♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



-Alfred Texntsox. 



HE Editor is 



isiblefor the opinions of correspondents, 

 es, and Post-Ofice Orders should be made 



N & SOXS. 



XATUEAL SELECTION DEBATED. 

 [1S26]— Might I take the liberty of asking Dr. Hatchinson to 

 scrntinise the behaviour of his termites again. On Saturday, 

 July 4, about an hour before sunset, I had an impromptu proof 

 that our ants, at all events, do take unto themselves wings to fly 

 away for the connubial operation — a much ado about nothing, I 

 can assure ye '. 



Reposing in the paradisaical Italian evening behind trellissed 

 vine, before mountain bluS, the swallows making the air aUegrU.iima 

 overhead, my attention was all at once called to a formicnlating 

 black patch on a low stone wall (once more taken possession of by 

 Instinct, as though it had been Reason). It proved to be a colony 

 of big black ants, very different from the red-headed, cock-tail 

 little ones indoors, a few feet off. Lustrous jet black, pearly- 

 winged qaeen-ants a lot of them seemed to be. Then there were 

 two other sizes smaller. They deigned no notice of meat, bread, 

 and sugar I brought them. Lo ! right above my devoted head 

 a column-like swarm in foil swing. Such a sight ! The small, 

 almost tiny, males, innumerable (why so much more numerous ? — 

 per " Nat. "Sel." .-) making me think of a chaos of Saturn's "rings" 

 and, the while, renewing my marvel that astronomers — thoughtful, 

 earnest men— so long blundered, except Cassini, with his flash of 

 genius, about Saturn's "rings" : — the first child whirling round a 

 burnt stick might have taught them the truth !— the old Coper- 

 nican truth— apnarence. The ephemeral creatures seemed mad 

 (fancy their tiny brains !) with excitement and pre-occnpation. A 

 stick, a hand, a' handkerchief dashed through them made no dif- 

 ference. The females were few, and so much bigger than the 

 microcosms of passion — the males— as to make these latter look 

 ludicrous. Their union did not take place in the air, but after they 

 had come down " flop" on to me, and the pillow I put. Then I 

 noted, 'twas not the same species as the black patch before me — 

 several of whose " queens" were slyly snapped up by a lizard time 

 after time, who then retreated into his hole to enjoy the repast, by 

 no means killing the protesting, wriggling victim straight off. 

 Happily, I doubt, the lower animals do not feel much. 



The female ant in the air, as on the ground, seemed indifferent, 

 in the charming feminine way. The myriad males went madly 

 gyrating about her and above her, and then, at last, one or two 

 literally knocked her down (piombavatio a terra). There was 

 another swarm close by, and another and another in my walk 

 further on. Eico, evidently a use of these wings, though why they 

 should fly into the ar to be knocked down to the nuptial conch, 

 I am not clear. No birds of the air swooped on to my 

 ants. This factor, of course, seems to make a difference. 

 In fine, ants gradually— 0, so gradually— '• acquired " their faerie 

 pinions (two pairs) per Natural Selection, id est, through in- 

 herited, cumulating, victor-variations, the happy individuals that 

 "happened" to develop the first rudiments of wings, getting the 

 best of it, and gradually exterminating or extinguishing their com- 

 petitors — all this, I reiterate, doth unto me for one indubitably, 

 pro ton, make Darwinism dubious. 



And here I may assure your courteous correspondent " Gamma," 

 who finds the pleasure of thinking for himself, that our lamented 

 illuminate, I mav sav staked his reputation on this, the doctrine 

 of Natural Selection"; although he, with his Shakesperian tempera- 

 ment and genius, is never to be confounded with those arrogant 

 Positivists of his disciples who out-Herod Herod ; whereof the irre- 



pressible Ilaeckel, perhaps, is head and front offending — he who 

 was so promptly and properly put down by Du Buis Raymond for 

 claiming the irrepressible Goethe as a great poet, but far from giving 

 us " measureless content " — his academic Faust will not compare 

 with the flesh-and-blood Hamlet as an anticipator of Darwin. 

 Haeckel, der junge freund of the Master, who did not quite speak 

 as became him of the Master, but rather as though he were the 

 great Darwin, not in the tone that became him — it is the tone which 

 is so objectionable in these extremists ; it was, e.g., in Wagner 

 — especially of the Master's knowledge of German (of course!) 

 But to resume. If "Gamma" will turn to our "New Testa- 

 ment" ho will at once see that "Natural Selection" is Darwin. 

