential to the development of the individual embryo. When tadpoles were placed in a perforated box, and that box sunk in the Seine, light being the only condition thus abstracted, they grew to a great size in their original form, but did not pass through the usual metamorphose which brings them to their mature state as frogs. The proteus, an animal of the frog kind, inhabiting the subterraneous waters of Carniola, and which never acquires perfect lungs so as to become a land animal, is presumed to be an example of arrested development, from the same cause. When, in connexion with these facts, we learn that human mothers living in dark and close cells under ground,—that is to say, with an inadequate provision of air and light,—are found to produce an unusual proportion of defective children, [229] we can appreciate the important effects of both these physical conditions in ordinary reproduction. Now there is nothing to forbid the supposition that the earth has been at different stages of its career under different conditions, as to both air and light. On the contrary, we have seen reason for supposing that the proportion of carbonic acid gas (the element fatal to animal life) was larger at the time of the carboniferous formation than it afterwards became. We have also seen that astronomers regard the zodiacal light as a residuum of matter enveloping the sun, and which was probably at one time denser than it is now. Here we have the indications of causes for a progress in the purification of the atmosphere and in the diffusion of light during the earlier ages of the earth’s history, with which the progress of organic life may have been conformable. An accession to the proportion of oxygen, and the effulgence of the central luminary, may have been the immediate prompting cause of all those advances from species to species which we have seen, upon other grounds, to be necessarily supposed as having taken place. And causes of the like nature may well be supposed to operate on other spheres of being, as well as on this. I do not indeed present these ideas as furnishing the true explanation of the progress of organic creation; they are merely thrown out as hints towards the formation of a just hypothesis, the completion of which is only to be looked for when some considerable advances shall have been made in the amount and character of our stock of knowledge.

Early in this century, M. Lamarck, a naturalist of the highest character, suggested an hypothesis of organic progress which deservedly incurred much ridicule, although it contained a glimmer of the truth. He surmised, and endeavoured, with a great deal of ingenuity, to prove, that one being advanced in the course of generations to another, in consequence merely of its experience of wants calling for the exercise of its faculties in a particular direction, by which exercise new developments of organs took place, ending in variations sufficient to constitute a new species. Thus he thought that a bird would be driven by necessity to seek its food in the water, and that, in its efforts to swim, the outstretching of its claws would lead to the expansion of the intermediate membranes, and it would thus become web-footed. Now it is possible that wants and the exercise of faculties have entered in some manner into the production of the phenomena which we have been considering; but certainly not in the way suggested by Lamarck, whose whole notion is obviously so inadequate to account for the rise of the organic kingdoms, that we only can place it with pity among the follies of the wise. Had the laws of organic development been known in his time, his theory might have been of a more imposing kind. It is upon these that the present hypothesis is mainly founded. I take existing natural means, and shew them to have been capable of producing all the existing organisms, with the simple and easily conceivable aid of a higher generative law, which we perhaps still see operating upon a limited scale. I also go beyond the French philosopher to a very important point, the original Divine conception of all the forms of being which these natural laws were only instruments in working out and realizing. The actuality of such a conception I hold to be strikingly demonstrated by the discoveries of Macleay, Vigors, and Swainson, with respect to the affinities and analogies of animal (and by implication vegetable) organisms. [232] Such a regularity in the structure, as we may call it, of the classification of animals, as is shewn in their systems, is totally irreconcilable with the idea of form going on to form merely as needs and wishes in the animals themselves dictated. Had such been the case, all would have been irregular, as things arbitrary necessarily are. But, lo, the whole plan of being is as symmetrical as the plan of a house, or the laying out of an old-fashioned garden! This must needs have been devised and arranged for beforehand. And what a preconception or forethought have we here! Let us only for a moment consider how various are the external physical conditions in which animals live—climate, soil, temperature, land, water, air—the peculiarities of food, and the various ways in which it is to be sought; the peculiar circumstances in which the business of reproduction and the care-taking of the young are to be attended to—all these required to be taken into account, and thousands of animals were to be formed suitable in organization and mental character for the concerns they were to have with these various conditions and circumstances—here a tooth fitted for crushing nuts; there a claw fitted to serve as a hook for suspension; here to repress teeth and develop a bony net-work instead; there to arrange for a bronchial apparatus, to last only for a certain brief time; and all these animals were to be schemed out, each as a part of a great range, which was on the whole to be rigidly regular: let us, I say, only consider these things, and we shall see that the decreeing of laws to bring the whole about was an act involving such a degree of wisdom and device as we only can attribute, adoringly, to the one Eternal and Unchangeable. It may be asked, how does this reflection comport with that timid philosophy which would have us to draw back from the investigation of God’s works, lest the knowledge of them should make us undervalue his greatness and forget his paternal character? Does it not rather appear that our ideas of the Deity can only be worthy of him in the ratio in which we advance in a knowledge of his works and ways; and that the acquisition of this knowledge is consequently an available means of our growing in a genuine reverence for him!

