KNO^A/LEDGE 



[July 17, 1885. 



to likeness to tho Aborigines.) This, of course, I admit, I realiso ; 

 but this, jnst this, is what Mr. Darwin controverted as the cause — 

 the canse, he maintained (with a lucid temperance of genius, of 

 labour and learning, which I Bhonld be the last not to extol in 

 excelsis), the cause, ho maintained, lay in natural selection : id est, 

 the selection by circumstance of what happened to show themselves 

 per variation the fittest in the struggle for existence. 



This doctrine of Natural Selection, as the Cause of Evolution, is 

 what I am disputing ; it seems rather to me a Consequence — of 

 Nature's Invention : thus. Nature invented the recurved hooks ot 

 seeds, &c., and these were selected by, or even did select, Oppor- 

 tunity (see Shakespeare's marvellous musical eloquence about 

 Opportunity in " Lucrece "). 



Again, the very basis of the Darwinian superstructure is Here- 

 dity. But who invented Heredity { Was that, too, " acquired ? " 



And he says (basis again) the offspring tends to " vary" in the 

 same part as the parent; but if the parent, e.r)., has a large foot, 

 the tendency of the offspring to have a still larger foot can scarcely 

 be termed variation ; if it varied .it might vary away from the 

 parent. Moreover all such "variation" has its limits. Peas, to 

 cite the case mentioned by Dr. Ball, do not go on getting larger 

 ad infinitum. We do not see giants twenty feet high, whales 

 1,000 feet long. 



Darwin is the Lather of the nineteenth century. That is why 

 ■we so greeted him. He has struck open our Bible. What men are 

 hungering and thirsting after is Religion— not Dogma, but Truth ; 

 not Superstition, but Nature; not Priestcraft, but God ; the proof 

 of immortality, which is alone interesting— cur God— we are 

 slowly coming to perceive, is what is plus the soul of what is, or, in 

 my favourite phraseology from the poet whom we have aa much 

 ' ■ 'o call divine as the Italians have to call Daute, "the cause, 







Now, after all, " Natural Selection," though exquisitely ingenious, 

 and true to a certain extent, seems to me, for one, rather a shallow 

 explanation of the Problem of the Universe (e.g., I do not believe 

 the giants in those days were extinguished by Natural Selection), 

 and Evolution itself waits for much further illumination and 

 development. 



I should like to make, as it were, a pronunc.iamicnto of the state- 

 ■ment — for the reflection of "A Welshman " and others whom this 

 superb subject may concern — that Mr. Darwin stakes his reputa- 

 tion on the doctrine of Natural Selection, and, forsooth, in this 

 utmost form, namely, that the most subtle and gracious organs Mid 

 contrivances, " insect's wing and eagle's eye,"* Mozart's ear and 

 Shakespeare's brain are the result of Natural Selection — that is, 

 of tiny beneficial, or victor variations, transmitted and cumulated 

 in the course of incomputable ages. 



Now I, for one, do not believe that the eye, e.g., was so "ac- 

 quired " ; the exquisite nerves for appreciating " The dew-dropping 

 south o'er a bank of violets" ; all, all this fabric of nervous tissue, 

 myriad inlets for the infinite. 



Nor do I exactly credit that the many and great gaps in the 

 living chain are due to extinction per Natural Selection (another 

 Darwinian leitmotiv). For instance, how plausible would it be for 

 a mere outsider, theoretical Adam, beholding the beasts defile 

 before him, to argue, ccco the lion ! surely monarch of all he sur- 

 veys ; he must exterminate all ! But no. The lion, lord as he is, 

 is not numerous, whereas his timid victims — gazelles and other 

 creatures are — make up for their feebleness by fertility, and, also, 

 their modes of escape. Behold the horse ! he, too, a magnificent 

 animal ! his neck clothed with thunder ; running a race with the 

 ■wind ! but, luckily, he does not eat flesh ; he is an innocent herb- 

 cater. The whale is Leviathan ; but lo, he actually exists upon 

 Infusoria ! What a lesson ! what a moral ! and so on throughout. 

 The principle Darwin leaves out of sight almost, namely, compen- 

 sation, advantage and drawback. 



Ale,\. Teetgen (" Commentator.") 



EVOLUTION. 



