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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Darwinian Hypothesis, by Thomas H. Huxley
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+Title: The Darwinian Hypothesis
+
+Author: Thomas H. Huxley
+
+Release Date: November, 2001 [Etext #2927]
+[Most recently updated: October 30, 2020]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DARWINIAN HYPOTHESIS ***
+
+
+
+
+This eBook was converted to HTML, with additional editing, by Jose Menendez
+from the text edition produced by Amy E. Zelmer.
+
+
+
+
+The Darwinian Hypothesis*
+
+by Thomas H. Huxley
+
+
+
+DARWIN ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES.
+
+
+THERE is a growing immensity in the speculations of science to which no
+human thing or thought at this day is comparable. Apart from the
+results which science brings us home and securely harvests, there is an
+expansive force and latitude in its tentative efforts, which lifts us
+out of ourselves and transfigures our mortality. We may have a
+preference for moral themes, like the Homeric sage, who had seen and
+known much:—
+
+     “Cities of men
+     And manners, climates, councils, governments”;
+
+yet we must end by confession that
+
+     “The windy ways of men
+     Are but dust which rises up
+     And is lightly laid again,”
+
+in comparison with the work of nature, to which science testifies, but
+which has no boundaries in time or space to which science can
+approximate.
+
+There is something altogether out of the reach of science, and yet the
+compass of science is practically illimitable. Hence it is that from
+time to time we are startled and perplexed by theories which have no
+parallel in the contracted moral world; for the generalizations of
+science sweep on in ever-widening circles, and more aspiring flights,
+through a limitless creation. While astronomy, with its telescope,
+ranges beyond the known stars, and physiology, with its microscope, is
+subdividing infinite minutiae, we may expect that our historic
+centuries may be treated as inadequate counters in the history of the
+planet on which we are placed. We must expect new conceptions of the
+nature and relations of its denizens, as science acquires the materials
+for fresh generalizations; nor have we occasion for alarms if a highly
+advanced knowledge, like that of the eminent Naturalist before us,
+confronts us with an hypothesis as vast as it is novel. This hypothesis
+may or may not be sustainable hereafter; it may give way to something
+else, and higher science may reverse what science has here built up
+with so much skill and patience, but its sufficiency must be tried by
+the tests of science alone, if we are to maintain our position as the
+heirs of Bacon and the acquitters of Galileo. We must weigh this
+hypothesis strictly in the controversy which is coming, by the only
+tests which are appropriate, and by no others whatsoever.
+
+The hypothesis to which we point, and of which the present work of Mr.
+Darwin is but the preliminary outline, may be stated in his own
+language as follows:—“Species originated by means of natural selection,
+or through the preservation of the favoured races in the struggle for
+life.” To render this thesis intelligible, it is necessary to interpret
+its terms. In the first place, what is a species? The question is a
+simple one, but the right answer to it is hard to find, even if we
+appeal to those who should know most about it. It is all those animals
+or plants which have descended from a single pair of parents; it is the
+smallest distinctly definable group of living organisms; it is an
+eternal and immutable entity; it is a mere abstraction of the human
+intellect having no existence in nature. Such are a few of the
+significations attached to this simple word which may be culled from
+authoritative sources; and if, leaving terms and theoretical subtleties
+aside, we turn to facts and endeavour to gather a meaning for
+ourselves, by studying the things to which, in practice, the name of
+species is applied, it profits us little. For practice varies as much
+as theory. Let the botanist or the zoologist examine and describe the
+productions of a country, and one will pretty certainly disagree with
+the other as to the number, limits, and definitions of the species into
+which he groups the very same things. In these islands, we are in the
+habit of regarding mankind as of one species, but a fortnight’s steam
+will land us in a country where divines and savants, for once in
+agreement, vie with one another in loudness of assertion, if not in
+cogency of proof, that men are of different species; and, more
+particularly, that the species negro is so distinct from our own that
+the Ten Commandments have actually no reference to him. Even in the
+calm region of entomology, where, if anywhere in this sinful world,
+passion and prejudice should fail to stir the mind, one learned
+coleopterist will fill ten attractive volumes with descriptions of
+species of beetles, nine-tenths of which are immediately declared by
+his brother beetle-mongers to be no species at all.
+
+The truth is that the number of distinguishable living creatures almost
+surpasses imagination. At least a hundred thousand such kinds of
+insects alone have been described and may be identified in collections,
+and the number of separable kinds of living things is underestimated at
+half a million. Seeing that most of these obvious kinds have their
+accidental varieties, and that they often shade into others by
+imperceptible degrees, it may well be imagined that the task of
+distinguishing between what is permanent and what fleeting, what is a
+species and what a mere variety, is sufficiently formidable.
+
+But is it not possible to apply a test whereby a true species may be
+known from a mere variety? Is there no criterion of species? Great
+authorities affirm that there is—that the unions of members of the same
+species are always fertile, while those of distinct species are either
+sterile, or their offspring, called hybrids, are so. It is affirmed not
+only that this is an experimental fact, but that it is a provision for
+the preservation of the purity of species. Such a criterion as this
+would be invaluable; but, unfortunately, not only is it not obvious how
+to apply it in the great majority of cases in which its aid is needed,
+but its general validity is stoutly denied. The Hon. and Rev. Mr.
+Herbert, a most trustworthy authority, not only asserts as the result
+of his own observations and experiments that many hybrids are quite as
+fertile as the parent species, but he goes so far as to assert that the
+particular plant _Crinum capense_ is much more fertile when crossed by
+a distinct species than when fertilised by its proper pollen! On the
+other hand, the famous Gaertner, though he took the greatest pains to
+cross the primrose and the cowslip, succeeded only once or twice in
+several years; and yet it is a well-established fact that the primrose
+and the cowslip are only varieties of the same kind of plant. Again,
+such cases as the following are well established. The female of species
+A, if crossed with the male of species B, is fertile; but, if the
+female of B is crossed with the male of A, she remains barren. Facts of
+this kind destroy the value of the supposed criterion.
+
+If, weary of the endless difficulties involved in the determination of
+species, the investigator, contenting himself with the rough practical
+distinction of separable kinds, endeavours to study them as they occur
+in nature—to ascertain their relations to the conditions which surround
+them, their mutual harmonies and discordances of structure, the bond of
+union of their parts and their past history, he finds himself,
+according to the received notions, in a mighty maze, and with, at most,
+the dimmest adumbration of a plan. If he starts with any one clear
+conviction, it is that every part of a living creature is cunningly
+adapted to some special use in its life. Has not his Paley told him
+that that seemingly useless organ, the spleen, is beautifully adjusted
+as so much packing between the other organs? And yet, at the outset of
+his studies, he finds that no adaptive reason whatsoever can be given
+for one-half of the peculiarities of vegetable structure; he also
+discovers rudimentary teeth, which are never used, in the gums of the
+young calf and in those of the foetal whale; insects which never bite
+have rudimental jaws, and others which never fly have rudimental wings;
+naturally blind creatures have rudimental eyes; and the halt have
+rudimentary limbs. So, again, no animal or plant puts on its perfect
+form at once, but all have to start from the same point, however
+various the course which each has to pursue. Not only men and horses,
+and cats and dogs, lobsters and beetles, periwinkles and mussels, but
+even the very sponges and animalcules commence their existence under
+forms which are essentially undistinguishable; and this is true of all
+the infinite variety of plants. Nay, more, all living beings march side
+by side along the high road of development, and separate the later the
+more like they are; like people leaving church, who all go down the
+aisle, but having reached the door some turn into the parsonage, others
+go down the village, and others part only in the next parish. A man in
+his development runs for a little while parallel with, though never
+passing through, the form of the meanest worm, then travels for a space
+beside the fish, then journeys along with the bird and the reptile for
+his fellow travellers; and only at last, after a brief companionship
+with the highest of the four-footed and four-handed world, rises into
+the dignity of pure manhood. No competent thinker of the present day
+dreams of explaining these indubitable facts by the notion of the
+existence of unknown and undiscoverable adaptations to purpose. And we
+would remind those who, ignorant of the facts, must be moved by
+authority, that no one has asserted the incompetence of the doctrine of
+final causes, in its application to physiology and anatomy, more
+strongly than our own eminent anatomist, Professor Owen, who, speaking
+of such cases, says (_On the Nature of Limbs_, pp. 39, 40): “I think it
+will be obvious that the principle of final adaptations fails to
+satisfy all the conditions of the problem.”
+
+But, if the doctrine of final causes will not help us to comprehend the
+anomalies of living structure, the principle of adaptation must surely
+lead us to understand why certain living beings are found in certain
+regions of the world and not in others. The palm, as we know, will not
+grow in our climate, nor the oak in Greenland. The white bear cannot
+live where the tiger thrives, nor _vice versa_, and the more the
+natural habits of animal and vegetable species are examined, the more
+do they seem, on the whole, limited to particular provinces. But when
+we look into the facts established by the study of the geographical
+distribution of animals and plants it seems utterly hopeless to attempt
+to understand the strange and apparently capricious relations which
+they exhibit. One would be inclined to suppose _a priori_ that every
+country must be naturally peopled by those animals that are fittest to
+live and thrive in it. And yet how, on this hypothesis, are we to
+account for the absence of cattle in the Pampas of South America, when
+those parts of the New World were discovered? It is not that they were
+unfit for cattle, for millions of cattle now run wild there; and the
+like holds good of Australia and New Zealand. It is a curious
+circumstance, in fact, that the animals and plants of the Northern
+Hemisphere are not only as well adapted to live in the Southern
+Hemisphere as its own autochthones, but are in many cases absolutely
+better adapted, and so overrun and extirpate the aborigines. Clearly,
+therefore, the species which naturally inhabit a country are not
+necessarily the best adapted to its climate and other conditions. The
+inhabitants of islands are often distinct from any other known species
+of animal or plants (witness our recent examples from the work of Sir
+Emerson Tennent, on Ceylon), and yet they have almost always a sort of
+general family resemblance to the animals and plants of the nearest
+mainland. On the other hand, there is hardly a species of fish, shell,
+or crab common to the opposite sides of the narrow isthmus of Panama.
