The Evolution of Man Volume I Part 4

A new branch of embryological research has been studied very a.s.siduously in the last decade of the nineteenth century--namely, "experimental embryology." The great importance which has been attached to the application of physical experiments to the living organism for the last hundred years, and the valuable results that it has given to physiology in the study of the vital phenomena, have led to its extension to embryology. I was the first to make experiments of this kind during a stay of four months on the Canary Island, Lanzerote, in 1866. I there made a thorough investigation of the almost unknown embryology of the siphonophorae. I cut a number of the embryos of these animals (which develop freely in the water, and pa.s.s through a very curious transformation), at an early stage, into several pieces, and found that a fresh organism (more or less complete, according to the size of the piece) was developed from each particle. More recently some of my pupils have made similar experiments with the embryos of vertebrates (especially the frog) and some of the invertebrates. Wilhelm Roux, in particular, has made extensive experiments, and based on them a special "mechanical embryology," which has given rise to a good deal of discussion and controversy. Roux has published a special journal for these subjects since 1895, the Archiv fur Entwickelungsmechanik. The contributions to it are very varied in value. Many of them are valuable papers on the physiology and pathology of the embryo. Pathological experiments--the placing of the embryo in abnormal conditions--have yielded many interesting results; just as the physiology of the normal body has for a long time derived a.s.sistance from the pathology of the diseased organism. Other of these mechanical-embryological articles return to the erroneous methods of His, and are only misleading. This must be said of the many contributions of mechanical embryology which take up a position of hostility to the theory of descent and its chief embryological foundation--the biogenetic law. This law, however, when rightly understood, is not opposed to, but is the best and most solid support of, a sound mechanical embryology. Impartial reflection and a due attention to paleontology and comparative anatomy should convince these one-sided mechanicists that the facts they have discovered--and, indeed, the whole embryological process--cannot be fully understood without the theory of descent and the biogenetic law.

CHAPTER 1.4. THE OLDER PHYLOGENY.

The embryology of man and the animals, the history of which we have reviewed in the last two chapters, was mainly a descriptive science forty years ago. The earlier investigations in this province were chiefly directed to the discovery, by careful observation, of the wonderful facts of the embryonic development of the animal body from the ovum. Forty years ago no one dared attack the question of the CAUSES of these phenomena. For fully a century, from the year 1759, when Wolff's solid Theoria generationis appeared, until 1859, when Darwin published his famous Origin of Species, the real causes of the embryonic processes were quite unknown. No one thought of seeking the agencies that effected this marvellous succession of structures. The task was thought to be so difficult as almost to pa.s.s beyond the limits of human thought. It was reserved for Charles Darwin to initiate us into the knowledge of these causes. This compels us to recognise in this great genius, who wrought a complete revolution in the whole field of biology, a founder at the same time of a new period in embryology. It is true that Darwin occupied himself very little with direct embryological research, and even in his chief work he only touches incidentally on the embryonic phenomena; but by his reform of the theory of descent and the founding of the theory of selection he has given us the means of attaining to a real knowledge of the causes of embryonic formation. That is, in my opinion, the chief feature in Darwin's incalculable influence on the whole science of evolution.

When we turn our attention to this latest period of embryological research, we pa.s.s into the second division of organic evolution--stem-evolution, or phylogeny. I have already indicated in Chapter 1.1 the important and intimate causal connection between these two sections of the science of evolution--between the evolution of the individual and that of his ancestors. We have formulated this connection in the biogenetic law; the shorter evolution, that of the individual, or ontogenesis, is a rapid and summary repet.i.tion, a condensed recapitulation, of the larger evolution, or that of the species. In this principle we express all the essential points relating to the causes of evolution; and we shall seek throughout this work to confirm this principle and lend it the support of facts. When we look to its CAUSAL significance, perhaps it would be better to formulate the biogenetic law thus: "The evolution of the species and the stem (phylon) shows us, in the physiological functions of heredity and adaptation, the conditioning causes on which the evolution of the individual depends"; or, more briefly: "Phylogenesis is the mechanical cause of ontogenesis."

But before we examine the great achievement by which Darwin revealed the causes of evolution to us, we must glance at the efforts of earlier scientists to attain this object. Our historical inquiry into these will be even shorter than that into the work done in the field of ontogeny. We have very few names to consider here. At the head of them we find the great French naturalist, Jean Lamarck, who first established evolution as a scientific theory in 1809. Even before his time, however, the chief philosopher, Kant, and the chief poet, Goethe, of Germany had occupied themselves with the subject. But their efforts pa.s.sed almost without recognition in the eighteenth century. A "philosophy of nature" did not arise until the beginning of the nineteenth century. In the whole of the time before this no one had ventured to raise seriously the question of the origin of species, which is the culminating point of phylogeny. On all sides it was regarded as an insoluble enigma.

