On the theory of the origin of the species by natural selection in the struggle for life

IH^%L,

1

ON THE THEORY

OF

THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

MTIJEAX SELECTION

IN THE STEUGGLE FOR LIFE

JOHN CEAWFUED, ESQ. F.R.S

[PEIYATELY PRINTED]

LONDON

SPOTTISWOODE & CO., PEINTERS, NEW-STREET SQUARE

18CS

ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY NATURAL SELECTION.

I PROPOSE in this Paper to state, in so far as concerns the natural
history of Man, such objections to the Darwinian theory as
have occurred to me, and which obhge me to refuse my beUef
in opinions which have received the assent of many eminent
men of science. In doing so, I hope I shall be found to state
them in those terms of respect and deference which are justly
due to them and more especially to the ingenious, accom-
plished, and candid author of the theory.

The Darwinian theory -was suggested by the well-known
difficulty of determining in plants and animals what it is
that constitutes a species when many species so closely
resemble others as to seem but mere varieties. Hence
it has been inferred that, in the course of countless ages,
a small number of crude types, through a process of bene-
ficial natural variations, have been transmuted into the
many species into which the organic world is now divided.
The object of the theory is to demonstrate that the whole
organic creation did not, as geological evidence would seem
to show, originate in a series of cataclysms, but, on the con-
trary, had its source in causes gradually and continuously
in action, and differing in no respect from those at present
in actual operation. This view supposes all organised beings
to be derived from a few, or even from one progenitor
or prototype. ' I cannot doubt,' says Mr. Darwin, ' that the
theory of descent by gradation embraces all the members of
the same class. T believe that animals have descended from

4 THE ORIGIN OF SrEClES BY NATURAL SELECTION.

at most only four or five progenitors, and plants from an equal
or even lesser numl)er.' He is, indeed, disposed to go fur-
ther than this, and to derive all organised beings whatsoever
from a single progenitor. Here, however, he judges from the
analogous structures and chemical composition of all plants
and animals, but admits that analogy may be an unsafe guide,
and so the number of the progenitors of the theory may be
reckoned at from eight to ten.

But what, it may well be asked, are these progenitors or
prototypes? for these words are but generic terms, which con-
vey no notion of size, form, or quality. We must, in fact,
consider them as atoms or monads of unappreciable minute-
ness— not visible even by the solar microscoj)e; in truth,
nothing better than ' such stuiF as dreams are made of.'

The theory supposes that from the hypothetic progenitors in
question — the origin of which it is as impossible for the human
mind to conceive as the origin of the universe itself — have
descended all living things, from the smallest infusorial animal-
cule up to the elephant, the whale, and man himself. These
mighty results are to be attained through the preservation of
' favoured races in the struggle for life ;' that is, by a perpetual
sequence of profitable variations in every species of plants and
animals. The profitable variations, however, which the muta-
tions produce, are so slow, so minute, and so unappreciable
that the hypothesis demands millions of years for their accom-
plishment; an assumption which, as it is unsupported by any
fact, places it at once beyond the reach of human investiga-
tion, relegating it to the realm of imagination.

Authentic history certainly affords no evidence in favour
of the theory of beneficial mutation by natural selection. The
wild and even the domestic animals of Egypt have undergone
no change in times of an antiquity which has been variously
estimated at from 5,000 up to 10,000 years. In the Egyptian
catacombs liave been found mummies of the ibis and the
kestrel hawk, not differing in a feather, or the spot of a feather,
from these birds of I'^gypt of the present day. The ox, the

THE ORIGIX OF SPECIES BY NATURAL SELECTIOX. 5

ass, the dog, and the goose represented on the Egyptian
monuments of equal antiquity, are the same varieties
which exist now. If, then, thousands of years have produced
no change at all, it is reasonable to believe that, except in
dreams, millions would be equally inoperative.

