I have already admitted that instinct may be modified by food or drugs, which may affect a structure or habit as powerfully as we see certain poisons affect the structure of plants by producing, as Mr. Darwin tells us, very complex galls upon their leaves. I do not, therefore, for a moment insist on habit as the sole cause of instinct. Every habit must have had its originating cause, and the causes which have started one habit will from time to time start or modify others; nor can I explain why some individuals of a race should be cleverer than others, any more than I can explain why they should exist at all; nevertheless, I observe it to be a fact that differences in intelligence and power of growth are universal in the individuals of all those races which we can best watch. I also most readily admit that the common course of nature would both cause many variations to arise independently of any desire on the part of the animal (much as we have lately seen that the moons of Mars were on the point of being discovered three hundred years ago, merely through Galileo sending to Kepler a Latin anagram which Kepler could not understand, and arranged into the line—“Salve umbistineum geminatum Martia prolem,” and interpreted to mean that Mars had two moons, whereas Galileo had meant to say “Altissimum planetam tergeminum observavi,” meaning that he had seen Saturn’s ring), and would also preserve and accumulate such variations when they had arisen; but I can no more believe that the wonderful adaptation of structures to needs, which we see around us in such an infinite number of plants and animals, can have arisen without a perception of those needs on the part of the creature in whom the structure appears, than I can believe that the form of the dray-horse or greyhound—so well adapted both to the needs of the animal in his daily service to man, and to the desires of man, that the creature should do him this daily service—can have arisen without any desire on man’s part to produce this particular structure, or without the inherited habit of performing the corresponding actions for man, on the part of the greyhound and dray-horse.
And I believe that this will be felt as reasonable by the great majority of my readers. I believe that nine fairly intelligent and observant men out of ten, if they were asked which they thought most likely to have been the main cause of the development of the various phases either of structure or instinct which we see around us, namely—sense of need, or even whim, and hence occasional discovery, helped by an occasional piece of good luck, communicated, it may be, and generally adopted, long practised, remembered by offspring, modified by changed surroundings, and accumulated in the course of time—or, the accumulation of small divergent, indefinite, and perfectly unintelligent variations, preserved through the survival of their possessor in the struggle for existence, and hence in time leading to wide differences from the original type—would answer in favour of the former alternative; and if for no other cause yet for this—that in the human race, which we are best able to watch, and between which and the lower animals no difference in kind will, I think, be supposed, but only in degree, we observe that progress must have an internal current setting in a definite direction, but whither we know not for very long beforehand; and that without such internal current there is stagnation. Our own progress—or variation—is due not to small, fortuitous inventions or modifications which have enabled their fortunate possessors to survive in times of difficulty, not, in fact, to strokes of luck (though these, of course, have had some effect—but not more, probably, than strokes of ill luck have counteracted) but to strokes of cunning—to a sense of need, and to study of the past and present which have given shrewd people a key with which to unlock the chambers of the future.
Further, Mr. Darwin himself says (“Plants and Animals under Domestication,” ii. p. 237, ed. 1875):—
“But I think we must take a broader view and conclude that organic beings when subjected during several generations to any change whatever in their conditions tend to vary: the kind of variation which ensues depending in most cases in a far higher degree on the nature or constitution of the being, than on the nature of the changed conditions.” And this we observe in man. The history of a man prior to his birth is more important as far as his success or failure goes than his surroundings after birth, important though these may indeed be. The able man rises in spite of a thousand hindrances, the fool fails in spite of every advantage. “Natural selection,” however, does not make either the able man or the fool. It only deals with him after other causes have made him, and would seem in the end to amount to little more than to a statement of the fact that when variations have arisen they will accumulate. One cannot look, as has already been said, for the origin of species in that part of the course of nature which settles the preservation or extinction of variations which have already arisen from some unknown cause, but one must look for it in the causes that have led to variation at all. These causes must get, as it were, behind the back of “natural selection,” which is rather a shield and hindrance to our perception of our own ignorance than an explanation of what these causes are.
The remarks made above will apply equally to plants such as the misletoe and red clover. For the sake of brevity I will deal only with the misletoe, which seems to be the more striking case. Mr. Darwin writes:—
“Naturalists continually refer to external conditions, such as climate, food, &c., as the only possible cause of variation. In one limited sense, as we shall hereafter see, this may be true; but it is preposterous to attribute to mere external conditions, the structure, for instance, of the woodpecker, with its feet, tail, beak, and tongue, so admirably adapted to catch insects under the bark of trees. In the case of the misletoe, which draws its nourishment from certain trees, which has seeds that must be transported by certain birds, and which has flowers with separate sexes absolutely requiring the agency of certain insects to bring pollen from one flower to another, it is equally preposterous to account for the structure of this parasite with its relations to several distinct organic beings, by the effect of external conditions, or of habit, or of the volition of the plant itself” (“Natural Selection,” p. 3, ed. 1876).
I cannot see this. To me it seems still more preposterous to account for it by the action of “natural selection” operating upon indefinite variations. It would be preposterous to suppose that a bird very different from a woodpecker should have had a conception of a woodpecker, and so by volition gradually grown towards it. So in like manner with the misletoe. Neither plant nor bird knew how far they were going, or saw more than a very little ahead as to the means of remedying this or that with which they were dissatisfied, or of getting this or that which they desired; but given perceptions at all, and thus a sense of needs and of the gratification of those needs, and thus hope and fear, and a sense of content and discontent—given also the lowest power of gratifying those needs—given also that some individuals have these powers in a higher degree than others—given also continued personality and memory over a vast extent of time—and the whole phenomena of species and genera resolve themselves into an illustration of the old proverb, that what is one man’s meat is another man’s poison. Life in its lowest form under the above conditions—and we cannot conceive of life at all without them—would be bound to vary, and to result after not so very many millions of years in the infinite forms and instincts which we see around us.
CHAPTER XIII.
LAMARCK AND MR. DARWIN.
It will have been seen that in the preceding pages the theory of evolution, as originally propounded by Lamarck, has been more than once supported, as against the later theory concerning it put forward by Mr. Darwin, and now generally accepted.
It is not possible for me, within the limits at my command, to do anything like justice to the arguments that may be brought forward in favour of either of these two theories. Mr. Darwin’s books are at the command of every one; and so much has been discovered since Lamarck’s day, that if he were living now, he would probably state his case very differently; I shall therefore content myself with a few brief remarks, which will hardly, however, aspire to the dignity of argument.