The whole science of the evolution of man and the other animals is intimately connected with the question of the nature of species, or with the problem of the origin of the various animals which we group together under the name of species. Thus the definition of the species becomes important. It is well known that this definition was given by Linne, who, in his famous Systema Naturae (1735), was the first to cla.s.sify and name the various groups of animals and plants, and drew up an orderly scheme of the species then known. Since that time "species" has been the most important and indispensable idea in descriptive natural history, in zoological and botanical cla.s.sification; although there have been endless controversies as to its real meaning.

What, then, is this "organic species"? Linne himself appealed directly to the Mosaic narrative; he believed that, as it is stated in Genesis, one pair of each species of animals and plants was created in the beginning, and that all the individuals of each species are the descendants of these created couples. As for the hermaphrodites (organisms that have male and female organs in one being), he thought it sufficed to a.s.sume the creation of one sole individual, since this would be fully competent to propagate its species. Further developing these mystic ideas, Linne went on to borrow from Genesis the account of the deluge and of Noah's ark as a ground for a science of the geographical and topographical distribution of organisms. He accepted the story that all the plants, animals, and men on the earth were swept away in a universal deluge, except the couples preserved with Noah in the ark, and ultimately landed on Mount Ararat. This mountain seemed to Linne particularly suitable for the landing, as it reaches a height of more than 16,000 feet, and thus provides in its higher zones the several climates demanded by the various species of animals and plants: the animals that were accustomed to a cold climate could remain at the summit; those used to a warm climate could descend to the foot; and those requiring a temperate climate could remain half-way down. From this point the re-population of the earth with animals and plants could proceed.

It was impossible to have any scientific notion of the method of evolution in Linne's time, as one of the chief sources of information, paleontology, was still wholly unknown. This science of the fossil remains of extinct animals and plants is very closely bound up with the whole question of evolution. It is impossible to explain the origin of living organisms without appealing to it. But this science did not rise until a much later date. The real founder of scientific paleontology was Georges Cuvier, the most distinguished zoologist who, after Linne, worked at the cla.s.sification of the animal world, and effected a complete revolution in systematic zoology at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In regard to the nature of the species he a.s.sociated himself with Linne and the Mosaic story of creation, though this was more difficult for him with his acquaintance with fossil remains. He clearly showed that a number of quite different animal populations have lived on the earth; and he claimed that we must distinguish a number of stages in the history of our planet, each of which was characterised by a special population of animals and plants.

These successive populations were, he said, quite independent of each other, and therefore the supernatural creative act, which was demanded as the origin of the animals and plants by the dominant creed, must have been repeated several times. In this way a whole series of different creative periods must have succeeded each other; and in connection with these he had to a.s.sume that stupendous revolutions or cataclysms--something like the legendary deluge--must have taken place repeatedly. Cuvier was all the more interested in these catastrophes or cataclysms as geology was just beginning to a.s.sert itself, and great progress was being made in our knowledge of the structure and formation of the earth's crust. The various strata of the crust were being carefully examined, especially by the famous geologist Werner and his school, and the fossils found in them were being cla.s.sified; and these researches also seemed to point to a variety of creative periods. In each period the earth's crust, composed of the various strata, seemed to be differently const.i.tuted, just like the population of animals and plants that then lived on it. Cuvier combined this notion with the results of his own paleontological and zoological research; and in his effort to get a consistent view of the whole process of the earth's history he came to form the theory which is known as "the catastrophic theory," or the theory of terrestrial revolutions. According to this theory, there have been a series of mighty cataclysms on the earth, and these have suddenly destroyed the whole animal and plant population then living on it; after each cataclysm there was a fresh creation of living things throughout the earth. As this creation could not be explained by natural laws, it was necessary to appeal to an intervention on the part of the Creator.

This catastrophic theory, which Cuvier described in a special work, was soon generally accepted, and retained its position in biology for half a century.

However, Cuvier's theory was completely overthrown sixty years ago by the geologists, led by Charles Lyell, the most distinguished worker in this field of science. Lyell proved in his famous Principles of Geology (1830) that the theory was false, in so far as it concerned the crust of the earth; that it was totally unnecessary to bring in supernatural agencies or general catastrophes in order to explain the structure and formation of the mountains; and that we can explain them by the familiar agencies which are at work to-day in altering and reconstructing the surface of the earth. These causes are--the action of the atmosphere and water in its various forms (snow, ice, fog, rain, the wear of the river, and the stormy ocean), and the volcanic action which is exerted by the molten central ma.s.s. Lyell convincingly proved that these natural causes are quite adequate to explain every feature in the build and formation of the crust. Hence Cuvier's theory of cataclysms was very soon driven out of the province of geology, though it remained for another thirty years in undisputed authority in biology. All the zoologists and botanists who gave any thought to the question of the origin of organisms adhered to Cuvier's erroneous idea of revolutions and new creations.

