Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith. Robert Patterson
than of plants or animals.
4. No instance has ever been known of a germ producing an animal, or plant, of another species, by any process of stopping short of ripening, or undue prolongation of it. Every seed breeds true to its kind, or not at all, or produces a deformity. Embryology utterly refuses the notion of the transmutation of species.
Mr. Darwin's various references to rudimentary organs, like the bones of a hand in the flipper of the whale, or the teats of male animals, and the like, can hardly be called arguments. He tries to account for them and fails; acknowledging ignorance of the laws of heredity. Some of them he will have to be young organs in process of evolution, others organs aborted for want of exercise. In this category he ought to place the tail which he ought to have inherited from his ancestors, as he is greatly exercised to know what became of it. But it is evident that his attempts to build arguments on such things, and to account for occasional variations by atarism, are in contradiction to his principles. Most of the known instances of the origination of permanent varieties were not the result of infinitesimal improvements, but were sudden and complete at once. The Japan peacocks, the short-legged sheep, the porcupine man and his family, and the six-fingered men, were not at all the results of a slow process of evolution; on the contrary, they were born so, complete at once, in utter contradiction of the theory.
5. The only other line of argument, which has any show of probability, is that based upon the gradations of the various orders of plants and animals. Not but that there are many other arguments adduced, but they are of too technical a character to be intelligible to any but zoologists, and of too little weight to demand consideration after the leading arguments are overturned. But this argument from gradation, though logically unsound, is plausibly specious, and therefore demands notice.
By far the ablest exhibition of this argument is that made by Lamarck, and we give it as he presents it: "The greater the abundance of natural objects assembled together, the more do we discover proofs that everything passes by insensible shades into something else; that even the more remarkable differences are evanescent, and that nature has for the most part left us nothing at our disposal for establishing distinctions, save trifling, and in some respects puerile particularities. We find that many genera among plants and animals are of such an extent, in consequence of the number of species referred to them, that the study and determination of these last have become almost impracticable. When the species are arranged in a series, and placed near to each other, with a due regard to their natural affinities, they each differ in so minute a degree from those next adjoining, that they almost melt into each other, and are in a manner confounded together. If we see isolated species, we may presume the absence of some more closely connected, and which have not yet been discovered. Already there are genera, and even entire orders, nay, whole classes which present this state of things." He then goes on to present, "as a guide to conjecture," what his successors now assert as a fact: "In the first place, if we examine the whole series of known animals, from one extremity to the other, when they are arranged in the order of their natural relations, we find that we may pass progressively, or at least with very few interruptions, from beings of more simple to those of more compound structure; and in proportion as the complexity of their organization increases, the number and dignity of their faculties increase also. Among plants a similar approximation to a graduated scale of being is apparent. Secondly, it appears, from geological observations, that plants and animals of more simple organization existed on the globe before the appearance of those of more compound structure, and the latter were successively formed at more modern periods, each new race being more fully developed than the most perfect of the preceding one."[22]
From this gradation of nature, thus stated, the evolutionists go on to infer genealogy, the birth descent of the larger from the smaller, and of the more complex from the simpler forms, as the only scientific explanation. But it is by no means the only scientific explanation of the order of nature. The best naturalists, from Moses to Agassiz, have regarded the order of nature as the development of the divine idea, have prosecuted their researches on that view, and have regarded that as a sufficient and scientific explanation of the gradation of plants and animals, as they actually exist.
The idea of birth descent can not be logically connected with that of gradation; especially with a gradation upward. Were the order of nature such as Lamarck describes, how could any man logically infer the birth descent of each of its classes from the next below? Here is an ironmonger's sample card of wood screws, beginning with those one-quarter of an inch long, and proceeding by gradations of one-sixteenth of an inch to those of four inches. Does the gradation show that the little ones begot the big ones? It may be said the wood screws do not beget progeny. Well, here is a hill containing twenty-three potatoes, weighing from half an ounce to half a pound, and quite regularly graded. Did the small potatoes beget the big ones? The inference of birth descent from gradation is utterly illogical, and of a piece with the incoherency which we have seen in the other parts of the theory. It never could be inferred from the facts stated, even did nature correspond to Lamarck's description.
But nature does not correspond to Lamarck's description. That description corresponded moderately, perhaps, to the science of his day, which was based chiefly upon external resemblances; but no scientific naturalist of the present day would accept it as a correct statement of the facts revealed by modern science.
In the first place there is no such imperceptible blending and shading off of species as the description would imply, obliterating all distinctions of species, and rendering it impossible even for a naturalist to distinguish one species from another. Since the time of Lamarck, structure and physiology have been more studied than mere external appearances; so that from a tooth or bone Cuvier or Agassiz could reconstruct an animal, and indicate its internal organization, as well as its form and habits. But even in Lamarck's days, and even to the most uneducated, there was no such imperceptible shading and blending as the theory requires. It is well to look here at its requirements, for they are not fully presented by its friends. Mr. Darwin gives us a diagram exhibiting the variation of an original species into a score or so of varieties, ending in distinct species. But this is very far, indeed, below the necessities of the case. The horse hair worm lays 8,000,000 of eggs; and the primeval germ, whatever it was, could hardly be less fertile, since fertility increases with simplicity of structure. But, taking 8,000,000 to begin with, here were as many varieties; since no two of them, or of any creature, could be exactly alike. The next generation would give 8,000,000 times as many varieties, and so on till Natural Selection began to thin off the feeble. But here we have, instead of a few well-marked varieties, an infinite multitude of imperceptible variations, rendering classification impossible. And as all these were only varieties of the same breed, they would breed together, and thus still more confuse the complexity, and render distinction of species impossible. For, in spite of all Mr. Darwin has to say about the extinction of the weaker varieties, the fact is, they are not at all extinguished, but keep their ground as well as the higher classes, or perhaps better. And if a snail, or a worm, can contrive to live now in an unimproved condition, why should its improving cousin die off? Did its improvement kill it? And so of improving mollusks, and well-doing radiates, and aspiring rabbits, and all the rest. The world ought to be so full of them that no man could sort them off into species, or tell which was fish, which was flesh, and which red herring; and no pork packer could distinguish hog from dog.
But instead of any such horrible confusion of a world full of mongrels, we discover a clear and well defined distinction of species, known even to the poor animals themselves, and by their instincts made known to all mankind. The Creator, who created all creatures after their kind, implanted in them an instinct of breeding only with their own species; and placed a bar in the way of man's vain attempts to work confusion of species, by rendering the hybrid offspring of different species sterile, or only capable of breeding back to the pure blood. Innumerable attempts have been made by fraud and force to procure cross breeds of different species of plants and animals, but always with the same result—the extinction of the progeny of the hybrid, unless bred back to nature. While a mingling of various breeds of the same species—horses, sheep, or cattle—generally increases fertility, the attempt to mingle different species, as the horse and the ass, though so similar, always produces sterile offspring. It is impossible to conceive any form in which the Creator could more emphatically