But the idea that any of the lower animals have been concerned in any way with the origin of man—is not this degrading? Degrading is a term, expressive of a notion of the human mind, and the human mind is liable to prejudices which prevent its notions from being invariably correct. Were we acquainted for the first time with the circumstances attending the production of an individual of our race, we might equally think them degrading, and be eager to deny them, and exclude them from the admitted truths of nature. Knowing this fact familiarly and beyond contradiction, a healthy and natural mind finds no difficulty in regarding it complacently. Creative Providence has been pleased to order that it should be so, and it must therefore be submitted to. Now the idea as to the progress of organic creation, if we become satisfied of its truth, ought to be received precisely in this spirit. It has pleased Providence to arrange that one species should give birth to another, until the second highest gave birth to man, who is the very highest: be it so, it is our part to admire and to submit. The very faintest notion of there being anything ridiculous or degrading in the theory—how absurd does it appear, when we remember that every individual amongst us actually passes through the characters of the insect, the fish, and reptile, (to speak nothing of others,) before he is permitted to breathe the breath of life! But such notions are mere emanations of false pride and ignorant prejudice. He who conceives them little reflects that they, in reality, involve the principle of a contempt for the works and ways of God. For it may be asked, if He, as appears, has chosen to employ inferior organisms as a generative medium for the production of higher ones, even including ourselves, what right have we, his humble creatures, to find fault? There is, also, in this prejudice, an element of unkindliness towards the lower animals, which is utterly out of place. These creatures are all of them part products of the Almighty Conception, as well as ourselves. All of them display wondrous evidences of his wisdom and benevolence. All of them have had assigned to them by their Great Father a part in the drama of the organic world, as well as ourselves. Why should they be held in such contempt? Let us regard them in a proper spirit, as parts of the grand plan, instead of contemplating them in the light of frivolous prejudices, and we shall be altogether at a loss to see how there should be any degradation in the idea of our race having been genealogically connected with them.

MACLEAY SYSTEM OF ANIMATED NATURE.
THIS SYSTEM CONSIDERED IN CONNEXION WITH THE
PROGRESS OF ORGANIC CREATION, AND AS INDICATING
THE NATURAL STATUS OF MAN.

It is now high time to advert to the system formed by the animated tribes, both with a view to the possible illustration of the preceding argument, and for the light which it throws upon that general system of nature which it is the more comprehensive object of this book to ascertain.

The vegetable and animal kingdoms are arranged upon a scale, starting from simply organized forms, and going on to the more complex, each of these forms being but slightly different from those next to it on both sides. The lowest and most slightly developed forms in the two kingdoms are so closely connected, that it is impossible to say where vegetable ends and animal begins. United at what may be called their bases, they start away in different directions, but not altogether to lose sight of each other. On the contrary, they maintain a strict analogy throughout the whole of their subsequent courses, sub-kingdom for sub-kingdom, class for class; shewing a beautiful, though as yet obscure relation between the two grand forms of being, and consequently a unity in the laws which brought them both into existence. So complete does this analogy appear, even in the present imperfect state of science, that I fully expect in a few years to see the animal and vegetable kingdoms duly ranked up against each other in a system of parallels, which will admit of our assigning to each species in the former the particular shrub or tree corresponding to it in the latter, all marked by unmistakable analogies of the most interesting kind.

It is as yet but a few years since a system of subordinate analogies not less remarkable began to be speculated upon as within the range of the animal kingdom. Probably it also exists in the vegetable kingdom; but to this point no direct attention has been given; so we are left to infer that such is the case from theoretical considerations only. We are indebted for what we know of these beautiful analogies to three naturalists—Macleay, Vigors, and Swainson, whose labours tempt us to dismiss in a great measure the artificial classifications hitherto used, and make an entirely new conspectus of the animal kingdom, not to speak of the corresponding reform which will be required in our systems of botany also.

The Macleay system, as it may be called in honour of its principal author, announces that, whether we take the whole animal kingdom, or any definite division of it, we shall find that we are examining a group of beings which is capable of being arranged along a series of close affinities, in a circular form,—that is to say, starting from any one portion of the group, when it is properly arranged, we can proceed from one to another by minute gradations, till at length, having run through the whole, we return to the point whence we set out. All natural groups of animals are, therefore, in the language of Mr. Macleay, circular; and the possibility of throwing any supposed group into a circular arrangement is held as a decisive test of its being a real or natural one. It is of course to be understood that each circle is composed of a set of inferior circles: for example, a set of tribe circles composes an order; a set of order circles, again, forms a class; and so on. Of each group, the component circles are invariably five in number: thus, in the animal kingdom, there are five sub-kingdoms,—the vertebrata, annulosa, [239a] radiata, acrita, [239b] mollusca. Take, again, one of these sub-kingdoms, the vertebrata, and we find it composed of five classes,—the mammalia, reptilia, pisces, amphibia, and aves, each of the other sub-kingdoms being similarly divisible. Take the mammalia, and it is in like manner found to be composed of five orders,—the cheirotheria, [239c] feræ, cetacea, glires, ungulata. Even in this numerical uniformity, which goes down to the lowest ramifications of the system, there would be something very remarkable, as arguing a definite and preconceived arrangement; but this is only the least curious part of the Macleay theory.

We shall best understand the wonderfully complex system of analogies developed by that theory, if we start from the part of the kingdom in which they were first traced,—namely, the class aves, or birds. This gives for its five orders,—incessores, (perching birds,) raptores, (birds of prey,) natatores, (swimming birds,) grallatores, (waders,) rasores, (scrapers.) In these orders our naturalists discerned distinct organic characters, of different degrees of perfectness, the first being the most perfect with regard to the general character of the class, and therefore the best representative of that class; whence it was called the typical order. The second was found to be inferior, or rather to have a less perfect balance of qualities; hence it was designated the sub-typical. In this are comprehended the chief noxious and destructive animals of the circle to which it belongs. The other three groups were called aberrant, as exhibiting a much wider departure from the typical standard, although the last of the three is observed to make a certain recovery, and join on to the typical group, so as to complete the circle. The first of the aberrant groups (natatores) is remarkable for making the water the theatre of its existence, and the birds composing it are in general of comparatively large bulk. The second (grallatores) are long-limbed and long-billed, that they may wade and pick up their subsistence in the shallows and marshes in which they chiefly live. The third (rasores) are distinguished by strong feet, for walking or running on the ground, and for scraping in it for their food; also by wings designed to scarcely raise them off the earth and, farther, by a general domesticity of character and usefulness to man.