A History of Science, vol 4, Henry Smith Williams [best books to read in life txt] 📗

perfectly adapted to its

Egyptian surroundings in an early day, historically speaking, and

that the climatic and other conditions of the Nile Valley had not

since then changed. His theory, he alleged, provided for the

stability of species under fixed conditions quite as well as for

transmutation under varying conditions.

 

But, needless to say, the popular verdict lay with Cuvier; talent

won for the time against genius, and Lamarck was looked upon as

an impious visionary. His faith never wavered, however. He

believed that he had gained a true insight into the processes of

animate nature, and he reiterated his hypotheses over and over,

particularly in the introduction to his Histoire Naturelle des

Animaux sans Vertebres, in 1815, and in his Systeme des

Connaissances Positives de l’Homme, in 1820. He lived on till

1829, respected as a naturalist, but almost unrecognized as a

prophet.

TENTATIVE ADVANCES

While the names of Darwin and Goethe, and in particular that of

Lamarck, must always stand out in high relief in this generation

as the exponents of the idea of transmutation of species, there

are a few others which must not be altogether overlooked in this

connection. Of these the most conspicuous is that of Gottfried

Reinhold Treviranus, a German naturalist physician, professor of

mathematics in the lyceum at Bremen.

 

It was an interesting coincidence that Treviranus should have

published the first volume of his Biologie, oder Philosophie der

lebenden Natur, in which his views on the transmutation of

species were expounded, in 1802, the same twelvemonth in which

Lamarck’s first exposition of the same doctrine appeared in his

Recherches sur l’Organisation des Corps Vivants. It is singular,

too, that Lamarck, in his Hydrogelogie of the same date, should

independently have suggested “biology” as an appropriate word to

express the general science of living things. It is significant

of the tendency of thought of the time that the need of such a

unifying word should have presented itself simultaneously to

independent thinkers in different countries.

 

That same memorable year, Lorenz Oken, another philosophical

naturalist, professor in the University of Zurich, published the

preliminary outlines of his Philosophie der Natur, which, as

developed through later publications, outlined a theory of

spontaneous generation and of evolution of species. Thus it

appears that this idea was germinating in the minds of several of

the ablest men of the time during the first decade of our

century. But the singular result of their various explications

was to give sudden check to that undercurrent of thought which

for some time had been setting towards this conception. As soon

as it was made clear whither the concession that animals may be

changed by their environment must logically trend, the recoil

from the idea was instantaneous and fervid. Then for a generation

Cuvier was almost absolutely dominant, and his verdict was

generally considered final.

 

There was, indeed, one naturalist of authority in France who had

the hardihood to stand out against Cuvier and his school, and who

was in a position to gain a hearing, though by no means to divide

the following. This was Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, the

famous author of the Philosophie Anatomique, and for many years

the colleague of Lamarck at the Jardin des Plantes. Like Goethe,

Geoffroy was pre-eminently an anatomist, and, like the great

German, he had early been impressed with the resemblances between

the analogous organs of different classes of beings. He

conceived the idea that an absolute unity of type prevails

throughout organic nature as regards each set of organs. Out of

this idea grew his gradually formed belief that similarity of

structure might imply identity of origin—that, in short, one

species of animal might have developed from another.

 

Geoffroy’s grasp of this idea of transmutation was by no means so

complete as that of Lamarck, and he seems never to have fully

determined in his own mind just what might be the limits of such

development of species. Certainly he nowhere includes all organic

creatures in one line of descent, as Lamarck had done;

nevertheless, he held tenaciously to the truth as he saw it, in

open opposition to Cuvier, with whom he held a memorable debate

at the Academy of Sciences in 1830—the debate which so aroused

the interest and enthusiasm of Goethe, but which, in the opinion

of nearly every one else, resulted in crushing defeat for

Geoffrey, and brilliant, seemingly final, victory for the

advocate of special creation and the fixity of species.

 

With that all ardent controversy over the subject seemed to end,

and for just a quarter of a century to come there was published

but a single argument for transmutation of species which

attracted any general attention whatever. This oasis in a desert

generation was a little book called Vestiges of the Natural

History of Creation, which appeared anonymously in England in

1844, and which passed through numerous editions, and was the

subject of no end of abusive and derisive comment. This book, the

authorship of which remained for forty years a secret, is now

conceded to have been the work of Robert Chambers, the well-known

English author and publisher. The book itself is remarkable as

being an avowed and unequivocal exposition of a general doctrine

of evolution, its view being as radical and comprehensive as that

of Lamarck himself. But it was a resume of earlier efforts rather

than a new departure, to say nothing of its technical

shortcomings, which may best be illustrated by a quotation.

