Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative, Volume I. Spencer Herbert

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inference respecting their resolvability. The largest or nearest nebulæ will be most easily resolved into stars; the successively smaller will be successively more difficult of resolution; and the irresolvable ones will be the smallest ones. This, however, is exactly the reverse of the fact. The largest nebulæ are either wholly irresolvable, or but partially resolvable under the highest telescopic powers; while large numbers of quite small nebulæ are easily resolved by far less powerful telescopes. An instrument through which the great nebula in Andromeda, two and a half degrees long and one degree broad, appears merely as a diffused light, decomposes a nebula of fifteen minutes diameter into twenty thousand starry points. At the same time that the individual stars of a nebula eight minutes in diameter are so clearly seen as to allow of their number being estimated, a nebula covering an area five hundred times as great shows no stars at all! What possible explanation of this can be given on the current hypothesis?

      Yet a further difficulty remains – one which is, perhaps, still more obviously fatal than the foregoing. This difficulty is presented by the phenomena of the Magellanic clouds. Describing the larger of these, Sir John Herschel says: —

      "The Nubecula Major, like the Minor, consists partly of large tracts and ill-defined patches of irresolvable nebula, and of nebulosity in every stage of resolution, up to perfectly resolved stars like the Milky Way, as also of regular and irregular nebulæ properly so called, of globular clusters in every stage of resolvability, and of clustering groups sufficiently insulated and condensed to come under the designation of 'clusters of stars.'" —Cape Observations, p. 146.

      In his Outlines of Astronomy, Sir John Herschel, after repeating this description in other words, goes on to remark that —

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      1

      Carpenter, Principles of Comparative Physiology, p. 474.

      2

      Since this was written (in 1857) the advance of paleontological discovery, especially in America, has shown conclusively, in respect of certain groups of vertebrates, that higher types have arisen by modifications of lower; so that, in common with others, Prof. Huxley, to whom the above allusion is made, now admits, or rather asserts, biological progression, and, by implication, that there have arisen more heterogeneous organic forms and a more heterogeneous assemblage of organic forms.

      3

      For detailed proof of these assertions see essay on "Manners and Fashion."

1

Carpenter, Principles of Comparative Physiology, p. 474.

2

Since this was written (in 1857) the advance of paleontological discovery, especially in America, has shown conclusively, in respect of certain groups of vertebrates, that higher types have arisen by modifications of lower; so that, in common with others, Prof. Huxley, to whom the above allusion is made, now admits, or rather asserts, biological progression, and, by implication, that there have arisen more heterogeneous organic forms and a more heterogeneous assemblage of organic forms.

3

For detailed proof of these assertions see essay on "Manners and Fashion."

4

The argument concerning organic evolution contained in this paragraph and the one preceding it, stands verbatim as it did when first published in the Westminster Review for April, 1857. I have thus left it without the alteration of a word that it may show the view I then held concerning the origin of species. The sole cause recognized is that of direct adaptation of constitution to conditions consequent on inheritance of the modifications of structure resulting from use and disuse. There is no recognition of that further cause disclosed in Mr. Darwin's work, published two and a half years later – the indirect adaptation resulting from the natural selection of favourable variations. The multiplication of effects is, however, equally illustrated in whatever way the adaptation to changing conditions is effected, or if it is effected in both ways, as I hold. I may add that there is indicated the view that the succession of organic forms is not serial but proceeds by perpetual divergence and re-divergence – that there has been a continual "divergence of many races from one race": each species being a "root" from which several other species branch out; and the growth of a tree being thus the implied symbol.

5

"Personal Narrative of the Origin of the Caoutchouc, or India-Rubber Manufacture in England." By Thomas Hancock.

6

Carpenter's Principles of Comparative Physiology, pp. 616-17.

7

With the exception, perhaps, of the Myxinoid fishes, in which what is considered as the nasal orifice is single, and on the median line. But seeing how unusual is the position of this orifice, it seems questionable whether it is the true homologue of the nostrils.

8

In the Westminster Review for April, 1857; and now reprinted in this volume.

9

See Essay on "Progress: its Law and Cause."

10

This was written before the publication of the Origin of Species. I leave it standing because it shows the stage of thought then arrived at.

11

Cosmos. (Seventh Edition.) Vol. i. pp. 79, 80.