In order to ill.u.s.trate the complete stagnancy of biology from 1830 to 1859 on the question of the origin of the various species of animals and plants, I may say, from my own experience, that during the whole of my university studies I never heard a single word said about this most important problem of the science. I was fortunate enough at that time (1852 to 1857) to have the most distinguished masters for every branch of biological science. Not one of them ever mentioned this question of the origin of species. Not a word was ever said about the earlier efforts to understand the formation of living things, nor about Lamarck's Philosophie Zoologique which had made a fresh attack on the problem in 1809. Hence it is easy to understand the enormous opposition that Darwin encountered when he took up the question for the first time. His views seemed to float in the air, without a single previous effort to support them. The whole question of the formation of living things was considered by biologists, until 1859, as pertaining to the province of religion and transcendentalism; even in speculative philosophy, in which the question had been approached from various sides, no one had ventured to give it serious treatment. This was due to the dualistic system of Immanuel Kant, who taught a natural system of evolution as far as the inorganic world was concerned; but, on the whole, adopted a supernaturalist system as regards the origin of living things. He even went so far as to say: "It is quite certain that we cannot even satisfactorily understand, much less explain, the nature of an organism and its internal forces on purely mechanical principles; it is so certain, indeed, that we may confidently say: 'It is absurd for a man to imagine even that some day a Newton will arise who will explain the origin of a single blade of gra.s.s by natural laws not controlled by design'--such a hope is entirely forbidden us." In these words Kant definitely adopts the dualistic and teleological point of view for biological science.

Nevertheless, Kant deserted this point of view at times, particularly in several remarkable pa.s.sages which I have dealt with at length in my Natural History of Creation (chapter 5), where he expresses himself in the opposite, or monistic, sense. In fact, these pa.s.sages would justify one, as I showed, in claiming his support for the theory of evolution. However, these monistic pa.s.sages are only stray gleams of light; as a rule, Kant adheres in biology to the obscure dualistic ideas, according to which the forces at work in inorganic nature are quite different from those of the organic world. This dualistic system prevails in academic philosophy to-day--most of our philosophers still regarding these two provinces as totally distinct. They put, on the one side, the inorganic or "lifeless" world, in which there are at work only mechanical laws, acting necessarily and without design; and, on the other, the province of organic nature, in which none of the phenomena can be properly understood, either as regards their inner nature or their origin, except in the light of preconceived design, carried out by final or purposive causes.

The prevalence of this unfortunate dualistic prejudice prevented the problem of the origin of species, and the connected question of the origin of man, from being regarded by the bulk of people as a scientific question at all until 1859. Nevertheless, a few distinguished students, free from the current prejudice, began, at the commencement of the nineteenth century, to make a serious attack on the problem. The merit of this attaches particularly to what is known as "the older school of natural philosophy," which has been so much misrepresented, and which included Jean Lamarck, Buffon, Geoffroy St.

Hilaire, and Blainville in France; Wolfgang Goethe, Reinhold Trevira.n.u.s, Sch.e.l.ling, and Lorentz Oken in Germany [and Erasmus Darwin in England].

The gifted natural philosopher who treated this difficult question with the greatest sagacity and comprehensiveness was Jean Lamarck. He was born at Bazentin, in Picardy, on August 1st, 1744; he was the son of a clergyman, and was destined for the Church. But he turned to seek glory in the army, and eventually devoted himself to science.

His Philosophie Zoologique was the first scientific attempt to sketch the real course of the origin of species, the first "natural history of creation" of plants, animals, and men. But, as in the case of Wolff's book, this remarkably able work had no influence whatever; neither one nor the other could obtain any recognition from their prejudiced contemporaries. No man of science was stimulated to take an interest in the work, and to develop the germs it contained of the most important biological truths. The most distinguished botanists and zoologists entirely rejected it, and did not even deign to reply to it. Cuvier, who lived and worked in the same city, has not thought fit to devote a single syllable to this great achievement in his memoir on progress in the sciences, in which the pettiest observations found a place. In short, Lamarck's Philosophie Zoologique shared the fate of Wolff's theory of development, and was for half a century ignored and neglected. The German scientists, especially Oken and Goethe, who were occupied with similar speculations at the same time, seem to have known nothing about Lamarck's work. If they had known it, they would have been greatly helped by it, and might have carried the theory of evolution much farther than they found it possible to do.

To give an idea of the great importance of the Philosophie Zoologique, I will briefly explain Lamarck's leading thought. He held that there was no essential difference between living and lifeless beings. Nature is one united and connected system of phenomena; and the forces which fas.h.i.+on the lifeless bodies are the only ones at work in the kingdom of living things. We have, therefore, to use the same method of investigation and explanation in both provinces. Life is only a physical phenomenon. All the plants and animals, with man at their head, are to be explained, in structure and life, by mechanical or efficient causes, without any appeal to final causes, just as in the case of minerals and other inorganic bodies. This applies equally to the origin of the various species. We must not a.s.sume any original creation, or repeated creations (as in Cuvier's theory), to explain this, but a natural, continuous, and necessary evolution. The whole evolutionary process has been uninterrupted. All the different kinds of animals and plants which we see to-day, or that have ever lived, have descended in a natural way from earlier and different species; all come from one common stock, or from a few common ancestors. These remote ancestors must have been quite simple organisms of the lowest type, arising by spontaneous generation from inorganic matter. The succeeding species have been constantly modified by adaptation to their varying environment (especially by use and habit), and have transmitted their modifications to their successors by heredity.