If the living beings of the present earth afford no evi-
dence in support of the theory of transmutation by natural
selection, neither do those which lie buried in the earth's crust ;
and this is, indeed, fully admitted by the ingenious author
of the theory himself. 'Why,' says he, ' does not every col-
lection of fossil remains afford plain evidence of the gradation
and mutation of the forms of life? ' and he adds, v/ith a candour
which is natural to him, ' we meet with no such evidence,
and this is the most obvious of the many objections which
may be urged against my theory.' The answer to the objec-
tion is, that ' the geological record is imperfect.' The imper-
fection, however, seems to amount to no more than that the
record affords no evidence whatever in favour of the theory
of mutation by natural selection, while it is perfect enough in
an opposite direction, showing that the lowest forms of life
came first into existence, and were followed by a successive
series of improvements, ending with man.

As to ' the struggle for life,' there is no doubt but that,
through all living beings, it is the weak that perish and the
vigorous that survive. Nature in some cases takes some
pains for preserving the integrity of the species, but never for
its improvement by mutation. Thus, with some gregarious
animals, the vigorous males, to the exclusion of the young and
feeble, are the fathers of the flock or herd. At the beginning,
according to the theory of natural selection, there could have
existed no ' struggle for life,' when a few monads, imj2gicgptlble
by the microscope, had the whole earth to themselves.
JU Nature, no~doubt, supplies us with wonderful mutations
of form and character, but they bear no analogy to those
ascribed to the Darwinian theory, which are more extra-
vagant than the metamorphoses of Ovid. The tadpole turned

6 THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY NATURAL SELECTIOX.

into a frog, the caterpillar into a butterfly, and a maggot
into a bee, arc wonderful mutations, but nothing in com-
parison with those which suppose eight or ten nameless atoms
to have peopled the land and the waters with all their
varied forms of life. To bear any resemblance to the trans-
formations of the Darwinian theory, the frog ought at least
to be transformed into a crocodile, the butterfly into a dove,
and the bee into a flilcon or eagle.

The arguments in support of the theory of natural selec-
tion are, of course, chiefly derived from the varieties which
occasionally arise in plants and animals; and this part of his
subject Mr. Darwin has elaborated with the great skill and
ingenuity of a most accomplished naturalist, who has tra-
velled far and studied long. The objections which here
present themselves are obvious. Variation in the wild or
natural state of plants and animals is rare and evanescent,
and can in no case, as far as I know, be shown to result in
improvement, or what Mr. Darwin calls ' profitable variation.'
It is only in the cultivated state of plants and the domesticated
state of animals that variation is frequent; that is, after
plants and animals have been long subjected to the control
and direction of man. Even then it is but a small number
of both that undergoes variation at all. The variety wliich
takes place, therefore, under man's direction ought not to be
taken into account at all, because, if the theory be true, vari-
ation must have been rife for millions of years before man
existed, the geological record, the true history of these
countless ages, affording no evidence of it.

But, even in plants and animals which undergo variety
under man's control, there is a vast difference in the degree
in which they do so, even when we are tolerably sure that the
wild sources are the same species. Thus, the variety which the
blue rock pigeon and the Indian jungle fowl undergo is end-
less, Avhile the ass, the two camels, hardly vary at aU. Even
when variety takes place it ought, as Mr. Darwin expresses
it, to be a profitable one to the individual; that is, be such

THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY NATURAL SELECTION. 7

an improvement as shall enable it to survive its cotemporarics
in the ' struggle for life.' But it turns out to be the very-
reverse of this. Plants and animals may gain in those
qualities which make them most useful or agreeable to man,
but they lose those properties which enable them best to
maintain the struggle for life. Our poultry lose, for the most
part, the power of flight- The domestic ass, when Avell cared
for, increases in size, but no longer possesses the fleetness of
the ass of the desert. The jungle fowl of India is a small
bird, but vigilant, shy, and powerful of wing ; while the
domestic bird is large, heavy, and dull, and, if turned into the
woods of its native country, would unquestionably perish from
incapacity of feedmg and defending itself.

