Books: Luck or Cunning?

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Which comes to saying that it is easy to understand the Lamarckian
system of evolution, but not the Charles-Darwinian. Mr. Allen
concluded his article a few pages later on by saying

"The first hypothesis" (Mr. Darwin's) "is one that throws no light
upon any of the facts. The second hypothesis" (which is unalloyed
Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck) "is one that explains them all with
transparent lucidity." Yet in his "Charles Darwin" Mr. Allen tells
us that though Mr. Darwin "did not invent the development theory, he
made it believable and comprehensible" (p. 4).

In his "Charles Darwin" Mr. Allen does not tell us how recently he
had, in another place, expressed an opinion about the value of Mr.
Darwin's "distinctive contribution" to the theory of evolution, so
widely different from the one he is now expressing with
characteristic appearance of ardour. He does not explain how he is
able to execute such rapid changes of front without forfeiting his
claim on our attention; explanations on matters of this sort seem
out of date with modern scientists. I can only suppose that Mr.
Allen regards himself as having taken a brief, as it were, for the
production of a popular work, and feels more bound to consider the
interests of the gentleman who pays him than to say what he really
thinks; for surely Mr. Allen would not have written as he did in
such a distinctly philosophical and scientific journal as "Mind"
without weighing his words, and nothing has transpired lately,
apropos of evolution, which will account for his present
recantation. I said in my book "Selections," &c., that when Mr.
Allen made stepping-stones of his dead selves, he jumped upon them
to some tune. I was a little scandalised then at the completeness
and suddenness of the movement he executed, and spoke severely; I
have sometimes feared I may have spoken too severely, but his recent
performance goes far to warrant my remarks.

If, however, there is no dead self about it, and Mr. Allen has only
taken a brief, I confess to being not greatly edified. I grant that
a good case can be made out for an author's doing as I suppose Mr.
Allen to have done; indeed I am not sure that both science and
religion would not gain if every one rode his neighbour's theory, as
at a donkey-race, and the least plausible were held to win; but
surely, as things stand, a writer by the mere fact of publishing a
book professes to be giving a bona fide opinion. The analogy of the
bar does not hold, for not only is it perfectly understood that a
barrister does not necessarily state his own opinions, but there
exists a strict though unwritten code to protect the public against
the abuses to which such a system must be liable. In religion and
science no such code exists--the supposition being that these two
holy callings are above the necessity for anything of the kind.
Science and religion are not as business is; still, if the public do
not wish to be taken in, they must be at some pains to find out
whether they are in the hands of one who, while pretending to be a
judge, is in reality a paid advocate, with no one's interests at
heart except his client's, or in those of one who, however warmly he
may plead, will say nothing but what springs from mature and genuine
conviction.

The present unsettled and unsatisfactory state of the moral code in
this respect is at the bottom of the supposed antagonism between
religion and science. These two are not, or never ought to be,
antagonistic. They should never want what is spoken of as
reconciliation, for in reality they are one. Religion is the
quintessence of science, and science the raw material of religion;
when people talk about reconciling religion and science they do not
mean what they say; they mean reconciling the statements made by one
set of professional men with those made by another set whose
interests lie in the opposite direction--and with no recognised
president of the court to keep them within due bounds this is not
always easy.

Mr. Allen says:-

"At the same time it must be steadily remembered that there are many
naturalists at the present day, especially among those of the lower
order of intelligence, who, while accepting evolutionism in a
general way, and therefore always describing themselves as
Darwinians, do not believe, and often cannot even understand, the
distinctive Darwinian addition to the evolutionary doctrine--namely,
the principle of natural selection. Such hazy and indistinct
thinkers as these are still really at the prior stage of Lamarckian
evolution" (p. 199).

Considering that Mr. Allen was at that stage himself so recently, he
might deal more tenderly with others who still find "the distinctive
Darwinian adjunct" "unthinkable." It is perhaps, however, because
he remembers his difficulties that Mr. Allen goes on as follows:-

"It is probable that in the future, while a formal acceptance of
Darwinism becomes general, the special theory of natural selection
will be thoroughly understood and assimilated only by the more
abstract and philosophical minds."