Lamarck was the first to formulate as a scientific theory the natural origin of living things, including man, and to push the theory to its extreme conclusions--the rise of the earliest organisms by spontaneous generation (or abiogenesis) and the descent of man from the nearest related mammal, the ape. He sought to explain this last point, which is of especial interest to us here, by the same agencies which he found at work in the natural origin of the plant and animal species.

He considered use and habit (adaptation) on the one hand, and heredity on the other, to be the chief of these agencies. The most important modifications of the organs of plants and animals are due, in his opinion, to the function of these very organs, or to the use or disuse of them. To give a few examples, the woodp.e.c.k.e.r and the humming-bird have got their peculiarly long tongues from the habit of extracting their food with their tongues from deep and narrow folds or ca.n.a.ls; the frog has developed the web between his toes by his own swimming; the giraffe has lengthened his neck by stretching up to the higher branches of trees, and so on. It is quite certain that this use or disuse of organs is a most important factor in organic development, but it is not sufficient to explain the origin of species.

To adaptation we must add heredity as the second and not less important agency, as Lamarck perfectly recognised. He said that the modification of the organs in any one individual by use or disuse was slight, but that it was increased by acc.u.mulation in pa.s.sing by heredity from generation to generation. But he missed altogether the principle which Darwin afterwards found to be the chief factor in the theory of transformation--namely, the principle of natural selection in the struggle for existence. It was partly owing to his failure to detect this supremely important element, and partly to the poor condition of all biological science at the time, that Lamarck did not succeed in establis.h.i.+ng more firmly his theory of the common descent of man and the other animals.

Independently of Lamarck, the older German school of natural philosophy, especially Reinhold Trevira.n.u.s, in his Biologie (1802), and Lorentz Oken, in his Naturphilosophie (1809), turned its attention to the problem of evolution about the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century. I have described its work in my History of Creation (chapter 4). Here I can only deal with the brilliant genius whose evolutionary ideas are of special interest--the greatest of German poets, Wolfgang Goethe. With his keen eye for the beauties of nature, and his profound insight into its life, Goethe was early attracted to the study of various natural sciences. It was the favourite occupation of his leisure hours throughout life. He gave particular and protracted attention to the theory of colours. But the most valuable of his scientific studies are those which relate to that "living, glorious, precious thing," the organism. He made profound research into the science of structures or morphology (morphae = forms). Here, with the aid of comparative anatomy, he obtained the most brilliant results, and went far in advance of his time. I may mention, in particular, his vertebral theory of the skull, his discovery of the pineal gland in man, his system of the metamorphosis of plants, etc. These morphological studies led Goethe on to research into the formation and modification of organic structures which we must count as the first germ of the science of evolution. He approaches so near to the theory of descent that we must regard him, after Lamarck, as one of its earliest founders. It is true that he never formulated a complete scientific theory of evolution, but we find a number of remarkable suggestions of it in his splendid miscellaneous essays on morphology. Some of them are really among the very basic ideas of the science of evolution. He says, for instance (1807): "When we compare plants and animals in their most rudimentary forms, it is almost impossible to distinguish between them. But we may say that the plants and animals, beginning with an almost inseparable closeness, gradually advance along two divergent lines, until the plant at last grows in the solid, enduring tree and the animal attains in man to the highest degree of mobility and freedom." That Goethe was not merely speaking in a poetical, but in a literal genealogical, sense of this close affinity of organic forms is clear from other remarkable pa.s.sages in which he treats of their variety in outward form and unity in internal structure. He believes that every living thing has arisen by the interaction of two opposing formative forces or impulses. The internal or "centripetal" force, the type or "impulse to specification," seeks to maintain the constancy of the specific forms in the succession of generations: this is heredity. The external or "centrifugal" force, the element of variation or "impulse to metamorphosis," is continually modifying the species by changing their environment: this is adaptation. In these significant conceptions Goethe approaches very close to a recognition of the two great mechanical factors which we now a.s.sign as the chief causes of the formation of species.

However, in order to appreciate Goethe's views on morphology, one must a.s.sociate his decidedly monistic conception of nature with his pantheistic philosophy. The warm and keen interest with which he followed, in his last years, the controversies of contemporary French scientists, and especially the struggle between Cuvier and Geoffroy St. Hilaire (see chapter 4 of The History of Creation), is very characteristic. It is also necessary to be familiar with his style and general tenour of thought in order to appreciate rightly the many allusions to evolution found in his writings. Otherwise, one is apt to make serious errors.

He approached so close, at the end of the eighteenth century, to the principles of the science of evolution that he may well be described as the first forerunner of Darwin, although he did not go so far as to formulate evolution as a scientific system, as Lamarck did.