+Wherever we look, then, living nature offers us riddles of difficult
+solution, if we suppose that what we see is all that can be known of
+it.
+
+But our knowledge of life is not confined to the existing world.
+Whatever their minor differences, geologists are agreed as to the vast
+thickness of the accumulated strata which compose the visible part of
+our earth, and the inconceivable immensity of the time of whose lapse
+they are the imperfect, but the only accessible witnesses. Now,
+throughout the greater part of this long series of stratified rocks are
+scattered, sometimes very abundantly, multitudes of organic remains,
+the fossilized exuviae of animals and plants which lived and died while
+the mud of which the rocks are formed was yet soft ooze, and could
+receive and bury them. It would be a great error to suppose that these
+organic remains were fragmentary relics. Our museums exhibit fossil
+shells of immeasurable antiquity, as perfect as the day they were
+formed, whole skeletons without a limb disturbed—nay, the changed
+flesh, the developing embryos, and even the very footsteps of primeval
+organisms. Thus the naturalist finds in the bowels of the earth species
+as well defined as, and in some groups of animals more numerous than,
+those that breathe the upper air. But, singularly enough, the majority
+of these entombed species are wholly distinct from those that now live.
+Nor is this unlikeness without its rule and order. As a broad fact, the
+further we go back in time the less the buried species are like
+existing forms; and the further apart the sets of extinct creatures are
+the less they are like one another. In other words, there has been a
+regular succession of living beings, each younger set being in a very
+broad and general sense somewhat more like those which now live.
+
+It was once supposed that this succession had been the result of vast
+successive catastrophes, destructions, and re-creations _en masse_; but
+catastrophes are now almost eliminated from geological, or at least
+palaeontological speculation; and it is admitted on all hands that the
+seeming breaks in the chain of being are not absolute, but only
+relative to our imperfect knowledge; that species have replaced
+species, not in assemblages, but one by one; and that, if it were
+possible to have all the phenomena of the past presented to us, the
+convenient epochs and formations of the geologist, though having a
+certain distinctness, would fade into one another with limits as
+undefinable as those of the distinct and yet separable colours of the
+solar spectrum.
+
+Such is a brief summary of the main truths which have been established
+concerning species. Are these truths ultimate and irresolvable facts,
+or are their complexities and perplexities the mere expressions of a
+higher law?
+
+A large number of persons practically assume the former position to be
+correct. They believe that the writer of the Pentateuch was empowered
+and commissioned to teach us scientific as well as other truth, that
+the account we find there of the creation of living things is simply
+and literally correct, and that anything which seems to contradict it
+is, by the nature of the case, false. All the phenomena which have been
+detailed are, on this view, the immediate product of a creative fiat
+and consequently are out of the domain of science altogether.
+
+Whether this view prove ultimately to be true or false, it is, at any
+rate, not at present supported by what is commonly regarded as logical
+proof, even if it be capable of discussion by reason; and hence we
+consider ourselves at liberty to pass it by, and to turn to those views
+which profess to rest on a scientific basis only, and therefore admit
+of being argued to their consequences. And we do this with the less
+hesitation as it so happens that those persons who are practically
+conversant with the facts of the case (plainly a considerable
+advantage) have always thought fit to range themselves under the latter
+category.
+
+The majority of these competent persons have up to the present time
+maintained two positions,—the first, that every species is, within
+certain defined or definable limits, fixed and incapable of
+modification; the second, that every species was originally produced by
+a distinct creative act. The second position is obviously incapable of
+proof or disproof, the direct operations of the Creator not being
+subjects of science; and it must therefore be regarded as a corollary
+from the first, the truth or falsehood of which is a matter of
+evidence. Most persons imagine that the arguments in favour of it are
+overwhelming; but to some few minds, and these, it must be confessed,
+intellects of no small power and grasp of knowledge, they have not
+brought conviction. Among these minds, that of the famous naturalist
+Lamarck, who possessed a greater acquaintance with the lower forms of
+life than any man of his day, Cuvier not excepted, and was a good
+botanist to boot, occupies a prominent place.
+
+Two facts appear to have strongly affected the course of thought of
+this remarkable man—the one, that finer or stronger links of affinity
+connect all living beings with one another, and that thus the highest
+creature grades by multitudinous steps into the lowest; the other, that
+an organ may be developed in particular directions by exerting itself
+in particular ways, and that modifications once induced may be
+transmitted and become hereditary. Putting these facts together,
+Lamarck endeavoured to account for the first by the operation of the
+second. Place an animal in new circumstances, says he, and its needs
+will be altered; the new needs will create new desires, and the attempt
+to gratify such desires will result in an appropriate modification of
+the organs exerted. Make a man a blacksmith, and his brachial muscles
+will develop in accordance with the demands made upon them, and in like
+manner, says Lamarck, “the efforts of some short-necked bird to catch
+fish without wetting himself have, with time and perseverance, given
+rise to all our herons and long-necked waders.”
+
+The Lamarckian hypothesis has long since been justly condemned, and it
+is the established practice for every tyro to raise his heel against
+the carcass of the dead lion. But it is rarely either wise or
+instructive to treat even the errors of a really great man with mere
+ridicule, and in the present case the logical form of the doctrine
+stands on a very different footing from its substance.
+
+If species have really arisen by the operation of natural conditions,
+we ought to be able to find those conditions now at work; we ought to
+be able to discover in nature some power adequate to modify any given
+kind of animal or plant in such a manner as to give rise to another
+kind, which would be admitted by naturalists as a distinct species.
+Lamarck imagined that he had discovered this _vera causa_ in the
+admitted facts that some organs may be modified by exercise; and that
+modifications, once produced, are capable of hereditary transmission.
+It does not seem to have occurred to him to inquire whether there is
+any reason to believe that there are any limits to the amount of
+modification producible, or to ask how long an animal is likely to
+endeavour to gratify an impossible desire. The bird, in our example,
+would surely have renounced fish dinners long before it had produced
+the least effect on leg or neck.
+
+Since Lamarck’s time, almost all competent naturalists have left
+speculations on the origin of species to such dreamers as the author of
+the “Vestiges,” by whose well-intentioned efforts the Lamarckian theory
+received its final condemnation in the minds of all sound thinkers.
+Notwithstanding this silence, however, the transmutation theory, as it
+has been called, has been a “skeleton in the closet” to many an honest
+zoologist and botanist who had a soul above the mere naming of dried
+plants and skins. Surely, has such an one thought, nature is a mighty
+and consistent whole, and the providential order established in the
+world of life must, if we could only see it rightly, be consistent with
+that dominant over the multiform shapes of brute matter. But what is
+the history of astronomy, of all the branches of physics, of chemistry,
+of medicine, but a narration of the steps by which the human mind has
+been compelled, often sorely against its will, to recognize the
+operation of secondary causes in events where ignorance beheld an
+immediate intervention of a higher power? And when we know that living
+things are formed of the same elements as the inorganic world, that
+they act and react upon it, bound by a thousand ties of natural piety,
+is it probable, nay is it possible, that they, and they alone, should
+have no order in their seeming disorder, no unity in their seeming
+multiplicity, should suffer no explanation by the discovery of some
+central and sublime law of mutual connexion?
+
+Questions of this kind have assuredly often arisen, but it might have
+been long before they received such expression as would have commanded
+the respect and attention of the scientific world, had it not been for
+the publication of the work which prompted this article. Its author,
+Mr. Darwin, inheritor of a once celebrated name, won his spurs in
+science when most of those now distinguished were young men, and has
+for the last 20 years held a place in the front ranks of British
+philosophers. After a circumnavigatory voyage, undertaken solely for
+the love of his science, Mr. Darwin published a series of researches
+which at once arrested the attention of naturalists and geologists; his
+generalizations have since received ample confirmation, and now command
+universal assent, nor is it questionable that they have had the most
+important influence on the progress of science. More recently Mr.
+Darwin, with a versatility which is among the rarest of gifts, turned
+his attention to a most difficult question of zoology and minute
+anatomy; and no living naturalist and anatomist has published a better
+monograph than that which resulted from his labours. Such a man, at all
+events, has not entered the sanctuary with unwashed hands, and when he
+lays before us the results of 20 years’ investigation and reflection we
+must listen even though we be disposed to strike. But, in reading his
+work it must be confessed that the attention which might at first be
+dutifully, soon becomes willingly, given, so clear is the author’s
+thought, so outspoken his conviction, so honest and fair the candid
+expression of his doubts. Those who would judge the book must read it;
+we shall endeavour only to make its line of argument and its
+philosophical position intelligible to the general reader in our own
+way.
+
+The Baker-street Bazaar has just been exhibiting its familiar annual
+spectacle. Straight-backed, small-headed, big-barrelled oxen, as
+dissimilar from any wild species as can well be imagined, contended for
+attention and praise with sheep of half-a-dozen different breeds and
+styes of bloated preposterous pigs, no more like a wild boar or sow
+than a city alderman is like an ourang-outang. The cattle show has
+been, and perhaps may again be, succeeded by a poultry show, of whose
+crowing and clucking prodigies it can only be certainly predicated that
+they will be very unlike the aboriginal _Phasianus gallus_. If the
+seeker after animal anomalies is not satisfied, a turn or two in Seven
+Dials will convince him that the breeds of pigeons are quite as
+extraordinary and unlike one another and their parent stock, while the
+Horticultural Society will provide him with any number of corresponding
+vegetable aberrations from nature’s types. He will learn with no little
+surprise, too, in the course of his travels, that the proprietors and
+producers of these animal and vegetable anomalies regard them as
+distinct species, with a firm belief, the strength of which is exactly
+proportioned to their ignorance of scientific biology, and which is the
+more remarkable as they are all proud of their skill in _originating_
+such “species.”
