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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of
+A Critical Examination of "On The Origin of Species"
+#16 in our series by Thomas H. Huxley
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+Title:  A Critical Examination of "On The Origin of Species"
+
+Author:  Thomas H. Huxley
+
+Release Date:  November, 2001  [Etext #2926]
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of A Critical Examination of
+"On The Origin of Species" by Thomas H. Huxley
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+
+A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE POSITION OF MR. DARWIN'S WORK, "ON
+THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES," IN RELATION TO THE COMPLETE THEORY OF THE
+CAUSES OF THE PHENOMENA OF ORGANIC NATURE
+
+by Thomas H. Huxley
+
+
+
+
+IN the preceding five lectures I have endeavoured to give you an account
+of those facts, and of those reasonings from facts, which form the data
+upon which all theories regarding the causes of the phenomena of
+organic nature must be based.  And, although I have had frequent
+occasion to quote Mr. Darwin--as all persons hereafter, in speaking upon
+these subjects, will have occasion to quote his famous book on the
+"Origin of Species,"--you must yet remember that, wherever I have
+quoted him, it has not been upon theoretical points, or for statements
+in any way connected with his particular speculations, but on matters
+of fact, brought forward by himself, or collected by himself, and which
+appear incidentally in his book.  If a man 'will' make a book,
+professing to discuss a single question, an encyclopaedia, I cannot help
+it.
+
+Now, having had an opportunity of considering in this sort of way the
+different statements bearing upon all theories whatsoever, I have to
+lay before you, as fairly as I can, what is Mr.  Darwin's view of the
+matter and what position his theories hold, when judged by the
+principles which I have previously laid down, as deciding our judgments
+upon all theories and hypotheses.
+
+I have already stated to you that the inquiry respecting the causes of
+the phenomena of organic nature resolves itself into two problems--the
+first being the question of the origination of living or organic
+beings; and the second being the totally distinct problem of the
+modification and perpetuation of organic beings when they have already
+come into existence.  The first question Mr. Darwin does not touch; he
+does not deal with it at all; but he says--given the origin of organic
+matter--supposing its creation to have already taken place, my object is
+to show in consequence of what laws and what demonstrable properties of
+organic matter, and of its environments, such states of organic nature
+as those with which we are acquainted must have come about.  This, you
+will observe, is a perfectly legitimate proposition; every person has a
+right to define the limits of the inquiry which he sets before himself;
+and yet it is a most singular thing that in all the multifarious, and,
+not unfrequently, ignorant attacks which have been made upon the
+'Origin of Species', there is nothing which has been more speciously
+criticised than this particular limitation.  If people have nothing else
+to urge against the book, they say--"Well, after all, you see, Mr.
+Darwin's explanation of the 'Origin of Species' is not good for much,
+because, in the long run, he admits that he does not know how organic
+matter began to exist.  But if you admit any special creation for the
+first particle of organic matter you may just as well admit it for all
+the rest; five hundred or five thousand distinct creations are just as
+intelligible, and just as little difficult to understand, as one."  The
+answer to these cavils is two-fold.  In the first place, all human
+inquiry must stop somewhere; all our knowledge and all our
+investigation cannot take us beyond the limits set by the finite and
+restricted character of our faculties, or destroy the endless unknown,
+which accompanies, like its shadow, the endless procession of
+phenomena.  So far as I can venture to offer an opinion on such a
+matter, the purpose of our being in existence, the highest object that
+human beings can set before themselves, is not the pursuit of any such
+chimera as the annihilation of the unknown; but it is simply the
+unwearied endeavour to remove its boundaries a little further from our
+little sphere of action.
+
+I wonder if any historian would for a moment admit the objection, that
+it is preposterous to trouble ourselves about the history of the Roman
+Empire, because we do not know anything positive about the origin and
+first building of the city of Rome!  Would it be a fair objection to
+urge, respecting the sublime discoveries of a Newton, or a Kepler, those
+great philosophers, whose discoveries have been of the profoundest
+benefit and service to all men,--to say to them--"After all that you
+have told us as to how the planets revolve, and how they are maintained
+in their orbits, you cannot tell us what is the cause of the origin of
+the sun, moon, and stars.  So what is the use of what you have done?"