CHAPTER 1.5. THE MODERN SCIENCE OF EVOLUTION.

We owe so much of the progress of scientific knowledge to Darwin's Origin of Species that its influence is almost without parallel in the history of science. The literature of Darwinism grows from day to day, not only on the side of academic zoology and botany, the sciences which were chiefly affected by Darwin's theory, but in a far wider circle, so that we find Darwinism discussed in popular literature with a vigour and zest that are given to no other scientific conception.

This remarkable success is due chiefly to two circ.u.mstances. In the first place, all the sciences, and especially biology, have made astounding progress in the last half-century, and have furnished a very vast quant.i.ty of proofs of the theory of evolution. In striking contrast to the failure of Lamarck and the older scientists to attract attention to their effort to explain the origin of living things and of man, we have this second and successful effort of Darwin, which was able to gather to its support a large number of established facts.

Availing himself of the progress already made, he had very different scientific proofs to allege than Lamarck, or St. Hilaire, or Goethe, or Trevira.n.u.s had had. But, in the second place, we must acknowledge that Darwin had the special distinction of approaching the subject from an entirely new side, and of basing the theory of descent on a consistent system, which now goes by the name of Darwinism.

Lamarck had unsuccessfully attempted to explain the modification of organisms that descend from a common form chiefly by the action of habit and the use of organs, though with the aid of heredity. But Darwin's success was complete when he independently sought to give a mechanical explanation, on a quite new ground, of this modification of plant and animal structures by adaptation and heredity. He was impelled to his theory of selection on the following grounds. He compared the origin of the various kinds of animals and plants which we modify artificially--by the action of artificial selection in horticulture and among domestic animals--with the origin of the species of animals and plants in their natural state. He then found that the agencies which we employ in the modification of forms by artificial selection are also at work in Nature. The chief of these agencies he held to be "the struggle for life." The gist of this peculiarly Darwinian idea is given in this formula: The struggle for existence produces new species without premeditated design in the life of Nature, in the same way that the will of man consciously selects new races in artificial conditions. The gardener or the farmer selects new forms as he wills for his own profit, by ingeniously using the agency of heredity and adaptation for the modification of structures; so, in the natural state, the struggle for life is always unconsciously modifying the various species of living things. This struggle for life, or compet.i.tion of organisms in securing the means of subsistence, acts without any conscious design, but it is none the less effective in modifying structures. As heredity and adaptation enter into the closest reciprocal action under its influence, new structures, or alterations of structure, are produced; and these are purposive in the sense that they serve the organism when formed, but they were produced without any pre-conceived aim.

This simple idea is the central thought of Darwinism, or the theory of selection. Darwin conceived this idea at an early date, and then, for more than twenty years, worked at the collection of empirical evidence in support of it before he published his theory. His grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, was an able scientist of the older school of natural philosophy, who published a number of natural-philosophic works about the end of the eighteenth century. The most important of them is his Zoonomia, published in 1794, in which he expounds views similar to those of Goethe and Lamarck, without really knowing anything of the work of these contemporaries. However, in the writings of the grandfather the plastic imagination rather outran the judgment, while in Charles Darwin the two were better balanced.

Darwin did not publish any account of his theory until 1858, when Alfred Russel Wallace, who had independently reached the same theory of selection, published his own work. In the following year appeared the Origin of Species, in which he develops it at length and supports it with a ma.s.s of proof. Wallace had reached the same conclusion, but he had not so clear a perception as Darwin of the effectiveness of natural selection in forming species, and did not develop the theory so fully. Nevertheless, Wallace's writings, especially those on mimicry, etc., and an admirable work on The Geographical Distribution of Animals, contain many fine original contributions to the theory of selection. Unfortunately, this gifted scientist has since devoted himself to spiritism.* (* Darwin and Wallace arrived at the theory quite independently. Vide Wallace's Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection (1870) and Darwinism (1891).)

Darwin's Origin of Species had an extraordinary influence, though not at first on the experts of the science. It took zoologists and botanists several years to recover from the astonishment into which they had been thrown through the revolutionary idea of the work. But its influence on the special sciences with which we zoologists and botanists are concerned has increased from year to year; it has introduced a most healthy fermentation in every branch of biology, especially in comparative anatomy and ontogeny, and in zoological and botanical cla.s.sification. In this way it has brought about almost a revolution in the prevailing views.

However, the point which chiefly concerns us here--the extension of the theory to man--was not touched at all in Darwin's first work in 1859. It was believed for several years that he had no thought of applying his principles to man, but that he shared the current idea of man holding a special position in the universe. Not only ignorant laymen (especially several theologians), but also a number of men of science, said very naively that Darwinism in itself was not to be opposed; that it was quite right to use it to explain the origin of the various species of plants and animals, but that it was totally inapplicable to man.

In the meantime, however, it seemed to a good many thoughtful people, laymen as well as scientists, that this was wrong; that the descent of man from some other animal species, and immediately from some ape-like mammal, followed logically and necessarily from Darwin's reformed theory of evolution. Many of the acuter opponents of the theory saw at once the justice of this position, and, as this consequence was intolerable, they wanted to get rid of the whole theory.