+
+On careful inquiry it is found that all these, and the many other
+artificial breeds or races of animals and plants, have been produced by
+one method. The breeder—and a skilful one must be a person of much
+sagacity and natural or acquired perceptive faculty—notes some slight
+difference, arising he knows not how, in some individuals of his stock.
+If he wish to perpetuate the difference, to form a breed with the
+peculiarity in question strongly marked, he selects such male and
+female individuals as exhibit the desired character, and breeds from
+them. Their offspring are then carefully examined, and those which
+exhibit the peculiarity the most distinctly are selected for breeding,
+and this operation is repeated until the desired amount of divergence
+from the primitive stock is reached. It is then found that by
+continuing the process of selection—always breeding, that is, from
+well-marked forms, and allowing no impure crosses to interfere,—a race
+may be formed, the tendency of which to reproduce itself is exceedingly
+strong; nor is the limit to the amount of divergence which may be thus
+produced known, but one thing is certain, that, if certain breeds of
+dogs, or of pigeons, or of horses, were known only in a fossil state,
+no naturalist would hesitate in regarding them as distinct species.
+
+But, in all these cases we have _human interference_. Without the
+breeder there would be no selection, and without the selection no race.
+Before admitting the possibility of natural species having originated
+in any similar way, it must be proved that there is in nature some
+power which takes the place of man, and performs a selection _sua
+sponte_. It is the claim of Mr. Darwin that he professes to have
+discovered the existence and the _modus operandi_ of this natural
+selection, as he terms it; and, if he be right, the process is
+perfectly simple and comprehensible, and irresistibly deducible from
+very familiar but well nigh forgotten facts.
+
+Who, for instance, has duly reflected upon all the consequences of the
+marvellous struggle for existence which is daily and hourly going on
+among living beings? Not only does every animal live at the expense of
+some other animal or plant, but the very plants are at war. The ground
+is full of seeds that cannot rise into seedlings; the seedlings rob one
+another of air, light and water, the strongest robber winning the day,
+and extinguishing his competitors. Year after year, the wild animals
+with which man never interferes are, on the average, neither more nor
+less numerous than they were; and yet we know that the annual produce
+of every pair is from one to perhaps a million young,—so that it is
+mathematically certain that, on the average, as many are killed by
+natural causes as are born every year, and those only escape which
+happen to be a little better fitted to resist destruction than those
+which die. The individuals of a species are like the crew of a
+foundered ship, and none but good swimmers have a chance of reaching
+the land.
+
+Such being unquestionably the necessary conditions under which living
+creatures exist, Mr. Darwin discovers in them the instrument of natural
+selection. Suppose that in the midst of this incessant competition some
+individuals of a species (A) present accidental variations which happen
+to fit them a little better than their fellows for the struggle in
+which they are engaged, then the chances are in favour, not only of
+these individuals being better nourished than the others, but of their
+predominating over their fellows in other ways, and of having a better
+chance of leaving offspring, which will of course tend to reproduce the
+peculiarities of their parents. Their offspring will, by a parity of
+reasoning, tend to predominate over their contemporaries, and there
+being (suppose) no room for more than one species such as A, the weaker
+variety will eventually be destroyed by the new destructive influence
+which is thrown into the scale, and the stronger will take its place.
+Surrounding conditions remaining unchanged, the new variety (which we
+may call B)—supposed, for argument’s sake, to be the best adapted for
+these conditions which can be got out of the original stock—will remain
+unchanged, all accidental deviations from the type becoming at once
+extinguished, as less fit for their post than B itself. The tendency of
+B to persist will grow with its persistence through successive
+generations, and it will acquire all the characters of a new species.
+
+But, on the other hand, if the conditions of life change in any degree,
+however slight, B may no longer be that form which is best adapted to
+withstand their destructive, and profit by their sustaining, influence;
+in which case if it should give rise to a more competent variety (C),
+this will take its place and become a new species; and thus, by
+_natural selection_, the species B and C will be successively derived
+from A.
+
+That this most ingenious hypothesis enables us to give a reason for
+many apparent anomalies in the distribution of living beings in time
+and space, and that it is not contradicted by the main phenomena of
+life and organization appear to us to be unquestionable; and so far it
+must be admitted to have an immense advantage over any of its
+predecessors. But it is quite another matter to affirm absolutely
+either the truth or falsehood of Mr. Darwin’s views at the present
+stage of the inquiry. Goethe has an excellent aphorism defining that
+state of mind which he calls _Thätige Skepsis_—active doubt. It is
+doubt which so loves truth that it neither dares rest in doubting, nor
+extinguish itself by unjustified belief; and we commend this state of
+mind to students of species, with respect to Mr. Darwin’s or any other
+hypothesis, as to their origin. The combined investigations of another
+20 years may, perhaps, enable naturalists to say whether the modifying
+causes and the selective power, which Mr. Darwin has satisfactorily
+shown to exist in nature, are competent to produce all the effects he
+ascribes to them, or whether, on the other hand, he has been led to
+over-estimate the value of his principle of natural selection, as
+greatly as Lamarck overestimated his _vera causa_ of modification by
+exercise.
+
+But there is, at all events, one advantage possessed by the more recent
+writer over his predecessor. Mr. Darwin abhors mere speculation as
+nature abhors a vacuum. He is as greedy of cases and precedents as any
+constitutional lawyer, and all the principles he lays down are capable
+of being brought to the test of observation and experiment. The path he
+bids us follow professes to be, not a mere airy track, fabricated of
+ideal cobwebs, but a solid and broad bridge of facts. If it be so, it
+will carry us safely over many a chasm in our knowledge, and lead us to
+a region free from the snares of those fascinating but barren Virgins,
+the Final Causes, against whom a high authority has so justly warned
+us. “My sons, dig in the vineyard,” were the last words of the old man
+in the fable; and, though the sons found no treasure, they made their
+fortunes by the grapes.
+
+ * _Times_, December 26th, 1850.
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Darwinian Hypothesis, by Thomas H. Huxley
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+<pre>
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Darwinian Hypothesis, by Thomas H. Huxley
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+Title: The Darwinian Hypothesis
+
+Author: Thomas H. Huxley
+
+Release Date: November, 2001 [Etext #2927]
+[Most recently updated: October 30, 2020]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DARWINIAN HYPOTHESIS ***
+
+
+
+
+This eBook was converted to HTML, with additional editing, by Jose Menendez
+from the text edition produced by Amy E. Zelmer.