Mr. Darwin has given special attention to the breeding of
the blue rock pigeon, the only species of its numerous family
which is amenable to domestication, and which sports into
varieties. These varieties seem to be indefinite in their
amount, for besides the more usual sorts, distinguished chiefly
by colour, we have such varieties as tumblers, runts, fantails,
barbs, pouters, and carriers. Not one of these can be said to
have any superior advantage over the wild blue pigeon in so
far as regards capacity to maintain the struggle for life, and
some of them are of such defective formation that they would
surely perish were man's care ^vithdrawn. Moreover, the
varieties produced by domestication are not permanently
profitable to the individual, as the progressive theory would
have us to understand; for it has been ascertained that when
the common house pigeon joins the wild birds its peculi-
arities are, in a short time, absorbed in the mass of the pri-
mitive stock ; whereas, had the variation been advantageous,
it ought, according to the theory, to have been heritable,
displacing the wild bird.

It is the same with cultivated plants as with domesticated
animals ; they gain in size and acquire properties useful or
agreeable to man, but they lose in capacity to maintahi the
struggle for existence. Some of them, such as the cultivated

8 THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY NATURAL SELECTION.

rose, the banana and the pine-apple, lose the power of pro-
pagation by seed, that is, become virtually sterile, and but for
man's care would perish. Domesticated animals and culti-
vated plants are, in short, but feeble competitors Avith theu'
wild congeners, and ought not to be quoted as profitable
mutations, to say nothing of the non-existence of such
varieties for the millions of years which preceded man's first
appearance, and during which the theory, were it true, must
have been in full operation.

One might have expected that the theory of development
by natural selection would, instead of four or five progenitors
for animals, and the same, or even a less number for plants,
have amounted to a number at least equal to that of their
respective natural orders. This would at least have dis-
pensed with the necessity which now exists of imagining
such violent and seemingly miraculous transitions as, for
example, the growth, in due time, of a mushroom into an
oak, or of a sponge into a whale.

The theory makes no pro\ision for disparities of climate,
or for the geographical distribution of plants and animals as
they now exist, frequently independent of climate. On the
contrary, it supposes every plant and animal of land and
water to have sprung from eight or ten invisible and inde-
scribable progenitors, which in this case must be imagined to
achieve distant migrations ; which we know to be impossible
to their most fully developed descendants — even to man liim-
self until within the last few generations.

The theory of natural selection by profitable variation of
species of course supposes indefinite improvement. For the
present, the transmigrations have had their climaxin man ; but
if the theory were true, it ought, after the lapse of a period of
time equal in length with that which has transpired since a
monad became a man, to produce a being t^vice as highly
gifted as the existing race of mortals. The theory, however,
is supposed to terminate in absolute perfection; but why, if
the principle of development be well founded, it should ever end
at all, is not explained. What, theii, does absolute perfection

THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY NATURAL SELECTION. 9

consist in? To form any conception of it is beyond human
understanding, and even the imagination can but form a dim
and vague notion of it. The Buddhist doctrine of the me-
tempsychosis cuts the matter short by supposing supreme
happiness to consist in absorption into the essence of the
Deity, after a long series of transmigrations beginning with
a worm, and rising to the dignity of a white elephant and
a king — a solution which is probably as intelligible as Dr.
Johnson's definition, which makes perfection an attribute of
the Deity ; which is but getting rid of an insuperable diffi-
culty by taking refuge in the imagination. Even the Bud-
dhist euthanasia w^ould provide only for the highest members
of the scale, leaving the rest of living creation to pursue the
struggle for life until the turn of all came, when the earth
would, of course, be without inhabitants.

A great geologist and naturalist. Sir Charles Lyell, fancies
that he sees in the origin and development of languages a
corroboration of the Darwinian theory.* The hypothesis on
which this view is founded is of recent German origin, and
supposes languages, like the prototypes of the theory — the
development of species by natural selection — to have been
originally few in number, and that from these few have come
the multitude of tongues now found to exist, and which have
existed in every authentic period of history. The very
reverse of this hypothesis is the fact, and it is not in the
nature of things that it should be otherwise. The framing of
a language is an operation as factitious as the fashioning of a
club, the kindling of fire, or the conversion of a stone into
a cutting instrument. When man first appeared he was as
destitute of articulate speech as he was of these objects, the
mere works of his hands and brain ; and he had to compose a
language, at first rude and scanty, corresponding with the
paucity of his ideas, as he had to fabricate rude tools and
weapons.

Languages, instead of being few in number, must have been

* ' The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man, with Remarks ou
the Origin of Species.' By Sir Charles Lyell, Bart., F.R.S.