The first scientific application of the Darwinian theory to man was made by Huxley, the greatest zoologist in England. This able and learned scientist, to whom zoology owes much of its progress, published in 1863 a small work ent.i.tled Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature. In the extremely important and interesting lectures which made up this work he proved clearly that the descent of man from the ape followed necessarily from the theory of descent. If that theory is true, we are bound to conceive the animals which most closely resemble man as those from which humanity has been gradually evolved. About the same time Carl Vogt published a larger work on the same subject. We must also mention Gustav Jaeger and Friedrich Rolle among the zoologists who accepted and taught the theory of evolution immediately after the publication of Darwin's book, and maintained that the descent of man from the lower animals logically followed from it. The latter published, in 1866, a work on the origin and position of man.

About the same time I attempted, in the second volume of my General Morphology (1866), to apply the theory of evolution to the whole organic kingdom, including man.* (* Huxley spoke of this "as one of the greatest scientific works ever published."--Translator.) I endeavoured to sketch the probable ancestral trees of the various cla.s.ses of the animal world, the protists, and the plants, as it seemed necessary to do on Darwinian principles, and as we can actually do now with a high degree of confidence. If the theory of descent, which Lamarck first clearly formulated and Darwin thoroughly established, is true, we should be able to draw up a natural cla.s.sification of plants and animals in the light of their genealogy, and to conceive the large and small divisions of the system as the branches and twigs of an ancestral tree. The eight genealogical tables which I inserted in the second volume of the General Morphology are the first sketches of their kind. In Chapter 2.27, particularly, I trace the chief stages in man's ancestry, as far as it is possible to follow it through the vertebrate stem. I tried especially to determine, as well as one could at that time, the position of man in the cla.s.sification of the mammals and its genealogical significance. I have greatly improved this attempt, and treated it in a more popular form, in chapters 26 to 28 of my History of Creation (1868).* (* Of which Darwin said that the Descent of Man would probably never have been written if he had seen it earlier.--Translator.)

It was not until 1871, twelve years after the appearance of The Origin of Species, that Darwin published the famous work which made the much-contested application of his theory to man, and crowned the splendid structure of his system. This important work was The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to s.e.x. In this Darwin expressly drew the conclusion, with rigorous logic, that man also must have been developed out of lower species, and described the important part played by s.e.xual selection in the elevation of man and the other higher animals. He showed that the careful selection which the s.e.xes exercise on each other in regard to s.e.xual relations and procreation, and the aesthetic feeling which the higher animals develop through this, are of the utmost importance in the progressive development of forms and the differentiation of the s.e.xes. The males choosing the handsomest females in one cla.s.s of animals, and the females choosing only the finest-looking males in another, the special features and the s.e.xual characteristics are increasingly accentuated. In fact, some of the higher animals develop in this connection a finer taste and judgment than man himself. But, even as regards man, it is to this s.e.xual selection that we owe the family-life, which is the chief foundation of civilisation. The rise of the human race is due for the most part to the advanced s.e.xual selection which our ancestors exercised in choosing their mates.

Darwin accepted in the main the general outlines of man's ancestral tree, as I gave it in the General Morphology and the History of Creation, and admitted that his studies led him to the same conclusion. That he did not at once apply the theory to man in his first work was a commendable piece of discretion; such a sequel was bound to excite the strongest opposition to the whole theory. The first thing to do was to establish it as regards the animal and plant worlds. The subsequent extension to man was bound to be made sooner or later.

It is important to understand this very clearly. If all living things come from a common root, man must be included in the general scheme of evolution. On the other hand, if the various species were separately created, man, too, must have been created, and not evolved. We have to choose between these two alternatives. This cannot be too frequently or too strongly emphasised. EITHER all the species of animals and plants are of supernatural origin--created, not evolved--and in that case man also is the outcome of a creative act, as religion teaches, OR the different species have been evolved from a few common, simple ancestral forms, and in that case man is the highest fruit of the tree of evolution.

We may state this briefly in the following principle--The descent of man from the lower animals is a special deduction which inevitably follows from the general inductive law of the whole theory of evolution. In this principle we have a clear and plain statement of the matter. Evolution is in reality nothing but a great induction, which we are compelled to make by the comparative study of the most important facts of morphology and physiology. But we must draw our conclusion according to the laws of induction, and not attempt to determine scientific truths by direct measurement and mathematical calculation. In the study of living things we can scarcely ever directly and fully, and with mathematical accuracy, determine the nature of phenomena, as is done in the simpler study of the inorganic world--in chemistry, physics, mineralogy, and astronomy. In the latter, especially, we can always use the simplest and absolutely safest method--that of mathematical determination. But in biology this is quite impossible for various reasons; one very obvious reason being that most of the facts of the science are very complicated and much too intricate to allow a direct mathematical a.n.a.lysis. The greater part of the phenomena that biology deals with are complicated HISTORICAL PROCESSES, which are related to a far-reaching past, and as a rule can only be approximately estimated. Hence we have to proceed by INDUCTION--that is to say, to draw general conclusions, stage by stage, and with proportionate confidence, from the acc.u.mulation of detailed observations. These inductive conclusions cannot command absolute confidence, like mathematical axioms; but they approach the truth, and gain increasing probability, in proportion as we extend the basis of observed facts on which we build. The importance of these inductive laws is not diminished from the circ.u.mstance that they are looked upon merely as temporary acquisitions of science, and may be improved to any extent in the progress of scientific knowledge. The same may be said of the attainments of many other sciences, such as geology or archeology. However much they may be altered and improved in detail in the course of time, these inductive truths may retain their substance unchanged.