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+</pre>
+
+<h1>The Darwinian Hypothesis<a href="#fn-1" name="fnref-1" id="fnref-1"><sup>*</sup></a></h1>
+
+<h2>by Thomas H. Huxley</h2>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="center">
+<b>DARWIN ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES.</b>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<big><big>T</big></big>HERE is a growing immensity in the speculations of
+science to which no human thing or thought at this day is comparable. Apart
+from the results which science brings us home and securely harvests, there is
+an expansive force and latitude in its tentative efforts, which lifts us out of
+ourselves and transfigures our mortality. We may have a preference for moral
+themes, like the Homeric sage, who had seen and known much:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;Cities of men<br />
+And manners, climates, councils, governments&rdquo;;
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+yet we must end by confession that
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;The windy ways of men<br />
+Are but dust which rises up<br />
+And is lightly laid again,&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+in comparison with the work of nature, to which science testifies, but which
+has no boundaries in time or space to which science can approximate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There is something altogether out of the reach of science, and yet the compass
+of science is practically illimitable. Hence it is that from time to time we
+are startled and perplexed by theories which have no parallel in the contracted
+moral world; for the generalizations of science sweep on in ever-widening
+circles, and more aspiring flights, through a limitless creation. While
+astronomy, with its telescope, ranges beyond the known stars, and physiology,
+with its microscope, is subdividing infinite minutiae, we may expect that our
+historic centuries may be treated as inadequate counters in the history of the
+planet on which we are placed. We must expect new conceptions of the nature and
+relations of its denizens, as science acquires the materials for fresh
+generalizations; nor have we occasion for alarms if a highly advanced
+knowledge, like that of the eminent Naturalist before us, confronts us with an
+hypothesis as vast as it is novel. This hypothesis may or may not be
+sustainable hereafter; it may give way to something else, and higher science
+may reverse what science has here built up with so much skill and patience, but
+its sufficiency must be tried by the tests of science alone, if we are to
+maintain our position as the heirs of Bacon and the acquitters of Galileo. We
+must weigh this hypothesis strictly in the controversy which is coming, by the
+only tests which are appropriate, and by no others whatsoever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The hypothesis to which we point, and of which the present work of Mr. Darwin
+is but the preliminary outline, may be stated in his own language as
+follows:&mdash;&ldquo;Species originated by means of natural selection, or
+through the preservation of the favoured races in the struggle for life.&rdquo;
+To render this thesis intelligible, it is necessary to interpret its terms. In
+the first place, what is a species? The question is a simple one, but the right
+answer to it is hard to find, even if we appeal to those who should know most
+about it. It is all those animals or plants which have descended from a single
+pair of parents; it is the smallest distinctly definable group of living
+organisms; it is an eternal and immutable entity; it is a mere abstraction of
+the human intellect having no existence in nature. Such are a few of the
+significations attached to this simple word which may be culled from
+authoritative sources; and if, leaving terms and theoretical subtleties aside,
+we turn to facts and endeavour to gather a meaning for ourselves, by studying
+the things to which, in practice, the name of species is applied, it profits us
+little. For practice varies as much as theory. Let the botanist or the
+zoologist examine and describe the productions of a country, and one will
+pretty certainly disagree with the other as to the number, limits, and
+definitions of the species into which he groups the very same things. In these
+islands, we are in the habit of regarding mankind as of one species, but a
+fortnight&rsquo;s steam will land us in a country where divines and savants,
+for once in agreement, vie with one another in loudness of assertion, if not in
+cogency of proof, that men are of different species; and, more particularly,
+that the species negro is so distinct from our own that the Ten Commandments
+have actually no reference to him. Even in the calm region of entomology,
+where, if anywhere in this sinful world, passion and prejudice should fail to
+stir the mind, one learned coleopterist will fill ten attractive volumes with
+descriptions of species of beetles, nine-tenths of which are immediately
+declared by his brother beetle-mongers to be no species at all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The truth is that the number of distinguishable living creatures almost
+surpasses imagination. At least a hundred thousand such kinds of insects alone
+have been described and may be identified in collections, and the number of
+separable kinds of living things is underestimated at half a million. Seeing
+that most of these obvious kinds have their accidental varieties, and that they
+often shade into others by imperceptible degrees, it may well be imagined that
+the task of distinguishing between what is permanent and what fleeting, what is
+a species and what a mere variety, is sufficiently formidable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But is it not possible to apply a test whereby a true species may be known from
+a mere variety? Is there no criterion of species? Great authorities affirm that
+there is&mdash;that the unions of members of the same species are always
+fertile, while those of distinct species are either sterile, or their
+offspring, called hybrids, are so. It is affirmed not only that this is an
+experimental fact, but that it is a provision for the preservation of the
+purity of species. Such a criterion as this would be invaluable; but,
+unfortunately, not only is it not obvious how to apply it in the great majority
+of cases in which its aid is needed, but its general validity is stoutly
+denied. The Hon. and Rev. Mr. Herbert, a most trustworthy authority, not only
+asserts as the result of his own observations and experiments that many hybrids
+are quite as fertile as the parent species, but he goes so far as to assert
+that the particular plant <i>Crinum capense</i> is much more fertile when
+crossed by a distinct species than when fertilised by its proper pollen! On the
+other hand, the famous Gaertner, though he took the greatest pains to cross the
+primrose and the cowslip, succeeded only once or twice in several years; and
+yet it is a well-established fact that the primrose and the cowslip are only
+varieties of the same kind of plant. Again, such cases as the following are
+well established. The female of species A, if crossed with the male of species
+B, is fertile; but, if the female of B is crossed with the male of A, she
+remains barren. Facts of this kind destroy the value of the supposed criterion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If, weary of the endless difficulties involved in the determination of species,
+the investigator, contenting himself with the rough practical distinction of
+separable kinds, endeavours to study them as they occur in nature&mdash;to
+ascertain their relations to the conditions which surround them, their mutual
+harmonies and discordances of structure, the bond of union of their parts and
+their past history, he finds himself, according to the received notions, in a
+mighty maze, and with, at most, the dimmest adumbration of a plan. If he starts
+with any one clear conviction, it is that every part of a living creature is
+cunningly adapted to some special use in its life. Has not his Paley told him
+that that seemingly useless organ, the spleen, is beautifully adjusted as so
+much packing between the other organs? And yet, at the outset of his studies,
+he finds that no adaptive reason whatsoever can be given for one-half of the
+peculiarities of vegetable structure; he also discovers rudimentary teeth,
+which are never used, in the gums of the young calf and in those of the foetal
+whale; insects which never bite have rudimental jaws, and others which never
+fly have rudimental wings; naturally blind creatures have rudimental eyes; and
+the halt have rudimentary limbs. So, again, no animal or plant puts on its
+perfect form at once, but all have to start from the same point, however
+various the course which each has to pursue. Not only men and horses, and cats
+and dogs, lobsters and beetles, periwinkles and mussels, but even the very
+sponges and animalcules commence their existence under forms which are
+essentially undistinguishable; and this is true of all the infinite variety of
+plants. Nay, more, all living beings march side by side along the high road of
+development, and separate the later the more like they are; like people leaving
+church, who all go down the aisle, but having reached the door some turn into
+the parsonage, others go down the village, and others part only in the next
+parish. A man in his development runs for a little while parallel with, though
+never passing through, the form of the meanest worm, then travels for a space
+beside the fish, then journeys along with the bird and the reptile for his
+fellow travellers; and only at last, after a brief companionship with the
+highest of the four-footed and four-handed world, rises into the dignity of
+pure manhood. No competent thinker of the present day dreams of explaining
+these indubitable facts by the notion of the existence of unknown and
+undiscoverable adaptations to purpose. And we would remind those who, ignorant
+of the facts, must be moved by authority, that no one has asserted the
+incompetence of the doctrine of final causes, in its application to physiology
+and anatomy, more strongly than our own eminent anatomist, Professor Owen, who,
+speaking of such cases, says (<i>On the Nature of Limbs</i>, pp. 39, 40):
+&ldquo;I think it will be obvious that the principle of final adaptations fails
+to satisfy all the conditions of the problem.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, if the doctrine of final causes will not help us to comprehend the
+anomalies of living structure, the principle of adaptation must surely lead us
+to understand why certain living beings are found in certain regions of the
+world and not in others. The palm, as we know, will not grow in our climate,
+nor the oak in Greenland. The white bear cannot live where the tiger thrives,
+nor <i>vice versa</i>, and the more the natural habits of animal and vegetable
+species are examined, the more do they seem, on the whole, limited to
+particular provinces. But when we look into the facts established by the study
+of the geographical distribution of animals and plants it seems utterly
+hopeless to attempt to understand the strange and apparently capricious
+relations which they exhibit. One would be inclined to suppose <i>a priori</i>
+that every country must be naturally peopled by those animals that are fittest
+to live and thrive in it. And yet how, on this hypothesis, are we to account
+for the absence of cattle in the Pampas of South America, when those parts of
+the New World were discovered? It is not that they were unfit for cattle, for
+millions of cattle now run wild there; and the like holds good of Australia and
+New Zealand. It is a curious circumstance, in fact, that the animals and plants
+of the Northern Hemisphere are not only as well adapted to live in the Southern
+Hemisphere as its own autochthones, but are in many cases absolutely better
+adapted, and so overrun and extirpate the aborigines. Clearly, therefore, the
+species which naturally inhabit a country are not necessarily the best adapted
+to its climate and other conditions. The inhabitants of islands are often
+distinct from any other known species of animal or plants (witness our recent
+examples from the work of Sir Emerson Tennent, on Ceylon), and yet they have
+almost always a sort of general family resemblance to the animals and plants of
+the nearest mainland. On the other hand, there is hardly a species of fish,
+shell, or crab common to the opposite sides of the narrow isthmus of Panama.
+Wherever we look, then, living nature offers us riddles of difficult solution,
+if we suppose that what we see is all that can be known of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But our knowledge of life is not confined to the existing world. Whatever their
+minor differences, geologists are agreed as to the vast thickness of the
+accumulated strata which compose the visible part of our earth, and the
+inconceivable immensity of the time of whose lapse they are the imperfect, but
+the only accessible witnesses. Now, throughout the greater part of this long
+series of stratified rocks are scattered, sometimes very abundantly, multitudes
+of organic remains, the fossilized exuviae of animals and plants which lived
+and died while the mud of which the rocks are formed was yet soft ooze, and
+could receive and bury them. It would be a great error to suppose that these
+organic remains were fragmentary relics. Our museums exhibit fossil shells of
+immeasurable antiquity, as perfect as the day they were formed, whole skeletons
+without a limb disturbed&mdash;nay, the changed flesh, the developing embryos,
+and even the very footsteps of primeval organisms. Thus the naturalist finds in
+the bowels of the earth species as well defined as, and in some groups of
+animals more numerous than, those that breathe the upper air. But, singularly
+enough, the majority of these entombed species are wholly distinct from those
+that now live. Nor is this unlikeness without its rule and order. As a broad
+fact, the further we go back in time the less the buried species are like
+existing forms; and the further apart the sets of extinct creatures are the
+less they are like one another. In other words, there has been a regular
+succession of living beings, each younger set being in a very broad and general
+sense somewhat more like those which now live.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was once supposed that this succession had been the result of vast
+successive catastrophes, destructions, and re-creations <i>en masse</i>; but
+catastrophes are now almost eliminated from geological, or at least
+palaeontological speculation; and it is admitted on all hands that the seeming
+breaks in the chain of being are not absolute, but only relative to our
+imperfect knowledge; that species have replaced species, not in assemblages,
+but one by one; and that, if it were possible to have all the phenomena of the
+past presented to us, the convenient epochs and formations of the geologist,
+though having a certain distinctness, would fade into one another with limits
+as undefinable as those of the distinct and yet separable colours of the solar
+spectrum.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such is a brief summary of the main truths which have been established
+concerning species. Are these truths ultimate and irresolvable facts, or are
+their complexities and perplexities the mere expressions of a higher law?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A large number of persons practically assume the former position to be correct.
+They believe that the writer of the Pentateuch was empowered and commissioned
+to teach us scientific as well as other truth, that the account we find there
+of the creation of living things is simply and literally correct, and that
+anything which seems to contradict it is, by the nature of the case, false. 