+Yet these objections would not be one whit more preposterous than the
+objections which have been made to the 'Origin of Species.' Mr. Darwin,
+then, had a perfect right to limit his inquiry as he pleased, and the
+only question for us--the inquiry being so limited--is to ascertain
+whether the method of his inquiry is sound or unsound; whether he has
+obeyed the canons which must guide and govern all investigation, or
+whether he has broken them; and it was because our inquiry this evening
+is essentially limited to that question, that I spent a good deal of
+time in a former lecture (which, perhaps, some of you thought might
+have been better employed), in endeavouring to illustrate the method
+and nature of scientific inquiry in general.  We shall now have to put
+in practice the principles that I then laid down.
+
+I stated to you in substance, if not in words, that wherever there are
+complex masses of phenomena to be inquired into, whether they be
+phenomena of the affairs of daily life, or whether they belong to the
+more abstruse and difficult problems laid before the philosopher, our
+course of proceeding in unravelling that complex chain of phenomena with
+a view to get at its cause, is always the same; in all cases we must
+invent an hypothesis; we must place before ourselves some more or less
+likely supposition respecting that cause; and then, having assumed an
+hypothesis, having supposed cause for the phenomena in question, we must
+endeavour, on the one hand, to demonstrate our hypothesis, or, on the
+other, to upset and reject it altogether, by testing it in three ways.
+We must, in the first place, be prepared to prove that the supposed
+causes of the phenomena exist in nature; that they are what the
+logicians call 'vera causae'--true causes;--in the next place, we
+should be prepared to show that the assumed causes of the phenomena are
+competent to produce such phenomena as those which we wish to explain
+by them; and in the last place, we ought to be able to show that no
+other known causes are competent to produce those phenomena.  If we can
+succeed in satisfying these three conditions we shall have demonstrated
+our hypothesis; or rather I ought to say we shall have proved it as far
+as certainty is possible for us; for, after all, there is no one of our
+surest convictions which may not be upset, or at any rate modified by a
+further accession of knowledge.  It was because it satisfied these
+conditions that we accepted the hypothesis as to the disappearance of
+the tea-pot and spoons in the case I supposed in a previous lecture; we
+found that our hypothesis on that subject was tenable and valid, because
+the supposed cause existed in nature, because it was competent to
+account for the phenomena, and because no other known cause was
+competent to account for them; and it is upon similar grounds that any
+hypothesis you choose to name is accepted in science as tenable and
+valid.
+
+What is Mr. Darwin's hypothesis? As I apprehend it--for I have put it
+into a shape more convenient for common purposes than I could find
+'verbatim' in his book--as I apprehend it, I say, it is, that all the
+phenomena of organic nature, past and present, result from, or are
+caused by, the inter-action of those properties of organic matter,
+which we have called ATAVISM and VARIABILITY, with the CONDITIONS OF
+EXISTENCE; or, in other words,--given the existence of organic matter,
+its tendency to transmit its properties, and its tendency occasionally
+to vary; and, lastly, given the conditions of existence by which organic
+matter is surrounded--that these put together are the causes of the
+Present and of the Past conditions of ORGANIC NATURE.
+
+Such is the hypothesis as I understand it.  Now let us see how it will
+stand the various tests which I laid down just now.  In the first
+place, do these supposed causes of the phenomena exist in nature?  Is
+it the fact that in nature these properties of organic matter--atavism
+and variability--and those phenomena which we have called the
+conditions of existence,--is it true that they exist?  Well, of course,
+if they do not exist, all that I have told you in the last three or
+four lectures must be incorrect, because I have been attempting to prove
+that they do exist, and I take it that there is abundant evidence that
+they do exist; so far, therefore, the hypothesis does not break down.