10 THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY NATURAL SELECTION.

originally numerous ; and for this obvious reason, that man
at his first appearance, in his then ignorance and helplessness,
must have been thmly scattered over the face of the earth ; and
this in small tribes or communities, so as to enable them to
obtain food. In that early stage men must have been ignorant
of each other's very existence, or, if one tribe knew another,
its knowledge would extend only to its nearest neighbour,
and then only in the quality of an enemy, contending with it
in a genume struggle for life, that is, for a bare subsistence.
Each isolated tribe had to frame its own language, and
hence a multiplicity of independent tongues was inevitable.
Accordingly, in proportion as we approach to the rude
primitive state of society, to which I am now referring,
independent languages are found to be numerous, while they
become fewer in proportion as we recede from it.

The illustration, then, which the origin and history of
language is supposed to give the Darwinian theory, is simply
a mistake, and is not a whit more to the purpose than would
be the origin of the use of flints for cutting instruments, or
of clay for vessels.

In further support of the Darwinian theory, it has been taken
for granted that no language — at least no European language
— has continued a living tongue beyond one thousand years ;
the object in this case being to show that languages, like or-
ganic species, are subject to transfonnation. I am satisfied
that the alleged fact is groundless. A language expresses the
ideas of the social condition of the people who speak it ; and
if that condition be stationary, the language must continue a
living tongue, not for one thousand years, but for ever. Thus
the languages of the Australians had reached the highest mark
which those of a people could possibly have attained whose
land yielded no plant for cultivation, no animals for domesti-
cation— who held no intercourse with strangers from whom
they could have derived benefit — and who, moreover, were
among the lowest types of mankind. A people in such a
condition being doomed savages, their languages would ne-

THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY NATURAL SELECTION. 11

cessarily represent the ideas of savages only ; and they may
have been in the condition they were in, when first observed by
civilised man, not for a thousand but for thousands of years.

It is not necessary, however, that a people should be
savages labouring under insuperable privations, in order that
language should be nearly stationary and of long endurance.
The Arabs of the age of Mahomed were barbarians, but not
savages. They were already in possession of a copious, and
therefore an ancient language, and the Koran is still considered
good Arabic, although written twelve centuries ago. Modern
Greek is known to differ from the Greek of the Homeric
poems only in the loss of a few inflections ; so that the dura-
tion of Greek may be reckoned at some threefold the length of
time theoretically allotted for duration of a living language.

It is conquest by strangers alone that, by substituting their
own tongue for a native one, puts an end to a living language.
It by no means always does so even then. It has not done
so in certain parts of Britain, Ireland, France, and Spain ; and
there can be no good reason for not concluding that the native
languages now spoken in Ireland, in Wales, in Brittany and
in Galicia, may not have been the languages of the time of
the Roman conquests, or, indeed, that they may not even then
have been ancient languages — the primitive tongues of the
inevitable savages who first constructed them. The support,
then, which the theory of development receives from the his-
tory of language, we may safely conclude, is jDurely illusory.

There is one argument against the theory of natural
development by variation which seems to me to be fatal to it.
This consists in the existence of the parasites of plants and
animals. These are of inferior organisation to the beings on
which and through which they live. They must, therefore,
have been either cotemporaneous or posterior creations to
the bodies to wliich they must owe their existence, and as
such, either equal or superior developments, instead of being
always inferior ones. Why is the misletoe or the fungus
of inferior organisation to the trees to which they owe their

12 THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY NATURAL SELECTIOX.

lives? Being eitlier cotemporary creations or more recent
developments, they ought to have been more perfect organi-
sations. If man was the last and most perfect emanation
of the DarAvinian theory, the parasites which trouble him,,
which are never seen without him, and which are ever most
numerous as we approach to the time of his first appear-
ance, being coeval -svith or of later creation than himself,
ought to be his superiors. The theory of progressive muta-
tion by natural selection in the struggle for life could surely
not have been in action when organisations of the highest
and lowest quality came into existence, at best, at one and
the same time.