+All the phenomena which have been detailed are, on this view, the immediate
+product of a creative fiat and consequently are out of the domain of science
+altogether.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whether this view prove ultimately to be true or false, it is, at any rate, not
+at present supported by what is commonly regarded as logical proof, even if it
+be capable of discussion by reason; and hence we consider ourselves at liberty
+to pass it by, and to turn to those views which profess to rest on a scientific
+basis only, and therefore admit of being argued to their consequences. And we
+do this with the less hesitation as it so happens that those persons who are
+practically conversant with the facts of the case (plainly a considerable
+advantage) have always thought fit to range themselves under the latter
+category.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The majority of these competent persons have up to the present time maintained
+two positions,&mdash;the first, that every species is, within certain defined
+or definable limits, fixed and incapable of modification; the second, that
+every species was originally produced by a distinct creative act. The second
+position is obviously incapable of proof or disproof, the direct operations of
+the Creator not being subjects of science; and it must therefore be regarded as
+a corollary from the first, the truth or falsehood of which is a matter of
+evidence. Most persons imagine that the arguments in favour of it are
+overwhelming; but to some few minds, and these, it must be confessed,
+intellects of no small power and grasp of knowledge, they have not brought
+conviction. Among these minds, that of the famous naturalist Lamarck, who
+possessed a greater acquaintance with the lower forms of life than any man of
+his day, Cuvier not excepted, and was a good botanist to boot, occupies a
+prominent place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Two facts appear to have strongly affected the course of thought of this
+remarkable man&mdash;the one, that finer or stronger links of affinity connect
+all living beings with one another, and that thus the highest creature grades
+by multitudinous steps into the lowest; the other, that an organ may be
+developed in particular directions by exerting itself in particular ways, and
+that modifications once induced may be transmitted and become hereditary.
+Putting these facts together, Lamarck endeavoured to account for the first by
+the operation of the second. Place an animal in new circumstances, says he, and
+its needs will be altered; the new needs will create new desires, and the
+attempt to gratify such desires will result in an appropriate modification of
+the organs exerted. Make a man a blacksmith, and his brachial muscles will
+develop in accordance with the demands made upon them, and in like manner, says
+Lamarck, &ldquo;the efforts of some short-necked bird to catch fish without
+wetting himself have, with time and perseverance, given rise to all our herons
+and long-necked waders.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Lamarckian hypothesis has long since been justly condemned, and it is the
+established practice for every tyro to raise his heel against the carcass of
+the dead lion. But it is rarely either wise or instructive to treat even the
+errors of a really great man with mere ridicule, and in the present case the
+logical form of the doctrine stands on a very different footing from its
+substance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If species have really arisen by the operation of natural conditions, we ought
+to be able to find those conditions now at work; we ought to be able to
+discover in nature some power adequate to modify any given kind of animal or
+plant in such a manner as to give rise to another kind, which would be admitted
+by naturalists as a distinct species. Lamarck imagined that he had discovered
+this <i>vera causa</i> in the admitted facts that some organs may be modified
+by exercise; and that modifications, once produced, are capable of hereditary
+transmission. It does not seem to have occurred to him to inquire whether there
+is any reason to believe that there are any limits to the amount of
+modification producible, or to ask how long an animal is likely to endeavour to
+gratify an impossible desire. The bird, in our example, would surely have
+renounced fish dinners long before it had produced the least effect on leg or
+neck.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Since Lamarck&rsquo;s time, almost all competent naturalists have left
+speculations on the origin of species to such dreamers as the author of the
+&ldquo;Vestiges,&rdquo; by whose well-intentioned efforts the Lamarckian theory
+received its final condemnation in the minds of all sound thinkers.
+Notwithstanding this silence, however, the transmutation theory, as it has been
+called, has been a &ldquo;skeleton in the closet&rdquo; to many an honest
+zoologist and botanist who had a soul above the mere naming of dried plants and
+skins. Surely, has such an one thought, nature is a mighty and consistent
+whole, and the providential order established in the world of life must, if we
+could only see it rightly, be consistent with that dominant over the multiform
+shapes of brute matter. But what is the history of astronomy, of all the
+branches of physics, of chemistry, of medicine, but a narration of the steps by
+which the human mind has been compelled, often sorely against its will, to
+recognize the operation of secondary causes in events where ignorance beheld an
+immediate intervention of a higher power? And when we know that living things
+are formed of the same elements as the inorganic world, that they act and react
+upon it, bound by a thousand ties of natural piety, is it probable, nay is it
+possible, that they, and they alone, should have no order in their seeming
+disorder, no unity in their seeming multiplicity, should suffer no explanation
+by the discovery of some central and sublime law of mutual connexion?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Questions of this kind have assuredly often arisen, but it might have been long
+before they received such expression as would have commanded the respect and
+attention of the scientific world, had it not been for the publication of the
+work which prompted this article. Its author, Mr. Darwin, inheritor of a once
+celebrated name, won his spurs in science when most of those now distinguished
+were young men, and has for the last 20 years held a place in the front ranks
+of British philosophers. After a circumnavigatory voyage, undertaken solely for
+the love of his science, Mr. Darwin published a series of researches which at
+once arrested the attention of naturalists and geologists; his generalizations
+have since received ample confirmation, and now command universal assent, nor
+is it questionable that they have had the most important influence on the
+progress of science. More recently Mr. Darwin, with a versatility which is
+among the rarest of gifts, turned his attention to a most difficult question of
+zoology and minute anatomy; and no living naturalist and anatomist has
+published a better monograph than that which resulted from his labours. Such a
+man, at all events, has not entered the sanctuary with unwashed hands, and when
+he lays before us the results of 20 years&rsquo; investigation and reflection
+we must listen even though we be disposed to strike. But, in reading his work
+it must be confessed that the attention which might at first be dutifully, soon
+becomes willingly, given, so clear is the author&rsquo;s thought, so outspoken
+his conviction, so honest and fair the candid expression of his doubts. Those
+who would judge the book must read it; we shall endeavour only to make its line
+of argument and its philosophical position intelligible to the general reader
+in our own way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Baker-street Bazaar has just been exhibiting its familiar annual spectacle.
+Straight-backed, small-headed, big-barrelled oxen, as dissimilar from any wild
+species as can well be imagined, contended for attention and praise with sheep
+of half-a-dozen different breeds and styes of bloated preposterous pigs, no
+more like a wild boar or sow than a city alderman is like an ourang-outang. The
+cattle show has been, and perhaps may again be, succeeded by a poultry show, of
+whose crowing and clucking prodigies it can only be certainly predicated that
+they will be very unlike the aboriginal <i>Phasianus gallus</i>. If the seeker
+after animal anomalies is not satisfied, a turn or two in Seven Dials will
+convince him that the breeds of pigeons are quite as extraordinary and unlike
+one another and their parent stock, while the Horticultural Society will
+provide him with any number of corresponding vegetable aberrations from
+nature&rsquo;s types. He will learn with no little surprise, too, in the course
+of his travels, that the proprietors and producers of these animal and
+vegetable anomalies regard them as distinct species, with a firm belief, the
+strength of which is exactly proportioned to their ignorance of scientific
+biology, and which is the more remarkable as they are all proud of their skill
+in <i>originating</i> such &ldquo;species.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On careful inquiry it is found that all these, and the many other artificial
+breeds or races of animals and plants, have been produced by one method. The
+breeder&mdash;and a skilful one must be a person of much sagacity and natural
+or acquired perceptive faculty&mdash;notes some slight difference, arising he
+knows not how, in some individuals of his stock. If he wish to perpetuate the
+difference, to form a breed with the peculiarity in question strongly marked,
+he selects such male and female individuals as exhibit the desired character,
+and breeds from them. Their offspring are then carefully examined, and those
+which exhibit the peculiarity the most distinctly are selected for breeding,
+and this operation is repeated until the desired amount of divergence from the
+primitive stock is reached. It is then found that by continuing the process of
+selection&mdash;always breeding, that is, from well-marked forms, and allowing
+no impure crosses to interfere,&mdash;a race may be formed, the tendency of
+which to reproduce itself is exceedingly strong; nor is the limit to the amount
+of divergence which may be thus produced known, but one thing is certain, that,
+if certain breeds of dogs, or of pigeons, or of horses, were known only in a
+fossil state, no naturalist would hesitate in regarding them as distinct
+species.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, in all these cases we have <i>human interference</i>. Without the breeder
+there would be no selection, and without the selection no race. Before
+admitting the possibility of natural species having originated in any similar
+way, it must be proved that there is in nature some power which takes the place
+of man, and performs a selection <i>sua sponte</i>. It is the claim of Mr.
+Darwin that he professes to have discovered the existence and the <i>modus
+operandi</i> of this natural selection, as he terms it; and, if he be right,
+the process is perfectly simple and comprehensible, and irresistibly deducible
+from very familiar but well nigh forgotten facts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Who, for instance, has duly reflected upon all the consequences of the
+marvellous struggle for existence which is daily and hourly going on among
+living beings? Not only does every animal live at the expense of some other
+animal or plant, but the very plants are at war. The ground is full of seeds
+that cannot rise into seedlings; the seedlings rob one another of air, light
+and water, the strongest robber winning the day, and extinguishing his
+competitors. Year after year, the wild animals with which man never interferes
+are, on the average, neither more nor less numerous than they were; and yet we
+know that the annual produce of every pair is from one to perhaps a million
+young,&mdash;so that it is mathematically certain that, on the average, as many
+are killed by natural causes as are born every year, and those only escape
+which happen to be a little better fitted to resist destruction than those
+which die. The individuals of a species are like the crew of a foundered ship,
+and none but good swimmers have a chance of reaching the land.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such being unquestionably the necessary conditions under which living creatures
+exist, Mr. Darwin discovers in them the instrument of natural selection.