+
+But in the next place comes a much more difficult inquiry:--Are the
+causes indicated competent to give rise to the phenomena of organic
+nature?  I suspect that this is indubitable to a certain extent.  It is
+demonstrable, I think, as I have endeavoured to show you, that they are
+perfectly competent to give rise to all the phenomena which are
+exhibited by RACES in nature.  Furthermore, I believe that they are
+quite competent to account for all that we may call purely structural
+phenomena which are exhibited by SPECIES in nature.  On that point also
+I have already enlarged somewhat.  Again, I think that the causes
+assumed are competent to account for most of the physiological
+characteristics of species, and I not only think that they are
+competent to account for them, but I think that they account for many
+things which otherwise remain wholly unaccountable and inexplicable,
+and I may say incomprehensible.  For a full exposition of the grounds
+on which this conviction is based, I must refer you to Mr.  Darwin's
+work; all that I can do now is to illustrate what I have said by two or
+three cases taken almost at random.
+
+I drew your attention, on a previous evening, to the facts which are
+embodied in our systems of Classification, which are the results of the
+examination and comparison of the different members of the animal
+kingdom one with another.  I mentioned that the whole of the animal
+kingdom is divisible into five sub-kingdoms; that each of these
+sub-kingdoms is again divisible into provinces; that each province may
+be divided into classes, and the classes into the successively smaller
+groups, orders, families, genera, and species.
+
+Now, in each of these groups, the resemblance in structure among the
+members of the group is closer in proportion as the group is smaller.
+Thus, a man and a worm are members of the animal kingdom in virtue of
+certain apparently slight though really fundamental resemblances which
+they present.  But a man and a fish are members of the same sub-kingdom
+'Vertebrata', because they are much more like one another than either
+of them is to a worm, or a snail, or any member of the other
+sub-kingdoms.  For similar reasons men and horses are arranged as
+members of the same Class, 'Mammalia'; men and apes as members of the
+same Order, 'Primates'; and if there were any animals more like men
+than they were like any of the apes, and yet different from men in
+important and constant particulars of their organization, we should
+rank them as members of the same Family, or of the same Genus, but as of
+distinct Species.
+
+That it is possible to arrange all the varied forms of animals into
+groups, having this sort of singular subordination one to the other, is
+a very remarkable circumstance; but, as Mr. Darwin remarks, this is a
+result which is quite to be expected, if the principles which he lays
+down be correct.  Take the case of the races which are known to be
+produced by the operation of atavism and variability, and the
+conditions of existence which check and modify these tendencies.  Take
+the case of the pigeons that I brought before you; there it was shown
+that they might be all classed as belonging to some one of five
+principal divisions, and that within these divisions other subordinate
+groups might be formed.  The members of these groups are related to one
+another in just the same way as the genera of a family, and the groups
+themselves as the families of an order, or the orders of a class; while
+all have the same sort of structural relations with the wild
+rock-pigeon, as the members of any great natural group have with a real
+or imaginary typical form.  Now, we know that all varieties of pigeons
+of every kind have arisen by a process of selective breeding from a
+common stock, the rock-pigeon; hence, you see, that if all species of
+animals have proceeded from some common stock, the general character of
+their structural relations, and of our systems of classification, which
+express those relations, would be just what we find them to be.  In
+other words, the hypothetical cause is, so far, competent to produce
+effects similar to those of the real cause.
+
+Take, again, another set of very remarkable facts,--the existence of
+what are called rudimentary organs, organs for which we can find no
+obvious use, in the particular animal economy in which they are found,
+and yet which are there.
+
+Such are the splint-like bones in the leg of the horse, which I here
+show you, and which correspond with bones which belong to certain toes
+and fingers in the human hand and foot. In the horse you see they are
+quite rudimentary, and bear neither toes nor fingers; so that the horse
+has only one "finger" in his fore-foot and one "toe" in his hind foot.
+But it is a very curious thing that the animals closely allied to the
+horse show more toes than he; as the rhinoceros, for instance: he has
+these extra toes well formed, and anatomical facts show very clearly
+that he is very closely related to the horse indeed.  So we may say that
+animals, in an anatomical sense nearly related to the horse, have those
+parts which are rudimentary in him, fully developed.
+
+Again, the sheep and the cow have no cutting-teeth, but only a hard pad
+in the upper jaw. That is the common characteristic of ruminants in
+general.  But the calf has in its upper jaw some rudiments of teeth
+which never are developed, and never play the part of teeth at all.
