June 19, 1885.] 



• KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



531 



What doctrine, I should like to know, with full liberty to indulge in 

 "may he's," &c., would not do the same? Let the believer in 

 Special Creation possess the same advantages, and what could ho 

 not e:xplain r 



Evolution owes its slreuijth and popularity to carefully-examined 

 facts, and to make its influence more universal, its advocates should 

 not stoop to weapons disallowed to its opponents. The theory has 

 yet to overcome enormous difliculties before it can rank as a 

 universal law. It may win its way to a place by the side of 

 gravitation, but to do so it will have to depend upon something else 

 than "may he's" and " possibly's." Thanking "Commentator" 

 for his able letter, Gamma. 



[1767] — You said lately in answer to a correspondent that it is 

 as absurd to deny the truth of evolution as to deny the sun at noon- 

 day. 



It would be a great boon to me — perhaps to others — if yon would 

 give a series of papers summing up in a really first-rate, exhaustive 

 style, all that has been established on this subject. 



I hare never read its classical literature (Darwin, Ac.) and 

 despair of ever doing so — for it would cost me over ten pounds a 

 year to have books from England. Many men who have not this 

 obstacle are yet unable to get a conspectus of the matter, from 

 absorption in business, &c. 



I hare read much about evolution — but am no better off than 

 would be a Pagan who had lived much with Christians, but never 

 read a word of the Bible. 



All that I have been able to seize in this cursory way is that 

 there is abundant evidence of adaptability to circumstances on 

 the part of animals and plants ; bnt nothing like a proof of what 

 I presume ought to be believed, because the majority of the best 

 minds have received it. 



When we walk too much, our feet blister. The process is this. 

 A given part of the cuticle has too much work, gets iuflamod, i.e., 

 diseased. Then the blood detaches from itself a supply of water, 

 pushes this under the distressed cuticle, forms a water-bod, and so 

 saves the inner skin at least from grievous harm. 



Now, it was not the brain which ordered this process ; for the 

 subject is generally unconscious of the harm till the blister is 

 formed. And it would be absurd to attribute to the Hood such a 

 high intelligence as the process implies. 



I am therefore driven to conclude that the organism was launched 

 at first with a faculty of forming external blows to a certain extent ; 

 but I cannot see I should be right in saying it had dcrelopcd, or 

 eroh'ed, a cushion of water "to save its bacon :" any more than 

 when I see a snail mend its own shell, or a spider its web. 



Bread (alone, I believe, of foods) has its digestion finished, not 

 in the stomach, but in the duodenum. Since cats ate bread, they 

 have adapted their intestines to circumstances, so that the tamo 

 cat does not cut np like the wild. This would be now called de- 

 velopment ; but does not "adaptibility" fit the fact quite as well ; 

 and is the cat's duodenum different in kiytd from the water in a 

 blister ? 



Were this granted, I can conceive (bnt " I speak as a fool ") 

 that it might be pushed to the conclusion of all the changes in 

 organic life that have been recorded. 



Again, I wish to know why, because there were once hipparia, 

 and now are horses, and the latter look like an improved edition of 

 the former, it should be concluded that at some given date a hip- 

 parion became a horse. 



I desire to leam how the process is held to have taken place in 

 praxi. Is it snpposed that of [a pair of say. Missing Links, there 

 was bom a man ? or, about the same time, a man and a woman ; 

 and did these chance to choose each other for mates ? In any case, 

 the first men must have had very near relations who were not 

 human at all. 



So far as 1 can gather, it is held that desire and energy were the 

 prime causes of improvements taking place in individuals. My 

 difficulty about this is the sad case of the ill-favonred. The cul- 

 tured brain of the head-creature spares no pains, no study before 

 the mirror, to turn a plain face into a handsome one ; yet the result 

 is ever nil. How hard then to see how inferior creatures acquired 

 all they wished for ! Stranger still, children of the same parents 

 may be so like as to be taken one for the other, yet one be ugly, 

 the other pretty ; so there was not much to do to get beautiful ; Ijut 

 " a miss is as good as a mile." And this obstinate adherence to 

 some ancient type persists for two generations. One of the noblest 

 families of England has always been ill-favoured, as the family 

 portraits prove. If all animals were originally aquatic, how curious 

 that all did not desire and obtain the power of rising into the air ? 

 Men must long ago have wished to fly ; yet even now we can't do 

 it, with all our appliances. Were the porcupine and hedgehog alone 

 sharp enough to see the advantage of a coat of spines ? 



