204 DARWINISM AND HUMAN LIFE 



Given heritable fluctuations and selection, we can 

 perhaps interpret the perfecting of an adaptive 

 structure, such as an elephant's trunk. Given 

 mutations and selection and isolation, we can 

 perhaps interpret the origin of a new species. 

 But when we face the " big lifts " the difficulty is 

 very great. Gymnosperms have probably evolved 

 from fern-like plants. But " the seed and all that 

 goes with it is a new character, and how selection 

 could have originated it is a question at whose 

 answer even scientific imagination balks. It is 

 evident that the ovules of Gymnosperms are related 

 by descent to the sporangia of ferns in some way, 

 but so extensive a change does not seem to come 

 within the possibilities of natural selection." 1 



It may be noted that some palaeobotanists, 

 notably Grand'Eury and Zeiller, maintain that the 

 rock-record is distinctly suggestive of the sudden 

 appearance of new forms differing by marked 

 characters from those that gave them birth. 



(c) Another view which finds adherents is that 

 many minor characters are the physiological or 

 developmental concomitants of major characters 

 which have undeniable selection- value. They 

 follow in the wake of the more primary qualities. 

 Thorns used to be interpreted by the eager Darwin- 

 ians as a protection against grazing animals, and 



human character, and yet it is conceivable that it has evolved from 

 pre-human habits by a series of very slight changes, some of the 

 links being found in self-subordinating behaviour among animals, 

 in parental care, in the law of the pack. As Norman Wilde puts it, 

 " Because darkness passes through twilight into day by imper- 

 ceptible degrees, we do not deny the difference in quality between 

 darkness and light." 



1 " The Theory of Natural Selection from the Standpoint of 

 Botany," by Prof. John M. Coulter, in " Fifty Years of Darwinism " 

 (1909), p. 60. 