+Well, if you go back in time, you find some of the older, now extinct,
+allies of the ruminants have well-developed teeth in their upper jaws;
+and at the present day the pig (which is in structure closely connected
+with ruminants) has well-developed teeth in its upper jaw; so that here
+is another instance of organs well-developed and very useful, in one
+animal, represented by rudimentary organs, for which we can discover no
+purpose whatsoever, in another closely allied animal.  The whalebone
+whale, again, has horny "whalebone" plates in its mouth, and no teeth;
+but the young foetal whale, before it is born, has teeth in its jaws;
+they, however, are never used, and they never come to anything.  But
+other members of the group to which the whale belongs have
+well-developed teeth in both jaws.
+
+Upon any hypothesis of special creation, facts of this kind appear to me
+to be entirely unaccountable and inexplicable, but they cease to be so
+if you accept Mr. Darwin's hypothesis, and see reason for believing
+that the whalebone whale and the whale with teeth in its mouth both
+sprang from a whale that had teeth, and that the teeth of the foetal
+whale are merely remnants--recollections, if we may so say--of the
+extinct whale.  So in the case of the horse and the rhinoceros: suppose
+that both have descended by modification from some earlier form which
+had the normal number of toes, and the persistence of the rudimentary
+bones which no longer support toes in the horse becomes comprehensible.
+
+In the language that we speak in England, and in the language of the
+Greeks, there are identical verbal roots, or elements entering into the
+composition of words.  That fact remains unintelligible so long as we
+suppose English and Greek to be independently created tongues; but when
+it is shown that both languages are descended from one original, the
+Sanscrit, we give an explanation of that resemblance.  In the same way
+the existence of identical structural roots, if I may so term them,
+entering into the composition of widely different animals, is striking
+evidence in favour of the descent of those animals from a common
+original.
+
+To turn to another kind of illustration:--If you regard the whole series
+of stratified rocks--that enormous thickness of sixty or seventy
+thousand feet that I have mentioned before, constituting the only
+record we have of a most prodigious lapse of time, that time being, in
+all probability, but a fraction of that of which we have no record;--if
+you observe in these successive strata of rocks successive groups of
+animals arising and dying out, a constant succession, giving you the
+same kind of impression, as you travel from one group of strata to
+another, as you would have in travelling from one country to
+another;--when you find this constant succession of forms, their traces
+obliterated except to the man of science,--when you look at this
+wonderful history, and ask what it means, it is only a paltering with
+words if you are offered the reply,--'They were so created.'
+
+But if, on the other hand, you look on all forms of organized beings as
+the results of the gradual modification of a primitive type, the facts
+receive a meaning, and you see that these older conditions are the
+necessary predecessors of the present.  Viewed in this light the facts
+of palaeontology receive a meaning--upon any other hypothesis, I am
+unable to see, in the slightest degree, what knowledge or signification
+we are to draw out of them.  Again, note as bearing upon the same
+point, the singular likeness which obtains between the successive
+Faunae and Florae, whose remains are preserved on the rocks: you never
+find any great and enormous difference between the immediately
+successive Faunae and Florae, unless you have reason to believe there
+has also been a great lapse of time or a great change of conditions.
+The animals, for instance, of the newest tertiary rocks, in any part of
+the world, are always, and without exception, found to be closely
+allied with those which now live in that part of the world.  For
+example, in Europe, Asia, and Africa, the large mammals are at present
+rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, elephants, lions, tigers, oxen, horses,
+etc.; and if you examine the newest tertiary deposits, which contain
+the animals and plants which immediately preceded those which now exist
+in the same country, you do not find gigantic specimens of ant-eaters
+and kangaroos, but you find rhinoceroses, elephants, lions, tigers,
+etc.,--of different species to those now living,--but still their close
+allies.  If you turn to South America, where, at the present day, we
+have great sloths and armadilloes and creatures of that kind, what do
+you find in the newest tertiaries?  You find the great sloth-like
+creature, the 'Megatherium', and the great armadillo, the 'Glyptodon',
+and so on.  And if you go to Australia you find the same law holds
+good, namely, that that condition of organic nature which has preceded
+the one which now exists, presents differences perhaps of species, and
+of genera, but that the great types of organic structure are the same
+as those which now flourish.
