A History of Science, vol 4 by Henry Smith Williams (best novels to read for beginners txt) 📖
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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 ADVANCESWhile 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,
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