I come now to consider that branch of my subject which
more directly connects the Darwinian theory with ethno-
logy, that which makes the races of Man to proceed from
the family of Apes. In bodily form, at least, there is a
seeming approximation, but on examination it will soon
be seen that the discrepancy is far more striking than the
similitude. The most highly endowed ape, in fact, far less
resembles man than a hog does an elephant, or a badger a bear.
The disparities are, indeed, unspeakable in their extent. In
all essential respects, apes are quadrupeds, and nothmg
better. Kature furnishes them spontaneously Avith food and
clothing, and they continue their race in the same way as all
other terrestrial mammals. A monkey can walk on his hind
legs, but his pace is shambling ; it costs him an effort to walk,
and he has to balance himself to preserve his equilibrium.
He stands on his hind legs more easily than a dog, but not
better than a bear, and his more natural movement is on
all-fours like that of any ordinary quadruped, and his most
natural is climbing.

All the species of apes are exclusively frugivorous, but all
the races of man are omnivorous. The abode of man is the
stable earth, but of apes the forest. Were there no trees
there would be no apes, and, m fact, in treeless regions they
have no existence. Man, of one race or another, is the denizen

THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY NATURAL SELECTION. 13

of every climate ; spread, with trifling exceptions, over every
part of tlie firm earth. The family of apes, on the contrary,
is restricted to tropical and subtropical regions, provided
tliey be wooded. Yet not even in all such are they found,
for there are extensive well-wooded tropical regions wholly
destitute of them. Thus they do not exist in the Molucca
Islands, in the great island of New Guinea, in any of the
many islands of the North and South Pacific Ocean, or in
the tropical part of the continent of Australia. Man, then,
is the denizen of the whole habitable earth, and apes, his
imagined progenitors, only of a small and peculiar portion
of it. It should follow from this distribution of the two
parties that apes could not have been the progenitors of
men unless ajDes possessed the power of overcoming geogra-
phical obstacles insurmountable by man himself while a
savage or a barbarian.

Apes vary in size from the magnitude of a marmot to that
of a wild boar, but no such disparity exists in the races of
man. The greater number of apes have long tails, and the
American monkeys prehensile tails, but in all the races of
man the termination of the spine is concealed in flesh. The
monkeys of Africa, Asia, and the Asiatic Islands have the
same number of teeth with man, but the monkeys of America
have four additional ones.

Throughout all the various races of man the union of the
sexes is followed by a fertile hybrid off'spring, but between
the diflerent species of apes no union of the sexes takes place
at all, even where the species seem most closely allied ; so that
in this respect they differ more from man than several species
of the other lower animals, such as all dogs and some oxen.

The brain of the apes has been deemed by anatomists to
make a nearer approach in form and structure to that of
man than the brain of any other animal. But the intellectual
fruits are not commensurate with this physical resemblance.
The ape is brisk, but fitful, artful, and prone to mischief. In
sober sagacity he is inferior to the dog and to the elephant;

14 THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY NATURAL SELECTION.

indeed, even to the hog. Monkeys may be tamed, but can-
not, even in countries of which they are denizens, be domes-
ticated ; so that in this respect they rank, not only below
all our domestic cattle, but even below our ordinary poultry.
In this last regard, it may be added, that they bear no likeness
to man, who even as a savage is a domesticated creature.

The apes are incapable of storing knowledge, and, like ordi-
nary brutes, are one and the same from generation to genera-
tion. Is there not in the brain of man and of the lower animals
something too subtle for anatomy ever to reach? No one
alleges that there is any difference in the material properties
of the brain of the sagacious and faithful dog and that of the
gluttonous and untameable wolf, or in that of the cunning
and untameable fox. Anatomy detects no difference in the
brains of the docile horse, the wilful ass, or of the zebra
incapable of domestication. The brain of a man is not by
anatomy distinguishable from that of a woman, although the
intellect of man be usually superior to that of woman, while
many women far excel the generality of men. No anatomist,
I presume, would assert that the brain of Newton could be
distinguished by its form or structure from that of an illiterate
peasant, or even from the brain of a savage that could count
no hiofher than the lino;ers of one of his own hands.

The theory of development by profitable variation makes
the family of apes the nearest approach to the variation
which ends in man : but it is silent about the gradations in
the apes themselves ; and there are above a hundred distinct
species of them, not one of which is common to Africa,
America, Asia, and the Asiatic islands.