+
+What meaning has this fact upon any other hypothesis or supposition than
+one of successive modification?  But if the population of the world, in
+any age, is the result of the gradual modification of the forms which
+peopled it in the preceding age,--if that has been the case, it is
+intelligible enough; because we may expect that the creature that
+results from the modification of an elephantine mammal shall be
+something like an elephant, and the creature which is produced by the
+modification of an armadillo-like mammal shall be like an armadillo.
+Upon that supposition, I say, the facts are intelligible; upon any
+other, that I am aware of, they are not.
+
+So far, the facts of palaeontology are consistent with almost any form
+of the doctrine of progressive modification; they would not be
+absolutely inconsistent with the wild speculations of De Maillet, or
+with the less objectionable hypothesis of Lamarck.  But Mr. Darwin's
+views have one peculiar merit; and that is, that they are perfectly
+consistent with an array of facts which are utterly inconsistent with
+and fatal to, any other hypothesis of progressive modification which
+has yet been advanced.  It is one remarkable peculiarity of Mr.
+Darwin's hypothesis that it involves no necessary progression or
+incessant modification, and that it is perfectly consistent with the
+persistence for any length of time of a given primitive stock,
+contemporaneously with its modifications.  To return to the case of the
+domestic breeds of pigeons, for example; you have the Dove-cot pigeon,
+which closely resembles the Rock pigeon, from which they all started,
+existing at the same time with the others.  And if species are
+developed in the same way in nature, a primitive stock and its
+modifications may, occasionally, all find the conditions fitted for
+their existence; and though they come into competition, to a certain
+extent, with one another, the derivative species may not necessarily
+extirpate the primitive one, or 'vice versa'.
+
+Now palaeontology shows us many facts which are perfectly harmonious
+with these observed effects of the process by which Mr. Darwin supposes
+species to have originated, but which appear to me to be totally
+inconsistent with any other hypothesis which has been proposed. There
+are some groups of animals and plants, in the fossil world, which have
+been said to belong to "persistent types," because they have persisted,
+with very little change indeed, through a very great range of time,
+while everything about them has changed largely.  There are families of
+fishes whose type of construction has persisted all the way from the
+carboniferous rock right up to the cretaceous; and others which have
+lasted through almost the whole range of the secondary rocks, and from
+the lias to the older tertiaries.  It is something stupendous this--to
+consider a genus lasting without essential modifications through all
+this enormous lapse of time while almost everything else was changed
+and modified.
+
+Thus I have no doubt that Mr. Darwin's hypothesis will be found
+competent to explain the majority of the phenomena exhibited by species
+in nature; but in an earlier lecture I spoke cautiously with respect to
+its power of explaining all the physiological peculiarities of species.
+
+There is, in fact, one set of these peculiarities which the theory of
+selective modification, as it stands at present, is not wholly
+competent to explain, and that is the group of phenomena which I
+mentioned to you under the name of Hybridism, and which I explained to
+consist in the sterility of the offspring of certain species when
+crossed one with another.  It matters not one whit whether this
+sterility is universal, or whether it exists only in a single case.
+Every hypothesis is bound to explain, or, at any rate, not be
+inconsistent with, the whole of the facts which it professes to account
+for; and if there is a single one of these facts which can be shown to
+be inconsistent with (I do not merely mean inexplicable by, but contrary
+to) the hypothesis, the hypothesis falls to the ground,--it is worth
+nothing.  One fact with which it is positively inconsistent is worth as
+much, and as powerful in negativing the hypothesis, as five hundred. If
+I am right in thus defining the obligations of an hypothesis, Mr.
+Darwin, in order to place his views beyond the reach of all possible
+assault, ought to be able to demonstrate the possibility of developing
+from a particular stock by selective breeding, two forms, which should
+either be unable to cross one with another, or whose cross-bred
+offspring should be infertile with one another.
+
+For, you see, if you have not done that you have not strictly fulfilled
+all the conditions of the problem; you have not shown that you can
+produce, by the cause assumed, all the phenomena which you have in
+nature.  Here are the phenomena of Hybridism staring you in the face,
+and you cannot say, 'I can, by selective modification, produce these
+same results.'  Now, it is admitted on all hands that, at present, so
+far as experiments have gone, it has not been found possible to produce
+this complete physiological divergence by selective breeding.  I stated
+this very clearly before, and I now refer to the point, because, if it
+could be proved, not only that this 'has' not been done, but that it
+'cannot' be done; if it could be demonstrated that it is impossible to
+breed selectively, from any stock, a form which shall not breed with
+another, produced from the same stock; and if we were shown that this
+must be the necessary and inevitable results of all experiments, I hold
+that Mr. Darwin's hypothesis would be utterly shattered.