Now, when we say that the theory of evolution in the sense of Lamarck and Darwin is an inductive law--in fact, the greatest of all biological inductions--we rely, in the first place, on the facts of paleontology. This science gives us some direct acquaintance with the historical phenomena of the changes of species. From the situations in which we find the fossils in the various strata of the earth we gather confidently, in the first place, that the living population of the earth has been gradually developed, as clearly as the earth's crust itself; and that, in the second place, several different populations have succeeded each other in the various geological periods. Modern geology teaches that the formation of the earth has been gradual, and unbroken by any violent revolutions. And when we compare together the various kinds of animals and plants which succeed each other in the history of our planet, we find, in the first place, a constant and gradual increase in the number of species from the earliest times until the present day; and, in the second place, we notice that the forms in each great group of animals and plants also constantly improve as the ages advance. Thus, of the vertebrates there are at first only the lower fishes; then come the higher fishes, and later the amphibia. Still later appear the three higher cla.s.ses of vertebrates--the reptiles, birds, and mammals, for the first time; only the lowest and least perfect forms of the mammals are found at first; and it is only at a very late period that placental mammals appear, and man belongs to the latest and youngest branch of these.

Thus perfection of form increases as well as variety from the earliest to the latest stage. That is a fact of the greatest importance. It can only be explained by the theory of evolution, with which it is in perfect harmony. If the different groups of plants and animals do really descend from each other, we must expect to find this increase in their number and perfection under the influence of natural selection, just as the succession of fossils actually discloses it to us.

Comparative anatomy furnishes a second series of facts which are of great importance for the forming of our inductive law. This branch of morphology compares the adult structures of living things, and seeks in the great variety of organic forms the stable and simple law of organisation, or the common type or structure. Since Cuvier founded this science at the beginning of the nineteenth century it has been a favourite study of the most distinguished scientists. Even before Cuvier's time Goethe had been greatly stimulated by it, and induced to take up the study of morphology. Comparative osteology, or the philosophic study and comparison of the bony skeleton of the vertebrates--one of its most interesting sections--especially fascinated him, and led him to form the theory of the skull which I mentioned before. Comparative anatomy shows that the internal structure of the animals of each stem and the plants of each cla.s.s is the same in its essential features, however much they differ in external appearance. Thus man has so great a resemblance in the chief features of his internal organisation to the other mammals that no comparative anatomist has ever doubted that he belongs to this cla.s.s.

The whole internal structure of the human body, the arrangement of its various systems of organs, the distribution of the bones, muscles, blood-vessels, etc., and the whole structure of these organs in the larger and the finer scale, agree so closely with those of the other mammals (such as the apes, rodents, ungulates, cetacea, marsupials, etc.) that their external differences are of no account whatever. We learn further from comparative anatomy that the chief features of animal structure are so similar in the various cla.s.ses (fifty to sixty in number altogether) that they may all be comprised in from eight to twelve great groups. But even in these groups, the stem-forms or animal types, certain organs (especially the alimentary ca.n.a.l) can be proved to have been originally the same for all. We can only explain by the theory of evolution this essential unity in internal structure of all these animal forms that differ so much in outward appearance.

This wonderful fact can only be really understood and explained when we regard the internal resemblance as an inheritance from common-stem forms, and the external differences as the effect of adaptation to different environments.

In recognising this, comparative anatomy has itself advanced to a higher stage. Gegenbaur, the most distinguished of recent students of this science, says that with the theory of evolution a new period began in comparative anatomy, and that the theory in turn found a touch stone in the science. "Up to now there is no fact in comparative anatomy that is inconsistent with the theory of evolution; indeed, they all lead to it. In this way the theory receives back from the science all the service it rendered to its method." Until then students had marvelled at the wonderful resemblance of living things in their inner structure without being able to explain it. We are now in a position to explain the causes of this, by showing that this remarkable agreement is the necessary consequence of the inheriting of common stem-forms; while the striking difference in outward appearance is a result of adaptation to changes of environment. Heredity and adaptation alone furnish the true explanation.

