LORD SALISBURY ON EVOLUTION. 565* 



System, held up to the time of Newton, would have continued 

 outstanding had Newton's generalization been disproved, so, were 

 the theory of natural selection disproved, the theory of organic 

 evolution would remain. Whether it were shown that natural 

 selection is inoperative, or whether it were shown that though a 

 partial cause it is inadequate to explain all the facts (the inherit- 

 ance of functionally-wrought modifications being a co-operative 

 cause) ; or whether it were shown that no cause hitherto alleged 

 is adequate ; the general doctrine that organisms of all kinds have 

 arisen by the continual superposing of modifications upon modifi- 

 cations would maintain its place, though it would not be fortified 

 so strongly. Lord Salisbury, however, in common with the im- 

 mense majority of men, assumes that the hypothesis of organic 

 evolution must stand or fall with its alleged causal agencies. 

 Though in one paragraph he distinguishes between natural selec- 

 tion as an alleged agent, and the facts regarded as implying evo- 

 lution which are said to be explained by it, yet, at the close of his 

 address, he assumes the two to be so indissolubly connected that, 

 if natural selection goes, evolution must go with it that the facts 

 are not naturally explicable at all, but must be regarded as super- 

 natural. He says, referring to Prof. Weismann : " I quite accept 

 the Professor's dictum that if natural selection is rejected we 

 have no resource but to fall back on the mediate or immediate 

 agency of a principle of design." And thus he indorses the popu- 

 lar notion that Darwinism and Evolution are equivalent terms. 



Though, speaking on behalf of biologists, who are conscious of 

 the difference, Prof. Huxley, in seconding the vote of thanks, de- 

 murred to this identification, yet the above-quoted sentence reap- 

 pears in the revised and republished form of Lord Salisbury's 

 address. 



Absence of direct proof of natural selection is duly emphasized 

 by Lord Salisbury. He says: "No man or succession of men 

 have ever observed the whole process in any single case, and cer- 

 tainly no man has recorded the observation." And, as direct 

 proof of the hypothesis is not forthcoming, it is tacitly assumed 

 that we must accept the alternative hypothesis, which is equally 

 without direct proof. Here I may be excused if, a propos of this 

 position, I reproduce some passages from an essay published in 

 pre- Darwinian days, when the development hypothesis, as it was 

 then called, was universally ridiculed. The first part of the essay 

 runs as follows : 



In a debate upon the development hypothesis, lately narrated to me by 

 a friend, one of the disputants was described as arguing that as, in all our 

 experience, we know no such phenomenon as transmutation of species, it is 

 unphilosophical to assume that transmutation of species, ever takes place. 



