“On the other hand, mutilations and other effects of directly transforming agents are rarely, if ever, transmitted.” Professor Ray Lankester ought to know the facts better than to say that the effects of mutilation are rarely, if ever, transmitted. The rule is, that they will not be transmitted unless they have been followed by disease, but that where disease has supervened they not uncommonly descend to offspring. [234a] I know Brown-Séquard considered it to be the morbid state of the nervous system consequent upon the mutilation that is transmitted, rather than the immediate effects of the mutilation, but this distinction is somewhat finely drawn.
When Professor Ray Lankester talks about the “other effects of directly transforming agents” being rarely transmitted, he should first show us the directly transforming agents. Lamarck, as I have said, knows them not. “It is little short of an absurdity,” he continues, “for people to come forward at this epoch, when evolution is at length accepted solely because of Mr. Darwin’s doctrine, and coolly to propose to replace that doctrine by the old notion so often tried and rejected.”
Whether this is an absurdity or no, Professor Lankester will do well to learn to bear it without showing so much warmth, for it is one that is becoming common. Evolution has been accepted not “because of” Mr. Darwin’s doctrine, but because Mr. Darwin so fogged us about his doctrine that we did not understand it. We thought we were backing his bill for descent with modification, whereas we were in reality backing it for descent with modification by means of natural selection from among fortuitous variations. This last really is Mr. Darwin’s theory, except in so far as it is also Mr. A. R. Wallace’s; descent, alone, is just as much and just as little Mr. Darwin’s doctrine as it is Professor Ray Lankester’s or mine. I grant it is in great measure through Mr. Darwin’s books that descent has become so widely accepted; it has become so through his books, but in spite of, rather than by reason of, his doctrine. Indeed his doctrine was no doctrine, but only a back-door for himself to escape by in the event of flood or fire; the flood and fire have come; it remains to be seen how far the door will work satisfactorily.
Professor Ray Lankester, again, should not say that Lamarck’s doctrine has been “so often tried and rejected.” M. Martins, in his edition of the “Philosophie Zoologique,” [235a] said truly that Lamarck’s theory had never yet had the honour of being seriously discussed. It never has—not at least in connection with the name of its propounder. To mention Lamarck’s name in the presence of the conventional English society naturalist has always been like shaking a red rag at a cow; he is at once infuriated; “as if it were possible,” to quote from Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire, whose defence of Lamarck is one of the best things in his book, [235b] “that so great labour on the part of so great a naturalist should have led him to ‘a fantastic conclusion’ only—to ‘a flighty error,’ and, as has been often said, though not written, to ‘one absurdity the more.’ Such was the language which Lamarck heard during his protracted old age, saddened alike by the weight of years and blindness; this was what people did not hesitate to utter over his grave, yet barely closed, and what, indeed, they are still saying—commonly too, without any knowledge of what Lamarck maintained, but merely repeating at second hand bad caricatures of his teaching.
“When will the time come when we may see Lamarck’s theory discussed, and I may as well at once say refuted, in some important points, with at any rate the respect due to one of the most illustrious masters of our science? And when will this theory, the hardihood of which has been greatly exaggerated, become freed from the interpretations and commentaries by the false light of which so many naturalists have formed their opinion concerning it? If its author is to be condemned, let it, at any rate, not be before he has been heard.”
Lamarck was the Lazarus of biology. I wish his more fortunate brethren, instead of intoning the old Church argument that he has “been refuted over and over again,” would refer us to some of the best chapters in the writers who have refuted him. My own reading has led me to become moderately well acquainted with the literature of evolution, but I have never come across a single attempt fairly to grapple with Lamarck, and it is plain that neither Isidore Geoffroy nor M. Martins knows of such an attempt any more than I do. When Professor Ray Lankester puts his finger on Lamarck’s weak places, then, but not till then, may he complain of those who try to replace Mr. Darwin’s doctrine by Lamarck’s.
Professor Ray Lankester concludes his note thus:—
“That such an attempt should be made is an illustration of a curious weakness of humanity. Not infrequently, after a long contested cause has triumphed, and all have yielded allegiance thereto, you will find, when few generations have passed, that men have clean forgotten what and who it was that made that cause triumphant, and ignorantly will set up for honour the name of a traitor or an impostor, or attribute to a great man as a merit deeds and thoughts which he spent a long life in opposing.”
Exactly so; that is what one rather feels, but surely Professor Ray Lankester should say “in trying to filch while pretending to oppose and to amend.” He is complaining here that people persistently ascribe Lamarck’s doctrine to Mr. Darwin. Of course they do; but, as I have already perhaps too abundantly asked, whose fault is this? If a man knows his own mind, and wants others to understand it, it is not often that he is misunderstood for any length of time. If he finds he is being misapprehended in a way he does not like, he will write another book and make his meaning plainer. He will go on doing this for as long time as he thinks necessary. I do not suppose, for example, that people will say I originated the theory of descent by means of natural selection from among fortunate accidents, or even that I was one of its supporters as a means of modification; but if this impression were to prevail, I cannot think I should have much difficulty in removing it. At any rate no such misapprehension could endure for more than twenty years, during which I continued to address a public who welcomed all I wrote, unless I myself aided and abetted the mistake. Mr. Darwin wrote many books, but the impression that Darwinism and evolution, or descent with modification, are identical is still nearly as prevalent as it was soon after the appearance of the “Origin of Species;” the reason of this is, that Mr. Darwin was at no pains to correct us. Where, in any one of his many later books, is there a passage which sets the matter in its true light, and enters a protest against the misconception of which Professor Ray Lankester complains so bitterly? The only inference from this is, that Mr. Darwin was not displeased at our thinking him to be the originator of the theory of descent with modification, and did not want us to know more about Lamarck than he could help. If we wanted to know about him, we must find out what he had said for ourselves, it was no part of Mr. Darwin’s business to tell us; he had no interest in our catching the distinctive difference between himself and that writer; perhaps not; but this approaches closely to wishing us to misunderstand it. When Mr. Darwin wished us to understand this or that, no one knew better how to show it to us.
We were aware, on reading the “Origin of Species,” that there was a something about it of which we had not full hold; nevertheless we gave Mr. Darwin our confidence at once, partly because he led off by telling us that we must trust him to a great extent, and explained that the present book was only an instalment of a larger work which, when it came out, would make everything perfectly clear; partly, again, because the case for descent with modification, which was the leading idea throughout the book, was so obviously strong, but perhaps mainly because every one said Mr. Darwin was so good, and so much less self-heeding than other people; besides, he had so “patiently” and “carefully” accumulated “such a vast store of facts” as no other naturalist, living or dead, had ever yet even tried to get together; he was so kind to us with his, “May we not believe?” and his “Have we any right to infer that the Creator?” &c. “Of course we have not,” we exclaimed, almost with tears in our eyes—“not if you ask us in that way.” Now that we understand what it was that puzzled us in Mr. Darwin’s work we do not think highly either of the chief offender, or of the accessories after the fact, many of whom are trying to brazen the matter out, and on a smaller scale to follow his example.