[1814] — "Commentator's " attack on Darwin's theory because it 

 does not explain hoti' variation happens seems to me about as 

 reasonable as if he were to find fault with Newton because the 

 latter did not attempt to show tho means by which gravitation 

 acts. Newton proved that a law which we call gravitation exists, 

 but how that force operates he could not explain. Shall we there- 

 fore depreciate the value of Newton's labours f Surely not; and 

 ■why should "Commentator" seek tominimisethe value of Darwin's 

 ■work ? Darwin set himself to prove (1) that organisms vary ; (2) 

 that there is no reason to suppose that there is any limit to this 

 ■variability ; (3) that, variability being granted, it follows that some 



" The eye, that most pure spirit of sense." — Shakespeare. 



forms must be better adapted to their circumstances than others, 

 and will therefore survive. This is really all that is involved in 

 Darwin's great theory. He sought, not) to show how an animal 

 can produce young which are not identical in all respects ivith 

 itself : he merely took tho fact of ■variation as he found it, and 

 showed that all the rest follows from it. 



It is difiioult to make out whether "Commentator" disbelieves 

 toto c(elo in variation, or believes that any given species can vary 

 only within certain limits. If the former, he must surely dis- 

 believe the evidence of his own senses. Can he find two human 

 faces, for instance, that are precisely alike ? If he believes in 

 restricted variability, on what evidence does he base his belief ? 

 The fan-tail pigeon ia the result of the selection of variations which 

 took place in the common pigeon. But the fantail itself varies, 

 some individuals being more divergent from the original stock than 

 others. Is there any reason to suppose that the limit of variability- 

 has been reached ? 



But perhaps "Commentator" does not intend to dispute 

 variability at all ; bnt merely its spontaneity. If so, why does he 

 quarrel with Darwin, who expressly refrained from theorising on a 

 point as to which neither he nor anyone else could be possessed of 

 any evidence f Whether variability is spontaneous (un8cientifi,c 

 word !), the result of laws of which we have no conception, or the 

 work of a Great Designer, makes no difference to the theory of 

 evolution, for that theory only legins with the million-times-proved 

 fact of variability. As well complain of the theory of light, because 

 it does not explain the origin of the sun, as tilt against evolution 

 because it doesn't make clear how the offspring of five-fingered 

 parents sometimes have six digits on each hand. 



CllAS. E. BELI,Kf<,, 



VARIATION IN THE APPARENT MAGNITUDE OF-. 

 SPECTRAL IMAGES. 

 [1815] — I have myself noticed tho phenomenon of variation 

 the apparent magnitude of the ocular .-pertra, as the eye ada] 



nitude, because there does not appear to bo the slightest suggestion 

 of a reason for a change in the actual magnitude of these spectra 

 on the retina. The phenomenon was very noticeable after gazing 

 at the coloured figures in that book, which was published some 

 years since, for the purpose of illustrating the phenomena of the 

 ocular spectra. The reasons for this apparent increase and decrease 

 in the spectra, when the eye is adjusted for vision at shorter and 

 longer distances, is this, that the spectral image persists on the 

 retina of one constant magnitude, but this image being brought 

 into juxtaposition with the diminished objects of a more distant 

 field of vision appears relatively larger, and with the environment of 

 the larger objects of a closer field of vision relatively smaller. Thus 

 it is that the rule of perspective appears to be reversed. The im- 

 portant fact that the ocular spectra have no external existence 

 whatever, does not as yet appear to be fully recognised. 



W. Cave Thomas. 



KING'S COLLEGE SCHOOL. 

 [181G]— Vol. VIII. of K. opens with a severe— all the t 





of Ol 



.'Client 





the I 



8 ot the above 



n expert in a double way. The Head- 

 master and myself had a week-and-week rivalrv, when we were 

 fifteen, for the prize of the third form in our school. Stokoe was 

 neither a bully nor a sneak, but an all-ronnd good fellow, steady 

 as he was genial. Our master died Head-master of Charterhouse ; 

 so he had a good model of what a master ought to be. I beat him 

 in class-work, but he was superior in exercises, so had the prize. 

 But we never had the least jealousy or meanness over our strife. 



I hold Mr. Proctor absolutely wrong in his general canon that 

 bad tone among boys lies at the masters' door. I know that schools 

 change like society, and always — almost — from within. Those who 

 make the tone of a school are the Icadirifi Inys — and, as these are 

 constantly changing, no one can ever know what a school is, save 

 from the boys themselves. E.y. the very school I was at with 

 Stokoe. The head-master had come into office nearly ten years 

 before. I found myself laughed at fur piety, persecuted for in- 

 dustry. By the time I had been there three years, all was 

 changed ! Pietv rather the fashion, irdustrv quite a M'?ie qud non. 

 An idle fellow Was rather a cad. What was 'the cause y If it was 

 in the master.s, it conld have been only through the advent (in my 

 first half) of a big, sneering, affected under-master, who was said 

 to have driven an Oxford coach for money. He, first of masters, 

 joined in the games. I think it not impossible this may ha^ve done 

 something. 