+Suppose that in the midst of this incessant competition some individuals of a
+species (A) present accidental variations which happen to fit them a little
+better than their fellows for the struggle in which they are engaged, then the
+chances are in favour, not only of these individuals being better nourished
+than the others, but of their predominating over their fellows in other ways,
+and of having a better chance of leaving offspring, which will of course tend
+to reproduce the peculiarities of their parents. Their offspring will, by a
+parity of reasoning, tend to predominate over their contemporaries, and there
+being (suppose) no room for more than one species such as A, the weaker variety
+will eventually be destroyed by the new destructive influence which is thrown
+into the scale, and the stronger will take its place. Surrounding conditions
+remaining unchanged, the new variety (which we may call B)&mdash;supposed, for
+argument&rsquo;s sake, to be the best adapted for these conditions which can be
+got out of the original stock&mdash;will remain unchanged, all accidental
+deviations from the type becoming at once extinguished, as less fit for their
+post than B itself. The tendency of B to persist will grow with its persistence
+through successive generations, and it will acquire all the characters of a new
+species.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, on the other hand, if the conditions of life change in any degree, however
+slight, B may no longer be that form which is best adapted to withstand their
+destructive, and profit by their sustaining, influence; in which case if it
+should give rise to a more competent variety (C), this will take its place and
+become a new species; and thus, by <i>natural selection</i>, the species B and
+C will be successively derived from A.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That this most ingenious hypothesis enables us to give a reason for many
+apparent anomalies in the distribution of living beings in time and space, and
+that it is not contradicted by the main phenomena of life and organization
+appear to us to be unquestionable; and so far it must be admitted to have an
+immense advantage over any of its predecessors. But it is quite another matter
+to affirm absolutely either the truth or falsehood of Mr. Darwin&rsquo;s views
+at the present stage of the inquiry. Goethe has an excellent aphorism defining
+that state of mind which he calls <i>Thätige Skepsis</i>&mdash;active doubt. 
+It is doubt which so loves truth that it neither dares rest in doubting, nor
+extinguish itself by unjustified belief; and we commend this state of mind to
+students of species, with respect to Mr. Darwin&rsquo;s or any other
+hypothesis, as to their origin. The combined investigations of another 20 years
+may, perhaps, enable naturalists to say whether the modifying causes and the
+selective power, which Mr. Darwin has satisfactorily shown to exist in nature,
+are competent to produce all the effects he ascribes to them, or whether, on
+the other hand, he has been led to over-estimate the value of his principle of
+natural selection, as greatly as Lamarck overestimated his <i>vera causa</i> of
+modification by exercise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But there is, at all events, one advantage possessed by the more recent writer
+over his predecessor. Mr. Darwin abhors mere speculation as nature abhors a
+vacuum. He is as greedy of cases and precedents as any constitutional lawyer,
+and all the principles he lays down are capable of being brought to the test of
+observation and experiment. The path he bids us follow professes to be, not a
+mere airy track, fabricated of ideal cobwebs, but a solid and broad bridge of
+facts. If it be so, it will carry us safely over many a chasm in our knowledge,
+and lead us to a region free from the snares of those fascinating but barren
+Virgins, the Final Causes, against whom a high authority has so justly warned
+us. &ldquo;My sons, dig in the vineyard,&rdquo; were the last words of the old
+man in the fable; and, though the sons found no treasure, they made their
+fortunes by the grapes.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+<a name="fn-1" id="fn-1"></a> <a href="#fnref-1">*</a>
+<i>Times</i>, December 26th, 1850.
+</p>
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Darwinian Hypothesis, by Thomas H. Huxley
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+
+
+
+THE DARWINIAN HYPOTHESIS*
+
+by Thomas H. Huxley
+
+
+
+
+    [footnote] *'Times', December 26th, 1850.
+
+DARWIN ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES.
+
+THERE is a growing immensity in the speculations of science to which no
+human thing or thought at this day is comparable.  Apart from the
+results which science brings us home and securely harvests, there is an
+expansive force and latitude in its tentative efforts, which lifts us
+out of ourselves and transfigures our mortality.  We may have a
+preference for moral themes, like the Homeric sage, who had seen and
+known much:--
+
+    "Cities of men
+    And manners, climates, councils, governments";
+
+yet we must end by confession that
+
+    "The windy ways of men
+    Are but dust which rises up
+    And is lightly laid again,"
+
+in comparison with the work of nature, to which science testifies, but
+which has no boundaries in time or space to which science can
+approximate.
+
+There is something altogether out of the reach of science, and yet the
+compass of science is practically illimitable.  Hence it is that from
+time to time we are startled and perplexed by theories which have no
+parallel in the contracted moral world; for the generalizations of
+science sweep on in ever-widening circles, and more aspiring flights,
+through a limitless creation.  While astronomy, with its telescope,
+ranges beyond the known stars, and physiology, with its microscope, is
+subdividing infinite minutiae, we may expect that our historic
+centuries may be treated as inadequate counters in the history of the
+planet on which we are placed.  We must expect new conceptions of the
+nature and relations of its denizens, as science acquires the materials
+for fresh generalizations; nor have we occasion for alarms if a highly
+advanced knowledge, like that of the eminent Naturalist before us,
+confronts us with an hypothesis as vast as it is novel.  This
+hypothesis may or may not be sustainable hereafter; it may give way to
+something else, and higher science may reverse what science has here
+built up with so much skill and patience, but its sufficiency must be
+tried by the tests of science alone, if we are to maintain our position
+as the heirs of Bacon and the acquitters of Galileo.  We must weigh
+this hypothesis strictly in the controversy which is coming, by the only
+tests which are appropriate, and by no others whatsoever.
+
+The hypothesis to which we point, and of which the present work of Mr.
+Darwin is but the preliminary outline, may be stated in his own
+language as follows:--"Species originated by means of natural
+selection, or through the preservation of the favoured races in the
+struggle for life."  To render this thesis intelligible, it is
+necessary to interpret its terms.  In the first place, what is a
+species?  The question is a simple one, but the right answer to it is
+hard to find, even if we appeal to those who should know most about
+it.  It is all those animals or plants which have descended from a
+single pair of parents; it is the smallest distinctly definable group
+of living organisms; it is an eternal and immutable entity; it is a mere
+abstraction of the human intellect having no existence in nature.  Such
+are a few of the significations attached to this simple word which may
+be culled from authoritative sources; and if, leaving terms and
+theoretical subtleties aside, we turn to facts and endeavour to gather a
+meaning for ourselves, by studying the things to which, in practice,
+the name of species is applied, it profits us little. For practice
+varies as much as theory.  Let the botanist or the zoologist examine and
+describe the productions of a country, and one will pretty certainly
+disagree with the other as to the number, limits, and definitions of
+the species into which he groups the very same things.  In these
+islands, we are in the habit of regarding mankind as of one species, but
+a fortnight's steam will land us in a country where divines and
+savants, for once in agreement, vie with one another in loudness of
+assertion, if not in cogency of proof, that men are of different
+species; and, more particularly, that the species negro is so distinct
+from our own that the Ten Commandments have actually no reference to
+him.  Even in the calm region of entomology, where, if anywhere in this
+sinful world, passion and prejudice should fail to stir the mind, one
+learned coleopterist will fill ten attractive volumes with descriptions
+of species of beetles, nine-tenths of which are immediately declared by
+his brother beetle-mongers to be no species at all.
+
+The truth is that the number of distinguishable living creatures almost
+surpasses imagination. At least a hundred thousand such kinds of
+insects alone have been described and may be identified in collections,
+and the number of separable kinds of living things is under estimated
+at half a million.  Seeing that most of these obvious kinds have their
+accidental varieties, and that they often shade into others by
+imperceptible degrees, it may well be imagined that the task of
+distinguishing between what is permanent and what fleeting, what is a
+species and what a mere variety, is sufficiently formidable.
+
+But is it not possible to apply a test whereby a true species may be
+known from a mere variety?  Is there no criterion of species?  Great
+authorities affirm that there is--that the unions of members of the
+same species are always fertile, while those of distinct species are
+either sterile, or their offspring, called hybrids, are so.  It is
+affirmed not only that this is an experimental fact, but that it is a
+provision for the preservation of the purity of species.  Such a
+criterion as this would be invaluable; but, unfortunately, not only is
+it not obvious how to apply it in the great majority of cases in which
+its aid is needed, but its general validity is stoutly denied.  The
+Hon. and Rev. Mr. Herbert, a most trustworthy authority, not only
+asserts as the result of his own observations and experiments that many
+hybrids are quite as fertile as the parent species, but he goes so far
+as to assert that the particular plant 'Crinum capense' is much more
+fertile when crossed by a distinct species than when fertilised by its
+proper pollen! On the other hand, the famous Gaertner, though he took
+the greatest pains to cross the primrose and the cowslip, succeeded
+only once or twice in several years; and yet it is a well-established
+fact that the primrose and the cowslip are only varieties of the same
+kind of plant.  Again, such cases as the following are well
+established.  The female of species A, if crossed with the male of
+species B, is fertile; but, if the female of B is crossed with the male
+of A, she remains barren.  Facts of this kind destroy the value of the
+supposed criterion.