+
+But has this been done? or what is really the state of the case?  It is
+simply that, so far as we have gone yet with our breeding, we have not
+produced from a common stock two breeds which are not more or less
+fertile with one another.
+
+I do not know that there is a single fact which would justify any one in
+saying that any degree of sterility has been observed between breeds
+absolutely known to have been produced by selective breeding from a
+common stock.  On the other hand, I do not know that there is a single
+fact which can justify any one in asserting that such sterility cannot
+be produced by proper experimentation.  For my own part, I see every
+reason to believe that it may, and will be so produced.  For, as Mr.
+Darwin has very properly urged, when we consider the phenomena of
+sterility, we find they are most capricious; we do not know what it is
+that the sterility depends on.  There are some animals which will not
+breed in captivity; whether it arises from the simple fact of their
+being shut up and deprived of their liberty, or not, we do not know,
+but they certainly will not breed.  What an astounding thing this is, to
+find one of the most important of all functions annihilated by mere
+imprisonment!
+
+So, again, there are cases known of animals which have been thought by
+naturalists to be undoubted species, which have yielded perfectly
+fertile hybrids; while there are other species which present what
+everybody believes to be varieties* which are more or less infertile
+with one another.  There are other cases which are truly extraordinary;
+there is one, for example, which has been carefully examined,--of two
+kinds of sea-weed, of which the male element of the one, which we may
+call A, fertilizes the female element of the other, B; while the male
+element of B will not fertilize the female element of A; so that, while
+the former experiment seems to show us that they are 'varieties', the
+latter leads to the conviction that they are 'species'.
+
+    *[footnote] And as I conceive with very good reason; but if
+    any objector urges that we cannot prove that they have been
+    produced by artificial or natural selection, the objection
+    must be admitted--ultrasceptical as it is.  But in science,
+    scepticism is a duty.
+
+When we see how capricious and uncertain this sterility is, how unknown
+the conditions on which it depends, I say that we have no right to
+affirm that those conditions will not be better understood by and by,
+and we have no ground for supposing that we may not be able to
+experiment so as to obtain that crucial result which I mentioned just
+now.  So that though Mr.  Darwin's hypothesis does not completely
+extricate us from this difficulty at present, we have not the least
+right to say it will not do so.
+
+There is a wide gulf between the thing you cannot explain and the thing
+that upsets you altogether.  There is hardly any hypothesis in this
+world which has not some fact in connection with it which has not been
+explained, but that is a very different affair to a fact that entirely
+opposes your hypothesis; in this case all you can say is, that your
+hypothesis is in the same position as a good many others.
+
+Now, as to the third test, that there are no other causes competent to
+explain the phenomena, I explained to you that one should be able to
+say of an hypothesis, that no other known causes than those supposed by
+it are competent to give rise to the phenomena.  Here, I think, Mr.
+Darwin's view is pretty strong.  I really believe that the alternative
+is either Darwinism or nothing, for I do not know of any rational
+conception or theory of the organic universe which has any scientific
+position at all beside Mr. Darwin's.  I do not know of any proposition
+that has been put before us with the intention of explaining the
+phenomena of organic nature, which has in its favour a thousandth part
+of the evidence which may be adduced in favour of Mr. Darwin's views.
+Whatever may be the objections to his views, certainly all others are
+absolutely out of court.