The nearest approach to man, however, is asserted to be
found in what are called the anthropoid or man-like monkeys ;
cliiefly, it may be presumed, because like man they have no
tails, for it would be difficult to discover any better reason.
The anthropoid apes are four in number, and in the order of
precedence given to them they are as follows : the gibbon,
the chimpanzee, the orang-utan, and the gorilla. But even

THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY NATURAL SELECTION. 15

these are not man-like in the order here set down ; for the
two first, which in external form bear the least resembhince
to man, are by far the most intelligent, while the two last,
which make the nearest approach to him, are by far the
stupidest; the gorilla, which stands nearest to man, being
surpassed in intelligence by many a little monkey with a tail
a yard long.

The chimpanzee and gorilla are African apes, so that
Africa had two progenitors, a clever and a stupid one. The
gibbon is an ape of continental Asia, so that throughout the
whole of that great continent, and for its manifold races
of man, there was but one progenitor. The Asiatic islands
had two — the gibbon and the orang-utan; or rather three,
for it is ascertained that there are two distinct species
of the latter. America has no anthropoid monkey at all,
so that, to people America and its islands with human
beings, the gibbon of India, or the orang-utan of Borneo,
had to cross the Atlantic — a feat which their savage
and barbarous descendants, after attaining the human form
by natural selection, were never able to achieve. The
people of Europe, who had no monkeys in their own
country, must trace their simian pedigree to the nearest
country; and thus Greeks, Romans, Germans, Frenchmen,
and Englishmen would have the same immediate progeni-
tors as Egyptians, Berbers, Negroes, Abyssinians, and Hot-
tentots, and they have to choose between a chimpanzee and
a gorilla. Australia, like Europe, had no ape at all ; but as
its native inhabitants are among the lowest types of mankind,
it ought surely to have had an inferior anthropoid to itself,
to show how near a man might be to a monkey.

A skilful anatomist and eloquent teacher, embracing the

theory of gradual mutation, has published a work to show

the connexion which he considers to exist between man and

the ape.* In this work pictured figures of the skeletons of

man and the four anthropoid apes are given, in which the

* 'The Evidences as to Man's Place in Nature.' By Thomas Henry
Huxley, F.R.S., 1863.

16 THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY NATURAL SELECTION.

apes as well as the man are represented as standing erect.
It would have been more consonant with nature if the apes
had been represented as going on all-fours, and, better still,
had they been shoAvn in the act of climbing a tree, or hang-
ing from one of its branches. While Professor Huxley, as a
supporter of the Darwinian theory, considers the anthropoid
apes — the gorilla at the head of them — as the nearest approach
to man, he fully admits that a wide gulf separates them ; and,
with the candour of a genuine philosopher, he thus expresses
himself on the subject : ' Let me take this opportunity of
directly asserting that the diirerences are great and significant
— that every bone of the gorilla bears marks by which it may
be distinguished from the corresponding bones of a man, and
that in the present creation, at any rate, no intermediate link
bridges over the gap between man and the troglodytes.' ' No
one,' he adds, ' is more convinced than I am of the vastness of
the gulf between civilised man and the brutes, or is more certain
that, whether from them or not, he is assuredly not of them.'
But let us for a moment indulge in the belief that the
Darwinian theory has, through the creation of a being or
beings superior to apes, but inferior to man, bridged over the
chasm which now separates them, and that the masterpiece
of organic existence is at length reached ; still man is but a
generic term, for he is divided into many races, or, speaking
more correctly, into many species, greatly differing among
themselves in bodily and mental attributes. It was incum-
bent, therefore, on the theory to show that such differences
were brought about by ' natural selection in the struggle for
life,' and to mdicate with which of the n^iany races tiie
mutation began ; or, in other words, which of the races it is
that stands nearest to the apes. It makes no attempt of the
kind ; it simply makes a man out of a monkey and of some-
thing else as yet unknown, leaving mankind an indiscrimi-
nate hodge-podge ; and so, therefore, the Darwinian theoiy,
except in so far as it provokes enquirj', is of no value to
ethnQloa;v or the natural historv of man.