By the kind of people, in fact, who read the Spectator and are
called thoughtful; and in point of fact less than a twelvemonth
after this passage was written, natural selection was publicly
abjured as "a theory of the origin of species" by Mr. Romanes
himself, with the implied approval of the Times.

"Thus," continues Mr. Allen, "the name of Darwin will often no doubt
be tacked on to what are in reality the principles of Lamarck."

It requires no great power of prophecy to foretell this, considering
that it is done daily by nine out of ten who call themselves
Darwinians. Ask ten people of ordinary intelligence how Mr. Darwin
explains the fact that giraffes have long necks, and nine of them
will answer "through continually stretching them to reach higher and
higher boughs." They do not understand that this is the Lamarckian
view of evolution, not the Darwinian; nor will Mr. Allen's book
greatly help the ordinary reader to catch the difference between the
two theories, in spite of his frequent reference to Mr. Darwin's
"distinctive feature," and to his "master-key." No doubt the
British public will get to understand all about it some day, but it
can hardly be expected to do so all at once, considering the way in
which Mr. Allen and so many more throw dust in its eyes, and will
doubtless continue to throw it as long as an honest penny is to be
turned by doing so. Mr. Allen, then, is probably right in saying
that "the name of Darwin will no doubt be often tacked on to what
are in reality the principles of Lamarck," nor can it be denied that
Mr. Darwin, by his practice of using "the theory of natural
selection" as though it were a synonym for "the theory of descent
with modification," contributed to this result.

I do not myself doubt that he intended to do this, but Mr. Allen
would say no less confidently he did not. He writes of Mr. Darwin
as follows:-

"Of Darwin's pure and exalted moral nature no Englishman of the
present generation can trust himself to speak with becoming
moderation."

He proceeds to trust himself thus:-

"His love of truth, his singleness of heart, his sincerity, his
earnestness, his modesty, his candour, his absolute sinking of self
and selfishness--these, indeed are all conspicuous to every reader
on the very face of every word he ever printed."

This "conspicuous sinking of self" is of a piece with the
"delightful unostentatiousness WHICH EVERY ONE MUST HAVE NOTICED"
about which Mr. Allen writes on page 65. Does he mean that Mr.
Darwin was "ostentatiously unostentatious," or that he was
"unostentatiously ostentatious"? I think we may guess from this
passage who it was that in the old days of the Pall Mall Gazelle
called Mr. Darwin "a master of a certain happy simplicity."

Mr. Allen continues:-

"Like his works themselves, they must long outlive him. But his
sympathetic kindliness, his ready generosity, the staunchness of his
friendship, the width and depth and breadth of his affections, the
manner in which 'he bore with those who blamed him unjustly without
blaming them again'--these things can never be so well known to any
other generation of men as to the three generations that walked the
world with him" (pp. 174, 175).

Again:-

"He began early in life to collect and arrange a vast encyclopaedia
of facts, all finally focussed with supreme skill upon the great
principle he so clearly perceived and so lucidly expounded. He
brought to bear upon the question an amount of personal observation,
of minute experiment, of world-wide book knowledge, of universal
scientific ability, such as never, perhaps, was lavished by any
other man upon any other department of study. His conspicuous and
beautiful love of truth, his unflinching candour, his transparent
fearlessness and honesty of purpose, his childlike simplicity, his
modesty of demeanour, his charming manner, his affectionate
disposition, his kindliness to friends, his courtesy to opponents,
his gentleness to harsh and often bitter assailants, kindled in the
minds of men of science everywhere throughout the world a contagious
enthusiasm only equalled perhaps among the disciples of Socrates and
the great teachers of the revival of learning. His name became a
rallying-point for the children of light in every country" (pp. 196,
197).

I need not quote more; the sentence goes on to talk about "firmly
grounding" something which philosophers and speculators might have
taken a century or two more "to establish in embryo;" but those who
wish to see it must turn to Mr. Allen's book.

