Marcli 20, 1884J 



NA rURE 



4 75 



and this is the difficuhy which is thus manufactured to 

 meet the experience theory. 



" Did tliere ever exist in any former period of the world 

 what, so far as I know, does certainly not exist now — any 

 animal with dispositions to enter on a new career, thought 

 of and imagined for the first time by itself, unconnected 

 with any organs already fitted for and appropriate to the 

 purpose ? . . . The questions raised when a young dipper, 

 which had never before seen the water, dives and swims 

 with perfect ease, are questions which the theory of 

 organised experience does not even tend to solve ; on 

 the contrary, it is a theory which leaves these ques- 

 tions precisely where they were, except in so far as it 

 may tend to obscure them by obvious confusions of 

 thought." 



Here one would have thought that the writer need not 

 have gone further than the instance which he himself 

 gives to have found evidence of the growth of an instinct 

 by the accumulation of hereditary experience or habit, 

 and as yet unconnected with the "organs already fitted 

 for and appropriate to the purpose." For the dipper 

 belongs to a non-aquatic family of birds, and therefore 

 has no organs specially adapted to its aquatic instincts. 

 In particular it has no webs to its feet; and therefore, so 

 far as the structure and affinities of the bird can in them- 

 selves argue anything, they speak most distinctly in 

 favour of the view that the species must have developed 

 aquatic instincts while not yet having had time to develop 

 the "appropriate organs." It would be no answer to say 

 that this species does not need these organs ; else why 

 are they needed by all \}a& families of birds which present 

 the same instincts .■' Or, conversely, can it be said that 

 these same organs, i.e. webbed feet, stand in any special 

 correlation with the existing instincts of the upland 

 geese, which, being terrestrial in their habits (though 

 aquatic in their affinities), never use them for swimming 

 or diving? Short of historical or palseontological know- 

 ledge (which in the case of instinct is of course impos- 

 sible), we could have no stronger evidence of transmuta- 

 tion than is afforded by these two complementary cases, 

 in one of which the absence of a structure points to the 

 recent acquisition of the instinct, while in the other the 

 presence of this structure points to the former existence 

 of the instinct now obsolete. Analogous cases occur in 

 the species of ground- parrots and tree-frogs which, 

 while retaining their ancestral structures adapted to 

 climbing, have nevertheless entirely lost their arboreal 

 instincts. 



Moreover, a strange want of thought is shown by the 

 remark that, so far as the writer knows, " there certainly 

 does not exist now any animal with dispositions to enter 

 on a new career, thought of and imagined for the first 

 time by itself." It is enough to quote the complete 

 change in the instincts of nidification which has been 

 observed to take place in the house-sparrow, and in 

 several species of swallow, since these birds first had the 

 opportunity of building on houses ; or the more recent 

 and perhaps more remarkable case of the mountain 

 parrot, which has been observed to manifest a "progres- 

 sive development of change in habits from the simple 

 tastes of a honey-eater to the savageness of a tearer of 

 flesh." Many similar instances might be given, and, as 

 showing that they are not uncommon, I may remark that 



a very instructive one is published by Dr. Rae in a 

 recent number of this journal. 



So much, then, for the Duke of Argyll's views on 

 instinct. Scarcely less unsatisfactory are his views on rudi- 

 mentary organs. The explanation which he adduces to 

 account for these structures is, not that they are remnants 

 of organs useful in the past, but that they are prophesies 

 of organs which, when more fully developed, are to be 

 of use in the future. We have no space to criticise at 

 any length this wholly untenable inversion of Mr. Dar- 

 win's teaching ; but we think it will be enough to notice 

 the singularly unfortunate instance which the Duke selects 

 to illustrate his theory. This instance is that of the 

 whales, and he says that Mr. Darwin's views of the rudi- 

 mentary organs here to be met with " obliges us to sup- 

 pose that the ancestors of the whales were once terrestrial 

 quadrupeds, and in that case we start with the conception 

 of hind limbs, and of the quadrupedal mammal, fully 

 formed and perfectly developed. Whereas, if we accept 

 the possibility of useless organs being the beginnings 

 and rudiments of structures which are there because the 

 germ has always within it the tendency to produce them, 

 then we catch sight of an idea which has the double 

 advantage of going nearer to the origin of species, and 

 of being in harmony with the analogy of natural opera- 

 tions as we see them now." Is not this enough ? When 

 we remember the eloquence, as it were, with which the 

 whole organisation of the Cetacea tells us of their having 

 been originally, like other mammals, terrestrial, it seems 

 that the Duke could have chosen no worse example 

 whereby to illustrate his hypothesis. 



Passing now to the long discussion of the question 

 whether savages should be regarded as the product of 

 evolution from lower levels of human life, or of degrada- 

 tion from higher levels, we may say in general terms that 

 by adopting the latter hypothesis as applying to ^1 

 savages, the Duke sets himself in opposition to the 

 theory of evolution as a whole. Moreover, he does not 

 appear to have reflected that the question is not one 

 which can be investigated or decided, as it were, in the 

 lump. It is quite likely that some savages have fallen 

 from a higher to a lower level of savagery; it by no means 

 follows that all savages have done the same. Further, if 

 we were to suppose that they did, from what level of 

 civilised or of uncivilised life ai-e we to suppose that they 

 all started ? This hypothesis, as a general explanation of 

 the savage state of man is, indeed, as incoherent as it is 

 obsolete ; yet it is not more so than certain other views 

 upon the savage state to which this writer gives expres- 

 sion. Thus, his chief contention is that savage man 

 shows himself to be, as it were, out of joint with the rest 

 of Nature, or, as he expresses it, an " evident departure " 

 from the unity or order of Nature. Perhaps it is enough 

 to say of a doctrine which from a scientific point of view 

 is so peculiar, that it ought to have prevented the author 

 from styling his book " The Unity of Nature." 



We have no space left to consider the only other topic 

 that calls for consideration in these columns, viz. the 

 essay on the Moral Sense. The whole treatment of this 

 subject appears to us most feeble. It is also most 

 inaccurate, as the following quotation will suffice to 

 show : — 