But one special part of comparative anatomy is of supreme interest and of the utmost philosophic importance in this connection. This is the science of rudimentary or useless organs; I have given it the name of "dysteleology" in view of its philosophic consequences. Nearly every organism (apart from the very lowest), and especially every highly-developed animal or plant, including man, has one or more organs which are of no use to the body itself, and have no share in its functions or vital aims. Thus we all have, in various parts of our frame, muscles which we never use, as, for instance, in the sh.e.l.l of the ear and adjoining parts. In most of the mammals, especially those with pointed ears, these internal and external ear-muscles are of great service in altering the sh.e.l.l of the ear, so as to catch the waves of sound as much as possible. But in the case of man and other short-eared mammals these muscles are useless, though they are still present. Our ancestors having long abandoned the use of them, we cannot work them at all to-day. In the inner corner of the eye we have a small crescent-shaped fold of skin; this is the last relic of a third inner eye-lid, called the nict.i.tating (winking) membrane. This membrane is highly developed and of great service in some of our distant relations, such as fishes of the shark type and several other vertebrates; in us it is shrunken and useless. In the intestines we have a process that is not only quite useless, but may be very harmful--the vermiform appendage. This small intestinal appendage is often the cause of a fatal illness. If a cherry-stone or other hard body is unfortunately squeezed through its narrow aperture during digestion, a violent inflammation is set up, and often proves fatal.

This appendix has no use whatever now in our frame; it is a dangerous relic of an organ that was much larger and was of great service in our vegetarian ancestors. It is still large and important in many vegetarian animals, such as apes and rodents.

There are similar rudimentary organs in all parts of our body, and in all the higher animals. They are among the most interesting phenomena to which comparative anatomy introduces us; partly because they furnish one of the clearest proofs of evolution, and partly because they most strikingly refute the teleology of certain philosophers. The theory of evolution enables us to give a very simple explanation of these phenomena.

We have to look on them as organs which have fallen into disuse in the course of many generations. With the decrease in the use of its function, the organ itself shrivels up gradually, and finally disappears. There is no other way of explaining rudimentary organs.

Hence they are also of great interest in philosophy; they show clearly that the monistic or mechanical view of the organism is the only correct one, and that the dualistic or teleological conception is wrong. The ancient legend of the direct creation of man according to a pre-conceived plan and the empty phrases about "design" in the organism are completely shattered by them. It would be difficult to conceive a more thorough refutation of teleology than is furnished by the fact that all the higher animals have these rudimentary organs.

The theory of evolution finds its broadest inductive foundation in the natural cla.s.sification of living things, which arranges all the various forms in larger and smaller groups, according to their degree of affinity. These groupings or categories of cla.s.sification--the varieties, species, genera, families, orders, cla.s.ses, etc.--show such constant features of coordination and subordination that we are bound to look on them as genealogical, and represent the whole system in the form of a branching tree. This is the genealogical tree of the variously related groups; their likeness in form is the expression of a real affinity. As it is impossible to explain in any other way the natural tree-like form of the system of organisms, we must regard it at once as a weighty proof of the truth of evolution. The careful construction of these genealogical trees is, therefore, not an amus.e.m.e.nt, but the chief task of modern cla.s.sification.

Among the chief phenomena that bear witness to the inductive law of evolution we have the geographical distribution of the various species of animals and plants over the surface of the earth, and their topographical distribution on the summits of mountains and in the depths of the ocean. The scientific study of these features--the "science of distribution," or chorology (chora = a place)--has been pursued with lively interest since the discoveries made by Alexander von Humboldt. Until Darwin's time the work was confined to the determination of the facts of the science, and chiefly aimed at settling the spheres of distribution of the existing large and small groups of living things. It was impossible at that time to explain the causes of this remarkable distribution, or the reasons why one group is found only in one locality and another in a different place, and why there is this manifold distribution at all. Here, again, the theory of evolution has given us the solution of the problem. It furnishes the only possible explanation when it teaches that the various species and groups of species descend from common stem-forms, whose ever-branching offspring have gradually spread themselves by migration over the earth. For each group of species we must admit a "centre of production," or common home; this is the original habitat in which the ancestral form was developed, and from which its descendants spread out in every direction. Several of these descendants became in their turn the stem-forms for new groups of species, and these also scattered themselves by active and pa.s.sive migration, and so on. As each migrating organism found a different environment in its new home, and adapted itself to it, it was modified, and gave rise to new forms.

This very important branch of science that deals with active and pa.s.sive migration was founded by Darwin, with the aid of the theory of evolution; and at the same time he advanced the true explanation of the remarkable relation or similarity of the living population in any locality to the fossil forms found in it. Moritz Wagner very ably developed his idea under the t.i.tle of "the theory of migration." In my opinion, this famous traveller has rather over-estimated the value of his theory of migration when he takes it to be an indispensable condition of the formation of new species and opposes the theory of selection. The two theories are not opposed in their main features.

Migration (by which the stem-form of a new species is isolated) is really only a special case of selection. The striking and interesting facts of chorology can be explained only by the theory of evolution, and therefore we must count them among the most important of its inductive bases.