If I have formed too severe an estimate of Mr. Darwin's work and
character--and this is more than likely--the fulsomeness of the
adulation lavished on him by his admirers for many years past must
be in some measure my excuse. We grow tired even of hearing
Aristides called just, but what is so freely said about Mr. Darwin
puts us in mind more of what the people said about Herod--that he
spoke with the voice of a God, not of a man. So we saw Professor
Ray Lankester hail him not many years ago as the "greatest of living
men." {224a}

It is ill for any man's fame that he should be praised so
extravagantly. Nobody ever was as good as Mr. Darwin looked, and a
counterblast to such a hurricane of praise as has been lately
blowing will do no harm to his ultimate reputation, even though it
too blow somewhat fiercely. Art, character, literature, religion,
science (I have named them in alphabetical order), thrive best in a
breezy, bracing air; I heartily hope I may never be what is commonly
called successful in my own lifetime--and if I go on as I am doing
now, I have a fair chance of succeeding in not succeeding.

CHAPTER XVII--Professor Ray Lankester and Lamarck

Being anxious to give the reader a sample of the arguments against
the theory of natural selection from among variations that are
mainly either directly or indirectly functional in their inception,
or more briefly against the Erasmus-Darwinian and Lamarckian
systems, I can find nothing more to the point, or more recent, than
Professor Ray Lankester's letter to the Athenaeum of March 29, 1884,
to the latter part of which, however, I need alone call attention.
Professor Ray Lankester says:-

"And then we are introduced to the discredited speculations of
Lamarck, which have found a worthy advocate in Mr. Butler, as really
solid contributions to the discovery of the verae causae of
variation! A much more important attempt to do something for
Lamarck's hypothesis, of the transmission to offspring of structural
peculiarities acquired by the parents, was recently made by an able
and experienced naturalist, Professor Semper of Wurzburg. His book
on 'Animal Life,' &c., is published in the 'International Scientific
Series.' Professor Semper adduces an immense number and variety of
cases of structural change in animals and plants brought about in
the individual by adaptation (during its individual life-history) to
new conditions. Some of these are very marked changes, such as the
loss of its horny coat in the gizzard of a pigeon fed on meat; BUT
IN NO SINGLE INSTANCE COULD PROFESSOR SEMPER SHOW--although it was
his object and desire to do so if possible--that such change was
transmitted from parent to offspring. Lamarckism looks all very
well on paper, but, as Professor Semper's book shows, when put to
the test of observation and experiment it collapses absolutely."

I should have thought it would have been enough if it had collapsed
without the "absolutely," but Professor Ray Lankester does not like
doing things by halves. Few will be taken in by the foregoing
quotation, except those who do not greatly care whether they are
taken in or not; but to save trouble to readers who may have neither
Lamarck nor Professor Semper at hand, I will put the case as
follows:-

Professor Semper writes a book to show, we will say, that the hour-
hand of the clock moves gradually forward, in spite of its appearing
stationary. He makes his case sufficiently clear, and then might
have been content to leave it; nevertheless, in the innocence of his
heart, he adds the admission that though he had often looked at the
clock for a long time together, he had never been able actually to
see the hour-hand moving. "There now," exclaims Professor Ray
Lankester on this, "I told you so; the theory collapses absolutely;
his whole object and desire is to show that the hour-hand moves, and
yet when it comes to the point, he is obliged to confess that he
cannot see it do so." It is not worth while to meet what Professor
Ray Lankester has been above quoted as saying about Lamarckism
beyond quoting the following passage from a review of "The
Neanderthal Skull on Evolution" in the "Monthly Journal of Science"
for June, 1885 (p. 362):-

"On the very next page the author reproduces the threadbare
objection that the 'supporters of the theory have never yet
succeeded in observing a single instance in all the millions of
years invented (!) in its support of one species of animal turning
into another.' Now, ex hypothesi, one species turns into another
not rapidly, as in a transformation scene, but in successive
generations, each being born a shade different from its progenitors.
Hence to observe such a change is excluded by the very terms of the
question. Does Mr. Saville forget Mr. Herbert Spencer's apologue of
the ephemeron which had never witnessed the change of a child into a
man?"

