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THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1887. 



THE ORIGIN OF THE FITTEST. 

 The Origin of the Fittest : Essays on Evolution. By 

 E. D. Cope, A.M., Ph.D., &c. (London : Macmillan 

 and Co., 1887.) 



/CONSIDERING the good work which Prof. Cope 

 ^^ has done in the cause of evolution, the present 

 collection of essays appears to us disappointing. Origin- 

 ally published from time to time as independent lectures 

 or articles in journals, they are now republished in the 

 form of a book, apparently without any revision, and 

 certainly without any such revision as would have been 

 required to constitute them a connected treatise. The 

 consequence is that instead of a systematic work on " The 

 Origin of the Fittest," we have a number of disjointed 

 papers bound up together, the larger number of which 

 contain more or less close repetitions of parts of the 

 others— sometimes in the form of long quotations, at other 

 times without special reference. The effect of such 

 frequent reduplications is somewhat tedious, and might 

 easily have been avoided by slightly modifying the 

 constituent essays. 



But, apart from the method of compilation, our chief 

 disappointment has reference to some of the leading 

 ideas which characterize the whole series of essays. For 

 example, great store is everywhere set upon the author's 

 doctrine of "growth-force," which so far as we can see 

 IS merely an abstraction serving as a shorthand expres- 

 sion of all the phenomena of growth as already known. 

 It is merely a re-statement of certain facts, in no way 

 serving to explain them. Similarly with the so-called 

 law of acceleration and retardation, which the writer 

 everywhere upholds as a scientific generalization of the 

 highest importance. The idea is that when in any series 

 of generations "growth-force" is accelerated, the organs 

 thus affected will undergo evolution ; while, when " growth- 

 force " is retarded, the organs in question will atrophy 

 and disappear. But surely it is hard to see in what other 

 ■way progressive modification could take place than by 

 one or other of these so-called laws. The laws merely 

 serve to re-state the facts— viz. that organs do evolve and 

 do degenerate. 



Another general view which Prof. Cope is fond of 

 frequently insisting upon is that the theory of natural 

 selection does not explain the "' origin of the fittest " 

 variations, but only the preservation of them. This, of 

 course, is an objection to Darwinism which is abundantly 

 familiar in general literature, but we are disappointed to 

 find it so warmly sanctioned by Prof, Cope. In his 

 case, however, Darwinism might reply, " Out of thine 

 own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant." Take 

 for example, the following passage : — 



and ends which we see so abundantly around us. The 

 amount of attempt, failure, and consequent destruction, 

 would be preposterously large, and in no wise consistent 

 with the facts of teleology as we behold them." 



"Admitting evolution as proved (see Part I.), we 

 perceive that an almost infinite chance exists against 

 any usual amount of variation, as observed, producing 

 a structure which shall be fit to survive in consequence 

 of Its superior adaptation to external circumstances It 

 would be incredible that a blind or undirected variation 

 should not fail in a vast majority of instances to pro- 

 duce a single case of the beautiful adaptation to means 

 Vol. XXXVI.— No. 935. 



Now the very essence of Darwinism is that, prepos- 

 terously large as the amount of attempt, failure, and 

 consequent destruction may be if regarded from a 

 teleological point of view, as a matter of fact it does 

 occur in so " vast a majority of instances," that there 

 can be no real question as to its furnishing sufficient 

 material for the mechanical interpretation. Prof. Cope 

 forgets that it is only the lines of fortunate variation (as 

 represented by the successful competitors) that have 

 been allowed to show themselves. And when we calcu- 

 late the opportunities of favourable variations arising 

 under a geometrical rate of propagation, with "failure 

 and consequent destruction " going on at the rate of 

 thousands— if not of millions— to one, surely we must fail 

 to appreciate the alleged difficulty of explaining the " origin 

 of the fittest." Only if we could suppose that some malign 

 intelligence were always on the look-out for a favourable 

 variation when it does happen to arise, in order to destroy 

 or unfavourably to handicap its chances of survival— only 

 on this supposition of a siiper-n2Xwxz\ selection intention- 

 ally working against the Darwinian principle could it be 

 said that the facts of organic Nature are not sufficient to 

 justify the Darwinian theory. True enough, " we perceive 

 that an almost infinite chance exists against any usual 

 amount of variation, as observed, producing a structure 

 which shall be fit to survive ; " but we likewise perceive that 

 this almost infinite chance is satisfied by " the amount of 

 attempt, failure, and consequent destruction," " which we 

 see so abundantly around us." In short, the doctrine of 

 variation in definite and beneficial lines is incompatible 

 with this large amount of failure and consequent destruc- 

 tion, while the fact of such failure and destruction being 

 everywhere so enormous renders it needless for the 

 Darwinian theory to look further than the chapter of 

 accidents for its " origin of the fittest." 



As we have no wish to fall foul of so capable a man of 

 science, we will not pursue further our criticism of his 

 views theoretical and speculative, although there is much 

 else— especially in his long essay on " Metaphysical Evolu- 

 tion"— which appeals to us as sheer nonsense. The 

 writer's strength is in his facts, and in our judgment he 

 would have been wise to have kept within his own pro- 

 vince of palaeontology. He is full of valuable informa- 

 tion upon this important subject, and we may remark that 

 as one result of his studies he gives a very decided opinion 

 upon a matter which has recently been debated in these 

 columns— namely, as to whether or not specific or other 

 typical characters are invariably of adaptive meaning. 

 Premising merely that his opinion has been formed inde- 

 pendently, and as a result of his own extensive observa- 

 tions in the sphere of morphological fact, we will conclude 

 by quoting one of the passages in which that opinion is 

 conveyed. 



" Another reason why natural selection fails to account 

 for the structures of many organic beings is the fact that 

 in expressing the survival of the fittest it requires that the 

 structures preserved should be especially useful to their 

 possessors. -Now, perhaps half of all the peculiarities of 

 the parts of animals (and probably of plants) are of no use 



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