+
+If, weary of the endless difficulties involved in the determination of
+species, the investigator, contenting himself with the rough practical
+distinction of separable kinds, endeavours to study them as they occur
+in nature--to ascertain their relations to the conditions which
+surround them, their mutual harmonies and discordances of structure,
+the bond of union of their parts and their past history, he finds
+himself, according to the received notions, in a mighty maze, and with,
+at most, the dimmest adumbration of a plan.  If he starts with any one
+clear conviction, it is that every part of a living creature is
+cunningly adapted to some special use in its life.  Has not his Paley
+told him that that seemingly useless organ, the spleen, is beautifully
+adjusted as so much packing between the other organs?  And yet, at the
+outset of his studies, he finds that no adaptive reason whatsoever can
+be given for one-half of the peculiarities of vegetable structure; he
+also discovers rudimentary teeth, which are never used, in the gums of
+the young calf and in those of the foetal whale; insects which never
+bite have rudimental jaws, and others which never fly have rudimental
+wings; naturally blind creatures have rudimental eyes; and the halt
+have rudimentary limbs.  So, again, no animal or plant puts on its
+perfect form at once, but all have to start from the same point,
+however various the course which each has to pursue.  Not only men and
+horses, and cats and dogs, lobsters and beetles, periwinkles and
+mussels, but even the very sponges and animalcules commence their
+existence under forms which are essentially undistinguishable; and this
+is true of all the infinite variety of plants.  Nay, more, all living
+beings march side by side along the high road of development, and
+separate the later the more like they are; like people leaving church,
+who all go down the aisle, but having reached the door some turn into
+the parsonage, others go down the village, and others part only in the
+next parish.  A man in his development runs for a little while parallel
+with, though never passing through, the form of the meanest worm, then
+travels for a space beside the fish, then journeys along with the bird
+and the reptile for his fellow travellers; and only at last, after a
+brief companionship with the highest of the four-footed and four-handed
+world, rises into the dignity of pure manhood.  No competent thinker of
+the present day dreams of explaining these indubitable facts by the
+notion of the existence of unknown and undiscoverable adaptations to
+purpose.  And we would remind those who, ignorant of the facts, must be
+moved by authority, that no one has asserted the incompetence of the
+doctrine of final causes, in its application to physiology and anatomy,
+more strongly than our own eminent anatomist, Professor Owen, who,
+speaking of such cases, says ('On the Nature of Limbs', pp. 39, 40): "I
+think it will be obvious that the principle of final adaptations fails
+to satisfy all the conditions of the problem."
+
+But, if the doctrine of final causes will not help us to comprehend the
+anomalies of living structure, the principle of adaptation must surely
+lead us to understand why certain living beings are found in certain
+regions of the world and not in others.  The palm, as we know, will not
+grow in our climate, nor the oak in Greenland.  The white bear cannot
+live where the tiger thrives, nor 'vice versa', and the more the
+natural habits of animal and vegetable species are examined, the more
+do they seem, on the whole, limited to particular provinces.  But when
+we look into the facts established by the study of the geographical
+distribution of animals and plants it seems utterly hopeless to attempt
+to understand the strange and apparently capricious relations which
+they exhibit.  One would be inclined to suppose 'a priori' that every
+country must be naturally peopled by those animals that are fittest to
+live and thrive in it.  And yet how, on this hypothesis, are we to
+account for the absence of cattle in the Pampas of South America, when
+those parts of the New World were discovered?  It is not that they were
+unfit for cattle, for millions of cattle now run wild there; and the
+like holds good of Australia and New Zealand.  It is a curious
+circumstance, in fact, that the animals and plants of the Northern
+Hemisphere are not only as well adapted to live in the Southern
+Hemisphere as its own autochthones, but are in many cases absolutely
+better adapted, and so overrun and extirpate the aborigines.  Clearly,
+therefore, the species which naturally inhabit a country are not
+necessarily the best adapted to its climate and other conditions.  The
+inhabitants of islands are often distinct from any other known species
+of animal or plants (witness our recent examples from the work of Sir
+Emerson Tennent, on Ceylon), and yet they have almost always a sort of
+general family resemblance to the animals and plants of the nearest
+mainland.  On the other hand, there is hardly a species of fish, shell,
+or crab common to the opposite sides of the narrow isthmus of Panama.
+Wherever we look, then, living nature offers us riddles of difficult
+solution, if we suppose that what we see is all that can be known of it.
+
+But our knowledge of life is not confined to the existing world.
+Whatever their minor differences, geologists are agreed as to the vast
+thickness of the accumulated strata which compose the visible part of
+our earth, and the inconceivable immensity of the time of whose lapse
+they are the imperfect, but the only accessible witnesses.  Now,
+throughout the greater part of this long series of stratified rocks are
+scattered, sometimes very abundantly, multitudes of organic remains,
+the fossilized exuviae of animals and plants which lived and died while
+the mud of which the rocks are formed was yet soft ooze, and could
+receive and bury them.  It would be a great error to suppose that these
+organic remains were fragmentary relics.  Our museums exhibit fossil
+shells of immeasurable antiquity, as perfect as the day they were
+formed, whole skeletons without a limb disturbed--nay, the changed
+flesh, the developing embryos, and even the very footsteps of primieval
+organisms.  Thus the naturalist finds in the bowels of the earth
+species as well defined as, and in some groups of animals more numerous
+than, those that breathe the upper air.  But, singularly enough, the
+majority of these entombed species are wholly distinct from those that
+now live.  Nor is this unlikeness without its rule and order.  As a
+broad fact, the further we go back in time the less the buried species
+are like existing forms; and the further apart the sets of extinct
+creatures are the less they are like one another.  In other words,
+there has been a regular succession of living beings, each younger set
+being in a very broad and general sense somewhat more like those which
+now live.
+
+It was once supposed that this succession had been the result of vast
+successive catastrophes, destructions, and re-creations 'en masse'; but
+catastrophes are now almost eliminated from geological, or at least
+palaeontological speculation; and it is admitted on all hands that the
+seeming breaks in the chain of being are not absolute, but only relative
+to our imperfect knowledge; that species have replaced species, not in
+assemblages, but one by one; and that, if it were possible to have all
+the phenomena of the past presented to us, the convenient epochs and
+formations of the geologist, though having a certain distinctness, would
+fade into one another with limits as undefinable as those of the
+distinct and yet separable colours of the solar spectrum.
+
+Such is a brief summary of the main truths which have been established
+concerning species. Are these truths ultimate and irresolvable facts,
+or are their complexities and perplexities the mere expressions of a
+higher law?
+
+A large number of persons practically assume the former position to be
+correct.  They believe that the writer of the Pentateuch was empowered
+and commissioned to teach us scientific as well as other truth, that
+the account we find there of the creation of living things is simply
+and literally correct, and that anything which seems to contradict it
+is, by the nature of the case, false.  All the phenomena which have
+been detailed are, on this view, the immediate product of a creative
+fiat and consequently are out of the domain of science altogether.
+
+Whether this view prove ultimately to be true or false, it is, at any
+rate, not at present supported by what is commonly regarded as logical
+proof, even if it be capable of discussion by reason; and hence we
+consider ourselves at liberty to pass it by, and to turn to those views
+which profess to rest on a scientific basis only, and therefore admit of
+being argued to their consequences.  And we do this with the less
+hesitation as it so happens that those persons who are practically
+conversant with the facts of the case (plainly a considerable advantage)
+have always thought fit to range themselves under the latter category.
+
+The majority of these competent persons have up to the present time
+maintained two positions,--the first, that every species is, within
+certain defined or definable limits, fixed and incapable of
+modification; the second, that every species was originally produced by
+a distinct creative act.  The second position is obviously incapable of
+proof or disproof, the direct operations of the Creator not being
+subjects of science; and it must therefore be regarded as a corollary
+from the first, the truth or falsehood of which is a matter of evidence.
+Most persons imagine that the arguments in favour of it are
+overwhelming; but to some few minds, and these, it must be confessed,
+intellects of no small power and grasp of knowledge, they have not
+brought conviction.  Among these minds, that of the famous naturalist
+Lamarck, who possessed a greater acquaintance with the lower forms of
+life than any man of his day, Cuvier not excepted, and was a good
+botanist to boot, occupies a prominent place.
+
+Two facts appear to have strongly affected the course of thought of this
+remarkable man--the one, that finer or stronger links of affinity
+connect all living beings with one another, and that thus the highest
+creature grades by multitudinous steps into the lowest; the other, that
+an organ may be developed in particular directions by exerting itself
+in particular ways, and that modifications once induced may be
+transmitted and become hereditary.  Putting these facts together,
+Lamarck endeavoured to account for the first by the operation of the
+second.  Place an animal in new circumstances, says he, and its needs
+will be altered; the new needs will create new desires, and the attempt
+to gratify such desires will result in an appropriate modification of
+the organs exerted.  Make a man a blacksmith, and his brachial muscles
+will develop in accordance with the demands made upon them, and in like
+manner, says Lamarck, "the efforts of some short-necked bird to catch
+fish without wetting himself have, with time and perseverance, given
+rise to all our herons and long-necked waders."
+
+The Lamarckian hypothesis has long since been justly condemned, and it
+is the established practice for every tyro to raise his heel against
+the carcass of the dead lion.  But it is rarely either wise or
+instructive to treat even the errors of a really great man with mere
+ridicule, and in the present case the logical form of the doctrine
+stands on a very different footing from its substance.
+
+If species have really arisen by the operation of natural conditions, we
+ought to be able to find those conditions now at work; we ought to be
+able to discover in nature some power adequate to modify any given kind
+of animal or plant in such a manner as to give rise to another kind,
+which would be admitted by naturalists as a distinct species.  Lamarck
+imagined that he had discovered this 'vera causa' in the admitted facts
+that some organs may be modified by exercise; and that modifications,
+once produced, are capable of hereditary transmission.  It does not
+seem to have occurred to him to inquire whether there is any reason to
+believe that there are any limits to the amount of modification
+producible, or to ask how long an animal is likely to endeavour to
+gratify an impossible desire.  The bird, in our example, would surely
+have renounced fish dinners long before it had produced the least effect
+on leg or neck.
