NATURE 



21 7 



THURSDAY, JANUARY 5, 1899. 



AN EVOLUTIONAL POLEMIC. 

 Organic Evolution Cross-examined j or, Some Suggestions 



on the Great Secret of Biology. By the Duke of Argylli 



K.G., &c. Pp. vi + 201. (London; John Murray, 



1S9S.) 

 T T has always appeared a mystery to the writer of this 

 J- notice why the phenomena of hfe should be dealt 

 with by some men of science and by certain philo- 

 sophical writers in a totally different spirit to that in 

 which other groups of natural phenomena are considered 

 and discussed. It is true that we know less about life 

 than about other phenomena — it is true that the organic 

 world is full of unexplained mysteries. Equally certain 

 is it that the living organism can accomplish physical 

 and chemical feats by processes which we are now 

 ignorant of, and which we cannot at present imitate. 

 But it is not obvious why because a particular department 

 6f knowledge, by virtue of its inherent difficulties and 

 intricacies, happens to be in a different phase of develop- 

 ment from other branches of human inquiry, that the 

 whole domain of organic nature should be detached and 

 delimited, and put on quite a different plane to any other 

 department of science. 



Anthropologists might offer a reasonable explanation of 

 this difference of attitude by an appeal to the history 

 of the development of natural knowledge. The early 

 observers of nature and the writers of the ancient 

 cosmogonies were not impressed by the slow and orderly 

 course of the inorganic world in the same way that they 

 must have been familiar with their organic environment. 

 The facts and laws of physical science required some- 

 thing beyond mere casual observation for their elucida- 

 tion, and the manifestations of these laws became impres- 

 sive only when they reached the dignity of cataclysms. 

 On the other hand, these writers were constantly being 

 brought into contact with the living world in a hundred 

 ways that had a more or less direct influence on their every- 

 day lives. They must have noticed the plants and 

 animals of the districts which they inhabited ; the indivi- 

 duals of their own and other races must have been of more 

 direct importance to them than the unobtrusive sequence 

 of non-vital phenomena. It is not to be wondered at 

 that in the ancient cosmogonies the living world should 

 have been regarded in a different light to the world of 

 " dead " matter, and a special mode of origination 

 invoked. In brief, there has arisen a set of ideas which 

 are even broader than "anthropocentric," and which might 

 fairly be designated bioccnlrii, and it is these ideas which, 

 consciously or unconsciously, permeate the work now 

 under consideration and all similar productions. 



The Uuke of Argyll will no doubt disclaim any such 

 severance of vital and non-vital phenomena. In certain 

 passages he states somewhat explicitly that he wishes it 

 to be understood that he deals with nature as a whole in 

 this cross-e.xamination of evolution. But it will be 

 evident to those who have followed the course of 

 thought in this field, that this latest contribution from the 

 doughty opponent of Darwin and Spencer and Huxley 

 and AYallace is nothing but a compromise between the 

 NO. 1523, VOL. 59] 



ancient biocentric system and the newer ideas of the 

 order and sequence of nature. It is a kind of eviscerated 

 Bridgwater Treatise with an aggressive binding, and 

 with the honest and plain teleology of the writers of those 

 famous old volumes replaced by the word Plan with a capi- 

 tal P. If we are not mistaken, there was a period in the 

 author's literary career when he scouted the idea of evolu- 

 tion in any form. Be this as it may, he now tells us that 

 he accepts '' the leading idea of development " (p. 98), and 

 he even goes so far as to say that he holds this idea " to 

 be indisputably applicable to everything, and especially 

 to organic life." The same statement is repeated in other 

 forms elsewhere in the book (p. 189, for example). The 

 Duke apparently prefers the word " development " to 

 evolution. There is a subtle distmction here which the 

 ordinary reader might overlook, and which it is therefore 

 desirable to point out. Evolution has become associated 

 with development through external causes controlled by, 

 and in co-operation with, causes resident within the 

 organism. Such, at least, is the idea which the writer has 

 always associated with organic evolution. D evelopment 

 on the other hand, is associated with a process of 

 spontaneous growth by virtue of an internal agency only. 

 This appears to be the burden of the Duke of Argyll's 

 tale as told in the three essays composing the present 

 work, which essays have been reprinted, with slight 

 alterations, from the Nineteenth Century. 



This notion of an internal force of development im- 

 planted in the organism by an external agency is a very 

 venerable dummy. The Duke has tried to furbish it up 

 with a fresh coating of paint, but evolutionists will, I am 

 afraid, not consider the new garniture sufficiently attrac- 

 tive to claim their attention. The old figure is still there, 

 and the dents made by the sticks thrown at it by such 

 skilled marksmen as Huxley and Weismann are too deep 

 to be effaced. We find, for example, on page 155, that an 

 essential feature of the creed of the " mechanical evolu- 

 tionists " (as interpreted by the author) is "the internal 

 directing agency or force, which always pursues a definite 

 line of growth, so that all the demands of the completed 

 structure must have been present from the beginning, 

 &c." This is considered by the Duke to be a neces- 

 sary consequence of the belief of the evolutionist that the 

 development of the germ is to be explained by " processes 

 of ordinary generation." Why, it may be fairly asked, 

 are biologists to be so constantly reminded in wordy 

 essays that the characters and attributes and properties 

 of organisms must have been potentially present from 

 the beginning of life ? The whole case of the biocentric 

 school amounts to this, and nothing more. So all the 

 characters of a complex mineral must have been poten- 

 tially present in the material atoms of which it is com- 

 posed ; and if there is an internal directing agency in 

 the case of a " procreated " germ, there is just as much 

 an internal directing agency in the mineral compelling 

 a definite crystalline structure and chemical composition. 

 We have never heard of any essayist taking the writer of 

 a mineralogical treatise to task because he had failed to 

 indicate to his readers that the structure and composition 

 of minerals were to be explained by innate properties 

 conferred in accordance with a prearranged plan. 



We have dealt so far with these essays in fheir con- 

 structive aspect, but they have also a destructive side ; 



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