Anyhow — I suppose that if I read enough I should believe in 



evolution as you do; but what I never shall be able to stomach is 

 the indecent joy with which the small fry of science rush buck to 

 the ancestral sty, and wallow grunting in the ennobling thought 

 that we have no need to nutl.e bc:ists of oursolv(>s, because beasts 

 we were, and boasts we might have remained, had it not been for 

 our persistent cleverness.* I may be forced to agree that Newton 

 or Shakespeare's first luimnn ancestor was (ho son of a gibbering 

 baboon ; but the thought will always be as |)ainful to mo as if, 

 nursed in a palace, I wore convinced beyon<l diMibliiig that I had 

 been changed at nurse, and was but the cliild of a churl. 



II AT.l.VAlinS. 



[Without attempting to deal .^crtatitii with our corrospondont'a 

 various points, I would suggest to him the perusal of Schmidt's 

 "Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism," which forms Vol. X IT. of 

 the " International Scientific Series." It should not cost him more 

 than six or seven francs post-free, and it contains as good a jurt is 

 of the facts on which the theory of evolution is founded as I am 

 acquainted with. — Eii.] 



THE WEAK POINT Oi" DARWINISM. 



[17GS]— "Commentator" (1731-) should read Mr. St. (leorgo 

 Mivart's "Genesis of Species," wliich puts very clearly the " weak 

 point of Darwinism." There must be a flaw in all evolutional 

 theories, till we have some conception of the laws of what is called 

 spontaneous or accidental variation. The "external factor" in 

 evolution consists of the direct or the indirect action of the envi- 

 ronment. In the former case, we call the rcKuItiiig changes 

 " adaptations; " in the latter, wo say that they are the outcome of 

 " natural selection." But of the internal factor (i.e., the physio- 

 logical causes which determine ihe development of a given group 

 of organisms in a given direction), we can as yet form no idea. 

 The wisest course is to use such knowledge as we have, frankly 

 confessing that it does not give a full explanation. 



May I suggest that "Commentator" would do well to lay to 

 heart a certain line which he quotes (174U), before passing con- 

 temptuous judgment on the character and intellect of a great 

 writer. Constance C. W. Naden. 



THOUGHT-READING. 



[1769] — In continuation of a former letter on the subject, there 

 is, I would remark, a class of phenomena which seem to bear on 

 the matter under discussion. I mean those with which the pro- 

 verb, " Talk of the ," is connected. Nothing, I fear, will ever 



convince me that the appearance of a person, simultaneously with 

 the mention of his name, is always a mere coincidence. It seems 

 to me we must admit that unconsciously we are able to detect the 

 presence of a person without using the senses of seeing or hearing, 

 Iiossibly by some modification of the sense of touch, not unsimilar 

 to that by which a blind person distinguishes colour, or possibly by 

 what in the dog we call " scent." Those who have good sight and 

 keen hearing little know to what uses the sense of touch may be 

 put. 



Whether we see a cannon fired or hear the report, the same idea 

 is produced in the mind — a cannon has been fired. There are many 

 other ways by which the same idea may be produced, viz., tho 

 smell of powder, or even the taste of it, or by touching the breach 

 and finding it hot ; but, in every case, either an ether wave or a 

 molecule in motion produces in the brain a molecular movement. 

 There is, apparently, no third way. As a rule, tho shorter ether 

 waves are only distinguished by the eye. I say, as a rule, as the 

 blind man seems able to distingnish them by the sense of touch. 

 The longer, or heat waves, most can distingnish by the sense of 

 touch. Now, besides the light and heat waves there are other 

 waves in the ether, and, at any rate, some of them seem to pass 

 through certain substances much in the same way as the light 

 waves pass through transparent substances, producing the s.ame 

 effect, or ne.irly so, at the end of their course as at the beginning. 

 Our knowledge of some of these waves, say the electricity waves, 

 is apparently only indirect. We see the effect produced, but 

 cannot by our senses detect the cause. We have no special 

 organ for electrical phenomena, as we have for those of light. 

 We are much in the same state in reference to electricity 

 as we should be in respect to light if the human race was blind. 

 Now, let us for the moment suppose that certain brains have a 

 rudimentary sense of electricity, odic force, or whatever one may 

 choose to call it, which in an imperfect way could receive impres- 



* On 7ie jjarle pa.s d'xme corde dans la maixon d'un pendu. 

 How crest-fallen shall we feel anon — we armorial (and arboreal) 

 people — when we look on our ijencalof/ical tree.", and reflect that 

 were the whole truth portrayed, the real founder of the line should 

 be " settled in tail male " at the first parting of the trunk ! 