 

“The whole question,” says Chambers, “stands thus: For the

theory of universal order—that is, order as presiding in both

the origin and administration of the world—we have the testimony

of a vast number of facts in nature, and this one in

addition—that whatever is left from the domain of ignorance, and

made undoubted matter of science, forms a new support to the same

doctrine. The opposite view, once predominant, has been

shrinking for ages into lesser space, and now maintains a footing

only in a few departments of nature which happen to be less

liable than others to a clear investigation. The chief of these,

if not almost the only one, is the origin of the organic

kingdoms. So long as this remains obscure, the supernatural will

have a certain hold upon enlightened persons. Should it ever be

cleared up in a way that leaves no doubt of a natural origin of

plants and animals, there must be a complete revolution in the

view which is generally taken of the relation of the Father of

our being.

 

“This prepares the way for a few remarks on the present state of

opinion with regard to the origin of organic nature. The great

difficulty here is the apparent determinateness of species. These

forms of life being apparently unchangeable, or at least always

showing a tendency to return to the character from which they

have diverged, the idea arises that there can have been no

progression from one to another; each must have taken its special

form, independently of other forms, directly from the appointment

of the Creator. The Edinburgh Review writer says, ‘they were

created by the hand of God and adapted to the conditions of the

period.’ Now it is, in the first place, not certain that species

constantly maintain a fixed character, for we have seen that what

were long considered as determinate species have been transmuted

into others. Passing, however, from this fact, as it is not

generally received among men of science, there remain some great

difficulties in connection with the idea of special creation.

First we should have to suppose, as pointed out in my former

volume, a most startling diversity of plan in the divine

workings, a great general plan or system of law in the leading

events of world-making, and a plan of minute, nice operation, and

special attention in some of the mere details of the process. The

discrepancy between the two conceptions is surely overpowering,

when we allow ourselves to see the whole matter in a steady and

rational light. There is, also, the striking fact of an

ascertained historical progress of plants and animals in the

order of their organization; marine and cellular plants and

invertebrated animals first, afterwards higher examples of both.

In an arbitrary system we had surely no reason to expect mammals

after reptiles; yet in this order they came. The writer in the

Edinburgh Review speaks of animals as coming in adaptation to

conditions, but this is only true in a limited sense. The groves

which formed the coal-beds might have been a fitting habitation

for reptiles, birds, and mammals, as such groves are at the

present day; yet we see none of the last of these classes and

hardly any traces of the two first at that period of the earth.

Where the iguanodon lived the elephant might have lived, but

there was no elephant at that time. The sea of the Lower Silurian

era was capable of supporting fish, but no fish existed. It

hence forcibly appears that theatres of life must have remained

unserviceable, or in the possession of a tenantry inferior to

what might have enjoyed them, for many ages: there surely would

have been no such waste allowed in a system where Omnipotence was

working upon the plan of minute attention to specialities. The

fact seems to denote that the actual procedure of the peopling of

the earth was one of a natural kind, requiring a long space of

time for its evolution. In this supposition the long existence

of land without land animals, and more particularly without the

noblest classes and orders, is only analogous to the fact, not

nearly enough present to the minds of a civilized people, that to

this day the bulk of the earth is a waste as far as man is

concerned.

 

“Another startling objection is in the infinite local variation

of organic forms. Did the vegetable and animal kingdoms consist

of a definite number of species adapted to peculiarities of soil

and climate, and universally distributed, the fact would be in

harmony with the idea of special exertion. But the truth is that

various regions exhibit variations altogether without apparent

end or purpose. Professor Henslow enumerates forty-five distinct

flowers or sets of plants upon the surface of the earth,

notwithstanding that many of these would be equally suitable

elsewhere. The animals of different continents are equally

various, few species being the same in any two, though the

general character may conform. The inference at present drawn

from this fact is that there must have been, to use the language

of the Rev. Dr. Pye Smith, ‘separate and original creations,

perhaps at different and respectively distinct epochs.’ It seems

hardly conceivable that rational men should give an adherence to

such a doctrine when we think of what it involves. In the single

fact that it necessitates a special fiat of the inconceivable

Author of this sand-cloud of worlds to produce the flora of St.

Helena, we read its more than sufficient condemnation. It surely

harmonizes far better with our general ideas of nature to suppose

that, just as all else in this far-spread science was formed on

the laws impressed upon it at first by its Author, so also was

this. An exception presented to us in such a light appears

admissible only when we succeed in forbidding our minds to follow

out those reasoning processes to which, by another law of the

Almighty, they tend, and for which they are adapted.”[4]

 

Such reasoning as this naturally aroused bitter animadversions,

and cannot have been without effect in creating an undercurrent

of thought in opposition to the main trend of opinion of the

time. But the book can hardly be said to have done more than

that. Indeed, some critics have denied it even this merit. After

its publication, as before, the conception of transmutation of

species remained in the popular estimation, both lay and

scientific,