 He expressly cites the eye as being the result of Natural Selection 

 • — likewise the whale's mouth (subtly-furnished cavern !) ; and 

 other divinely complicated cases. He evolves all from one, viil 

 Natural Selection ; that is Darwinism. 



Now, though we do seen to see one protoplasm, even now the 

 origin of animal life and form (not seeds ?) yet mark, it is indivi- 

 dual, respective protoplasm, already within a fully-evolved life 

 and form— the Mother. Thus upon the threshold sul stellalo 

 soglio we are in doubt as to Evolution itself ; grand propriety 

 though it seem to be, truly scientific, like Nature's way — 

 that it is " the result of Natural Selection " we may be 

 pardoned for continuing to hold to be "debated and debatable." 

 It took five hundred years for Christianity to establish itself; 

 Darwin himself would be the last to complain of our threshing 

 away at his ism. His grand merit was to electrify thought. 

 Darwin himself " discovered " the Niata cattle and Ancon sheep, 

 &c., striking cases of variation by leap and bound, such as 

 "Gamma" has in his mind's eye; and I stiU feel that the 

 Teacher himself scarcely felt the full force of that ; of 

 Monstrosities, and — Metamorphosis. Look at the case of the 

 Medusa ; the zoea and nauplius stages ; the chrysalis and but- 

 terfly — more beautiful than poet's dream ! Will Darwin say 

 that these magical, miraculous transformations (at the side-scenes) 

 were " acquired " ? How can we imagine the simple hard chrysalis 

 acquiring the power to evolve into the magnificent butterfly, by 

 useless rudimentary steps, which gave it the advantage in the 

 struggle for existence. But, if these things transpired by Law — 

 the Unsearchable, Ubiquitous, Self-Existent, Imminent God— then 

 they seem more conceivable, or, at least, receivable ; just as the 

 Inorganic World is ; gravitation-soul'd star-rich space. 



With regard to Shakespeare, too. Curious ! Just as " Gamma" 

 was penning his letter I was thinking of writing to you to inquire, 

 Can Natural Selection account for Shakespeare ? Yet a little while 

 and his ancestors were besmear'd barbarians of the Stone Age, con- 

 fronting Ca?sar (marvellous destiny ! little England with her honours 

 thrust upon her !) Like Burns, he sprang from the toiling-moiling 

 million. Neither by Class nor Circumstance, it would seem, had 

 his seraphic brain had the way prepared before it. What Evolation, 

 what Natural Selection, ages of practice and conquest, turned out 

 that ? But Shakespeare may have had Cajsar's own blood in his 

 veins, or Plato's. He must not forget, too, that his Age, the men 

 of it, were a magnificently potent (not impotent) race, of which, 

 over there in Cajsar's Italia, the world-man Columbus was the true 

 Coryphaius— and the world-man Galileo ; and the world-man of 

 science, the Columbus of Urania's America, the Proto-Martyr of 

 Science, Giordano Bruno. 



Beethoven, too (the only peer with Shakespeare), came after 

 those Columns of Hercules, Bach and Handel, in a musical age like 

 a great tree in flower. The profounder inquiry remains, what made 

 the race take such a giant-stride and saltation of genius ? Nay, 

 specially, what made this Nineteenth Century do so ? Ages of 

 cunning and brutality, of lust and drunkenness, by wretches who 

 knew not how many beans made five, scarcely at first sight seem to 

 explain Shakespeare and Beethoven per Natural Selection ; scarcely 

 seem to explain their immense pure brains. Tet it maybe so; at 

 least, in part. The spectacle of these centuries we now perceive 

 to be the Star of the Teutonic Race in the ascendant. But 

 their civilisation, that has indeed advanced by leaps and 

 bounds, towered by Titanic impulses. With regard to^ music, 

 I think Darwin's doctrine immensely suggestive ; more subtle 

 and profound than Spencer's— viz., "that man's music is the 

 outcome of ages of animal evolution ; that we are so moved by 

 music because, unconsciously, we thrill with the recollection 

 and experience of aeons of animal ancestry or pre-existence ; 

 wherein, from the nightingale up to the eagle, lion, and gibbon, we 

 employed the Voice in the most intense period of our life-history, 

 during passion, when the female was the centre of all existence ; 

 and male warred against male, to monopolise her, with the fiercest 

 drunken joy ; thereby also helping on his own evolution, and 

 (according to Darwin's beautiful, if nnproven, speculation) Beauty 

 —Beauty the nearest form of God '.—Music seems to me infinitely 

 more than this : Prophecy rather than Past ; as it were, the 