The apologue, I may say in passing, is not Mr. Spencer's; it is by
the author of the "Vestiges," and will be found on page 161 of the
1853 edition of that book; but let this pass. How impatient
Professor Ray Lankester is of any attempt to call attention to the
older view of evolution appears perhaps even more plainly in a
review of this same book of Professor Semper's that appeared in
"Nature," March 3, 1881. The tenor of the remarks last quoted shows
that though what I am about to quote is now more than five years
old, it may be taken as still giving us the position which Professor
Ray Lankester takes on these matters. He wrote:-

"It is necessary," he exclaims, "to plainly and emphatically state"
(Why so much emphasis? Why not "it should be stated"?) "that
Professor Semper and a few other writers of similar views" {227a} (I
have sent for the number of "Modern Thought" referred to by
Professor Ray Lankester but find no article by Mr. Henslow, and do
not, therefore, know what he had said) "are not adding to or
building on Mr. Darwin's theory, but are actually opposing all that
is essential and distinctive in that theory, by the revival of the
exploded notion of 'directly transforming agents' advocated by
Lamarck and others."

It may be presumed that these writers know they are not "adding to
or building on" Mr. Darwin's theory, and do not wish to build on it,
as not thinking it a sound foundation. Professor Ray Lankester says
they are "actually opposing," as though there were something
intolerably audacious in this; but it is not easy to see why he
should be more angry with them for "actually opposing" Mr. Darwin
than they may be with him, if they think it worth while, for
"actually defending" the exploded notion of natural selection--for
assuredly the Charles-Darwinian system is now more exploded than
Lamarck's is.

What Professor Ray Lankester says about Lamarck and "directly
transforming agents" will mislead those who take his statement
without examination. Lamarck does not say that modification is
effected by means of "directly transforming agents;" nothing can be
more alien to the spirit of his teaching. With him the action of
the external conditions of existence (and these are the only
transforming agents intended by Professor Ray Lankester) is not
direct, but indirect. Change in surroundings changes the organism's
outlook, and thus changes its desires; desires changing, there is
corresponding change in the actions performed; actions changing, a
corresponding change is by-and-by induced in the organs that perform
them; this, if long continued, will be transmitted; becoming
augmented by accumulation in many successive generations, and
further modifications perhaps arising through further changes in
surroundings, the change will amount ultimately to specific and
generic difference. Lamarck knows no drug, nor operation, that will
medicine one organism into another, and expects the results of
adaptive effort to be so gradual as to be only perceptible when
accumulated in the course of many generations. When, therefore,
Professor Ray Lankester speaks of Lamarck as having "advocated
directly transforming agents," he either does not know what he is
talking about, or he is trifling with his readers. Professor Ray
Lankester continues:-

"They do not seem to be aware of this, for they make no attempt to
examine Mr. Darwin's accumulated facts and arguments." Professor
Ray Lankester need not shake Mr. Darwin's "accumulated facts and
arguments" at us. We have taken more pains to understand them than
Professor Ray Lankester has taken to understand Lamarck, and by this
time know them sufficiently. We thankfully accept by far the
greater number, and rely on them as our sheet-anchors to save us
from drifting on to the quicksands of Neo-Darwinian natural
selection; few of them, indeed, are Mr. Darwin's, except in so far
as he has endorsed them and given them publicity, but I do not know
that this detracts from their value. We have paid great attention
to Mr. Darwin's facts, and if we do not understand all his
arguments--for it is not always given to mortal man to understand
these--yet we think we know what he was driving at. We believe we
understand this to the full as well as Mr. Darwin intended us to do,
and perhaps better. Where the arguments tend to show that all
animals and plants are descended from a common source we find them
much the same as Buffon's, or as those of Erasmus Darwin or Lamarck,
and have nothing to say against them; where, on the other hand, they
aim at proving that the main means of modification has been the fact
that if an animal has been "favoured" it will be "preserved"--then
we think that the animal's own exertions will, in the long run, have
had more to do with its preservation than any real or fancied
"favour." Professor Ray Lankester continues:-

"The doctrine of evolution has become an accepted truth" (Professor
Ray Lankester writes as though the making of truth and falsehood lay
in the hollow of Mr. Darwin's hand. Surely "has become accepted"
should be enough; Mr. Darwin did not make the doctrine true)
"entirely in consequence of Mr. Darwin's having demonstrated the
mechanism." (There is no mechanism in the matter, and if there is,
Mr. Darwin did not show it. He made some words which confused us
and prevented us from seeing that "the preservation of favoured
races" was a cloak for "luck," and that this was all the explanation
he was giving) "by which the evolution is possible; it was almost
universally rejected, while such undemonstrable agencies as those
arbitrarily asserted to exist by Professor Semper and Mr. George
Henslow were the only means suggested by its advocates."