+
+Take the Lamarckian hypothesis, for example.  Lamarck was a great
+naturalist, and to a certain extent went the right way to work; he
+argued from what was undoubtedly a true cause of some of the phenomena
+of organic nature.  He said it is a matter of experience that an animal
+may be modified more or less in consequence of its desires and
+consequent actions. Thus, if a man exercise himself as a blacksmith,
+his arms will become strong and muscular; such organic modification is
+a result of this particular action and exercise.  Lamarck thought that
+by a very simple supposition based on this truth he could explain the
+origin of the various animal species: he said, for example, that the
+short-legged birds which live on fish had been converted into the
+long-legged waders by desiring to get the fish without wetting their
+bodies, and so stretching their legs more and more through successive
+generations.  If Lamarck could have shown experimentally, that even
+races of animals could be produced in this way, there might have been
+some ground for his speculations.  But he could show nothing of the
+kind, and his hypothesis has pretty well dropped into oblivion, as it
+deserved to do.  I said in an earlier lecture that there are hypotheses
+and hypotheses, and when people tell you that Mr.  Darwin's
+strongly-based hypothesis is nothing but a mere modification of
+Lamarck's, you will know what to think of their capacity for forming a
+judgment on this subject.
+
+But you must recollect that when I say I think it is either Mr. Darwin's
+hypothesis or nothing; that either we must take his view, or look upon
+the whole of organic nature as an enigma, the meaning of which is
+wholly hidden from us; you must understand that I mean that I accept it
+provisionally, in exactly the same way as I accept any other hypothesis.
+Men of science do not pledge themselves to creeds; they are bound by
+articles of no sort; there is not a single belief that it is not a
+bounden duty with them to hold with a light hand and to part with it
+cheerfully, the moment it is really proved to be contrary to any fact,
+great or small.  And if, in course of time I see good reasons for such
+a proceeding, I shall have no hesitation in coming before you, and
+pointing out any change in my opinion without finding the slightest
+occasion to blush for so doing.  So I say that we accept this view as
+we accept any other, so long as it will help us, and we feel bound to
+retain it only so long as it will serve our great purpose--the
+improvement of Man's estate and the widening of his knowledge.  The
+moment this, or any other conception, ceases to be useful for these
+purposes, away with it to the four winds; we care not what becomes of
+it!
+
+But to say truth, although it has been my business to attend closely to
+the controversies roused by the publication of Mr. Darwin's book, I
+think that not one of the enormous mass of objections and obstacles
+which have been raised is of any very great value, except that
+sterility case which I brought before you just now.  All the rest are
+misunderstandings of some sort, arising either from prejudice, or want
+of knowledge, or still more from want of patience and care in reading
+the work.
+
+For you must recollect that it is not a book to be read with as much
+ease as its pleasant style may lead you to imagine.  You spin through
+it as if it were a novel the first time you read it, and think you know
+all about it; the second time you read it you think you know rather
+less about it; and the third time, you are amazed to find how little
+you have really apprehended its vast scope and objects.  I can
+positively say that I never take it up without finding in it some new
+view, or light, or suggestion that I have not noticed before.  That is
+the best characteristic of a thorough and profound book; and I believe
+this feature of the 'Origin of Species' explains why so many persons
+have ventured to pass judgment and criticisms upon it which are by no
+means worth the paper they are written on.
+
+Before concluding these lectures there is one point to which I must
+advert,--though, as Mr.  Darwin has said nothing about man in his book,
+it concerns myself rather than him;--for I have strongly maintained on
+sundry occasions that if Mr. Darwin's views are sound, they apply as
+much to man as to the lower mammals, seeing that it is perfectly
+demonstrable that the structural differences which separate man from
+the apes are not greater than those which separate some apes from
+others.  There cannot be the slightest doubt in the world that the
+argument which applies to the improvement of the horse from an earlier
+stock, or of ape from ape, applies to the improvement of man from some
+simpler and lower stock than man.  There is not a single
+faculty--functional or structural, moral, intellectual, or
+instinctive,--there is no faculty whatever that is not capable of
+improvement; there is no faculty whatsoever which does not depend upon
+structure, and as structure tends to vary, it is capable of being
+improved.
+
+Well, I have taken a good deal of pains at various times to prove this,
+and I have endeavoured to meet the objections of those who maintain,
+that the structural differences between man and the lower animals are
+of so vast a character and enormous extent, that even if Mr. Darwin's
+views are correct, you cannot imagine this particular modification to
+take place.  It is, in fact, easy matter to prove that, so far as
+structure is concerned, man differs to no greater extent from the
+animals which are immediately below him than these do from other members
+of the same order.  Upon the other hand, there is no one who estimates
+more highly than I do the dignity of human nature, and the width of the
+gulf in intellectual and moral matters, which lies between man and the
+whole of the lower creation.