+
+Since Lamarck's time, almost all competent naturalists have left
+speculations on the origin of species to such dreamers as the author of
+the 'Vestiges', by whose well-intentioned efforts the Lamarckian theory
+received its final condemnation in the minds of all sound thinkers.
+Notwithstanding this silence, however, the transmutation theory, as it
+has been called, has been a "skeleton in the closet" to many an honest
+zoologist and botanist who had a soul above the mere naming of dried
+plants and skins.  Surely, has such an one thought, nature is a mighty
+and consistent whole, and the providential order established in the
+world of life must, if we could only see it rightly, be consistent with
+that dominant over the multiform shapes of brute matter.  But what is
+the history of astronomy, of all the branches of physics, of chemistry,
+of medicine, but a narration of the steps by which the human mind has
+been compelled, often sorely against its will, to recognize the
+operation of secondary causes in events where ignorance beheld an
+immediate intervention of a higher power?  And when we know that living
+things are formed of the same elements as the inorganic world, that they
+act and react upon it, bound by a thousand ties of natural piety, is it
+probable, nay is it possible, that they, and they alone, should have no
+order in their seeming disorder, no unity in their seeming
+multiplicity, should suffer no explanation by the discovery of some
+central and sublime law of mutual connexion?
+
+Questions of this kind have assuredly often arisen, but it might have
+been long before they received such expression as would have commanded
+the respect and attention of the scientific world, had it not been for
+the publication of the work which prompted this article.  Its author,
+Mr. Darwin, inheritor of a once celebrated name, won his spurs in
+science when most of those now distinguished were young men, and has
+for the last 20 years held a place in the front ranks of British
+philosophers.  After a circumnavigatory voyage, undertaken solely for
+the love of his science, Mr. Darwin published a series of researches
+which at once arrested the attention of naturalists and geologists; his
+generalizations have since received ample confirmation, and now command
+universal assent, nor is it questionable that they have had the most
+important influence on the progress of science.  More recently Mr.
+Darwin, with a versatility which is among the rarest of gifts, turned
+his attention to a most difficult question of zoology and minute
+anatomy; and no living naturalist and anatomist has published a better
+monograph than that which resulted from his labours.  Such a man, at
+all events, has not entered the sanctuary with unwashed hands, and when
+he lays before us the results of 20 years' investigation and reflection
+we must listen even though we be disposed to strike.  But, in reading
+his work it must be confessed that the attention which might at first
+be dutifully, soon becomes willingly, given, so clear is the author's
+thought, so outspoken his conviction, so honest and fair the candid
+expression of his doubts.  Those who would judge the book must read it;
+we shall endeavour only to make its line of argument and its
+philosophical position intelligible to the general reader in our own
+way.
+
+The Baker-street Bazaar has just been exhibiting its familiar annual
+spectacle. Straight-backed, small-headed, big-barrelled oxen, as
+dissimilar from any wild species as can well be imagined, contended for
+attention and praise with sheep of half-a-dozen different breeds and
+styes of bloated preposterous pigs, no more like a wild boar or sow than
+a city alderman is like an ourang-outang.  The cattle show has been,
+and perhaps may again be, succeeded by a poultry show, of whose crowing
+and clucking prodigies it can only be certainly predicated that they
+will be very unlike the aboriginal 'Phasianus gallus'.  If the seeker
+after animal anomalies is not satisfied, a turn or two in Seven Dials
+will convince him that the breeds of pigeons are quite as extraordinary
+and unlike one another and their parent stock, while the Horticultural
+Society will provide him with any number of corresponding vegetable
+aberrations from nature's types.  He will learn with no little surprise,
+too, in the course of his travels, that the proprietors and producers
+of these animal and vegetable anomalies regard them as distinct
+species, with a firm belief, the strength of which is exactly
+proportioned to their ignorance of scientific biology, and which is the
+more remarkable as they are all proud of their skill in 'originating'
+such "species."
+
+On careful inquiry it is found that all these, and the many other
+artificial breeds or races of animals and plants, have been produced by
+one method.  The breeder--and a skilful one must be a person of much
+sagacity and natural or acquired perceptive faculty--notes some slight
+difference, arising he knows not how, in some individuals of his stock.
+If he wish to perpetuate the difference, to form a breed with the
+peculiarity in question strongly marked, he selects such male and
+female individuals as exhibit the desired character, and breeds from
+them.  Their offspring are then carefully examined, and those which
+exhibit the peculiarity the most distinctly are selected for breeding,
+and this operation is repeated until the desired amount of divergence
+from the primitive stock is reached.  It is then found that by
+continuing the process of selection--always breeding, that is, from
+well-marked forms, and allowing no impure crosses to interfere,--a race
+may be formed, the tendency of which to reproduce itself is exceedingly
+strong; nor is the limit to the amount of divergence which may be thus
+produced known, but one thing is certain, that, if certain breeds of
+dogs, or of pigeons, or of horses, were known only in a fossil state,
+no naturalist would hesitate in regarding them as distinct species.
+
+But, in all these cases we have 'human interference'.  Without the
+breeder there would be no selection, and without the selection no
+race.  Before admitting the possibility of natural species having
+originated in any similar way, it must be proved that there is in nature
+some power which takes the place of man, and performs a selection 'sua
+sponte'.  It is the claim of Mr.  Darwin that he professes to have
+discovered the existence and the 'modus operandi' of this natural
+selection, as he terms it; and, if he be right, the process is perfectly
+simple and comprehensible, and irresistibly deducible from very
+familiar but well nigh forgotten facts.
+
+Who, for instance, has duly reflected upon all the consequences of the
+marvellous struggle for existence which is daily and hourly going on
+among living beings?  Not only does every animal live at the expense of
+some other animal or plant, but the very plants are at war.  The ground
+is full of seeds that cannot rise into seedlings; the seedlings rob one
+another of air, light and water, the strongest robber winning the day,
+and extinguishing his competitors.  Year after year, the wild animals
+with which man never interferes are, on the average, neither more nor
+less numerous than they were; and yet we know that the annual produce of
+every pair is from one to perhaps a million young,--so that it is
+mathematically certain that, on the average, as many are killed by
+natural causes as are born every year, and those only escape which
+happen to be a little better fitted to resist destruction than those
+which die.  The individuals of a species are like the crew of a
+foundered ship, and none but good swimmers have a chance of reaching
+the land.
+
+Such being unquestionably the necessary conditions under which living
+creatures exist, Mr.  Darwin discovers in them the instrument of
+natural selection.  Suppose that in the midst of this incessant
+competition some individuals of a species (A) present accidental
+variations which happen to fit them a little better than their fellows
+for the struggle in which they are engaged, then the chances are in
+favour, not only of these individuals being better nourished than the
+others, but of their predominating over their fellows in other ways, and
+of having a better chance of leaving offspring, which will of course
+tend to reproduce the peculiarities of their parents.  Their offspring
+will, by a parity of reasoning, tend to predominate over their
+contemporaries, and there being (suppose) no room for more than one
+species such as A, the weaker variety will eventually be destroyed by
+the new destructive influence which is thrown into the scale, and the
+stronger will take its place.  Surrounding conditions remaining
+unchanged, the new variety (which we may call B)--supposed, for
+argument's sake, to be the best adapted for these conditions which can
+be got out of the original stock--will remain unchanged, all accidental
+deviations from the type becoming at once extinguished, as less fit for
+their post than B itself.  The tendency of B to persist will grow with
+its persistence through successive generations, and it will acquire all
+the characters of a new species.
+
+But, on the other hand, if the conditions of life change in any degree,
+however slight, B may no longer be that form which is best adapted to
+withstand their destructive, and profit by their sustaining, influence;
+in which case if it should give rise to a more competent variety (C),
+this will take its place and become a new species; and thus, by
+'natural selection', the species B and C will be successively derived
+from A.
+
+That this most ingenious hypothesis enables us to give a reason for many
+apparent anomalies in the distribution of living beings in time and
+space, and that it is not contradicted by the main phenomena of life
+and organization appear to us to be unquestionable; and so far it must
+be admitted to have an immense advantage over any of its predecessors.
+But it is quite another matter to affirm absolutely either the truth or
+falsehood of Mr. Darwin's views at the present stage of the inquiry.
+Goethe has an excellent aphorism defining that state of mind which he
+calls 'Thatige Skepsis'a--active doubt.  It is doubt which so loves
+truth that it neither dares rest in doubting, nor extinguish itself by
+unjustified belief; and we commend this state of mind to students of
+species, with respect to Mr. Darwin's or any other hypothesis, as to
+their origin. The combined investigations of another 20 years may,
+perhaps, enable naturalists to say whether the modifying causes and the
+selective power, which Mr. Darwin has satisfactorily shown to exist in
+nature, are competent to produce all the effects he ascribes to them,
+or whether, on the other hand, he has been led to over-estimate the
+value of his principle of natural selection, as greatly as Lamarck
+overestimated his vera causa of modification by exercise.
+
+But there is, at all events, one advantage possessed by the more recent
+writer over his predecessor.  Mr. Darwin abhors mere speculation as
+nature abhors a vacuum.  He is as greedy of cases and precedents as any
+constitutional lawyer, and all the principles he lays down are capable
+of being brought to the test of observation and experiment.  The path
+he bids us follow professes to be, not a mere airy track, fabricated of
+ideal cobwebs, but a solid and broad bridge of facts.  If it be so, it
+will carry us safely over many a chasm in our knowledge, and lead us to
+a region free from the snares of those fascinating but barren Virgins,
+the Final Causes, against whom a high authority has so justly warned us.
+"My sons, dig in the vineyard," were the last words of the old man in
+the fable; and, though the sons found no treasure, they made their
+fortunes by the grapes.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Darwinian Hypothesis
+by Thomas H. Huxley
+