Undoubtedly the theory of descent with modification, which received
its first sufficiently ample and undisguised exposition in 1809 with
the "Philosophie Zoologique" of Lamarck, shared the common fate of
all theories that revolutionise opinion on important matters, and
was fiercely opposed by the Huxleys, Romaneses, Grant Allens, and
Ray Lankesters of its time. It had to face the reaction in favour
of the Church which began in the days of the First Empire, as a
natural consequence of the horrors of the Revolution; it had to face
the social influence and then almost Darwinian reputation of Cuvier,
whom Lamarck could not, or would not, square; it was put forward by
one who was old, poor, and ere long blind. What theory could do
more than just keep itself alive under conditions so unfavourable?
Even under the most favourable conditions descent with modification
would have been a hard plant to rear, but, as things were, the
wonder is that it was not killed outright at once. We all know how
large a share social influences have in deciding what kind of
reception a book or theory is to meet with; true, these influences
are not permanent, but at first they are almost irresistible; in
reality it was not the theory of descent that was matched against
that of fixity, but Lamarck against Cuvier; who can be surprised
that Cuvier for a time should have had the best of it?

And yet it is pleasant to reflect that his triumph was not, as
triumphs go, long lived. How is Cuvier best known now? As one who
missed a great opportunity; as one who was great in small things,
and stubbornly small in great ones. Lamarck died in 1831; in 1861
descent with modification was almost universally accepted by those
most competent to form an opinion. This result was by no means so
exclusively due to Mr. Darwin's "Origin of Species" as is commonly
believed. During the thirty years that followed 1831 Lamarck's
opinions made more way than Darwinians are willing to allow.
Granted that in 1861 the theory was generally accepted under the
name of Darwin, not under that of Lamarck, still it was Lamarck and
not Darwin that was being accepted; it was descent, not descent with
modification by means of natural selection from among fortuitous
variations, that we carried away with us from the "Origin of
Species." The thing triumphed whether the name was lost or not. I
need not waste the reader's time by showing further how little
weight he need attach to the fact that Lamarckism was not
immediately received with open arms by an admiring public. The
theory of descent has become accepted as rapidly, if I am not
mistaken, as the Copernican theory, or as Newton's theory of
gravitation.

When Professor Ray Lankester goes on to speak of the "undemonstrable
agencies" "arbitrarily asserted" to exist by Professor Semper, he is
again presuming on the ignorance of his readers. Professor Semper's
agencies are in no way more undemonstrable than Mr. Darwin's are.
Mr. Darwin was perfectly cogent as long as he stuck to Lamarck's
demonstration; his arguments were sound as long as they were
Lamarck's, or developments of, and riders upon, Buffon, Erasmus
Darwin, and Lamarck, and almost incredibly silly when they were his
own. Fortunately the greater part of the "Origin of Species" is
devoted to proving the theory of descent with modification, by
arguments against which no exception would have been taken by Mr.
Darwin's three great precursors, except in so far as the variations
whose accumulation results in specific difference are supposed to be
fortuitous--and, to do Mr. Darwin justice, the fortuitousness,
though always within hail, is kept as far as possible in the
background.

"Mr. Darwin's arguments," says Professor Ray Lankester, "rest on the
PROVED existence of minute, many-sided, irrelative variations NOT
produced by directly transforming agents." Mr. Darwin throughout
the body of the "Origin of Species" is not supposed to know what his
variations are or are not produced by; if they come, they come, and
if they do not come, they do not come. True, we have seen that in
the last paragraph of the book all this was changed, and the
variations were ascribed to the conditions of existence, and to use
and disuse, but a concluding paragraph cannot be allowed to override
a whole book throughout which the variations have been kept to hand
as accidental. Mr. Romanes is perfectly correct when he says {232a}
that "natural selection" (meaning the Charles-Darwinian natural
selection) "trusts to the chapter of accidents in the matter of
variation" this is all that Mr. Darwin can tell us; whether they
come from directly transforming agents or no he neither knows nor
says. Those who accept Lamarck will know that the agencies are not,
as a rule, directly transforming, but the followers of Mr. Darwin
cannot.

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