+
+But I find this very argument brought forward vehemently by some.  "You
+say that man has proceeded from a modification of some lower animal,
+and you take pains to prove that the structural differences which are
+said to exist in his brain do not exist at all, and you teach that all
+functions, intellectual, moral, and others, are the expression or the
+result, in the long run, of structures, and of the molecular forces
+which they exert."  It is quite true that I do so.
+
+"Well, but," I am told at once, somewhat triumphantly, "you say in the
+same breath that there is a great moral and intellectual chasm between
+man and the lower animals.  How is this possible when you declare that
+moral and intellectual characteristics depend on structure, and yet
+tell us that there is no such gulf between the structure of man and that
+of the lower animals?"
+
+I think that objection is based upon a misconception of the real
+relations which exist between structure and function, between mechanism
+and work.  Function is the expression of molecular forces and
+arrangements no doubt; but, does it follow from this, that variation in
+function so depends upon variation in structure that the former is
+always exactly proportioned to the latter?  If there is no such
+relation, if the variation in function which follows on a variation in
+structure, may be enormously greater than the variation of the
+structure, then, you see, the objection falls to the ground.
+
+Take a couple of watches--made by the same maker, and as completely
+alike as possible; set them upon the table, and the function of
+each--which is its rate of going--will be performed in the same manner,
+and you shall be able to distinguish no difference between them; but let
+me take a pair of pincers, and if my hand is steady enough to do it,
+let me just lightly crush together the bearings of the balance-wheel,
+or force to a slightly different angle the teeth of the escapement of
+one of them, and of course you know the immediate result will be that
+the watch, so treated, from that moment will cease to go.  But what
+proportion is there between the structural alteration and the
+functional result?  Is it not perfectly obvious that the alteration is
+of the minutest kind, yet that slight as it is, it has produced an
+infinite difference in the performance of the functions of these two
+instruments?
+
+Well, now, apply that to the present question.  What is it that
+constitutes and makes man what he is?  What is it but his power of
+language--that language giving him the means of recording his
+experience--making every generation somewhat wiser than its
+predecessor,--more in accordance with the established order of the
+universe?
+
+What is it but this power of speech, of recording experience, which
+enables men to be men--looking before and after and, in some dim sense,
+understanding the working of this wondrous universe--and which
+distinguishes man from the whole of the brute world?  I say that this
+functional difference is vast, unfathomable, and truly infinite in its
+consequences; and I say at the same time, that it may depend upon
+structural differences which shall be absolutely inappreciable to us
+with our present means of investigation.  What is this very speech that
+we are talking about?  I am speaking to you at this moment, but if you
+were to alter, in the minutest degree, the proportion of the nervous
+forces now active in the two nerves which supply the muscles of my
+glottis, I should become suddenly dumb.  The voice is produced only so
+long as the vocal chords are parallel; and these are parallel only so
+long as certain muscles contract with exact equality; and that again
+depends on the equality of action of those two nerves I spoke of.  So
+that a change of the minutest kind in the structure of one of these
+nerves, or in the structure of the part in which it originates, or of
+the supply of blood to that part, or of one of the muscles to which it
+is distributed, might render all of us dumb.  But a race of dumb men,
+deprived of all communication with those who could speak, would be
+little indeed removed from the brutes.  And the moral and intellectual
+difference between them and ourselves would be practically infinite,
+though the naturalist should not be able to find a single shadow of
+even specific structural difference.
+
+But let me dismiss this question now, and, in conclusion, let me say
+that you may go away with it as my mature conviction, that Mr. Darwin's
+work is the greatest contribution which has been made to biological
+science since the publication of the 'Regne Animal' of Cuvier, and
+since that of the 'History of Development' of Von Baer.  I believe that
+if you strip it of its theoretical part it still remains one of the
+greatest encyclopaedias of biological doctrine that any one man ever
+brought forth; and I believe that, if you take it as the embodiment of
+an hypothesis, it is destined to be the guide of biological and
+psychological speculation for the next three or four generations.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of A Critical Examination of
+"On The Origin of Species" by Thomas H. Huxley
+
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