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It is only a sieve, and not a force of nature, not a direct cause of improvement, as many of Darwin's adversaries, and unfortunately many of his followers also, have so often asserted. It is only a sieve, which decides what is to live, and what is to die. But evolutionary lines are of great length, and the evolution of a flower, or of an insectivorous plant is a way with many sidepaths.
The idea which permeates Darwin's work is certainly one of real competition going on within each animal group for food, safety, and possibility of leaving an offspring. He often speaks of regions being stocked with animal life to their full capacity, and from that overstocking he infers the necessity of competition.
Darwin's "distinctive contribution" to the theory of evolution, so widely different from the one he is now expressing with characteristic appearance of ardour. He does not explain how he is able to execute such rapid changes of front without forfeiting his claim on our attention; explanations on matters of this sort seem out of date with modern scientists. I can only suppose that Mr.
Darwin becomes tedious in the manner of a man who insists on continuing to prove his innocence after he has been acquitted. You assure him that there is not a stain on his character, and beg him to leave the court; but he will not be content with enough evidence: he will have you listen to all the evidence that exists in the world. Darwin's industry was enormous.
Darwin's strongly-based hypothesis is nothing but a mere modification of Lamarck's, you will know what to think of their capacity for forming a judgment on this subject. But you must recollect that when I say I think it is either Mr.
And one piece of natural knowledge is added to another, and others are added to that, and at last we come to propositions so interesting as Mr. Darwin's famous proposition that "our ancestor was a hairy quadruped furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in his habits."
If Darwin's opinions are false, it was to be expected that contradictions would accompany their detailed application at every step, and that these, by their cumulative force, would entirely destroy the suppositions from which they proceeded, even though the deductions derived from each particular case might possess little of the unconditional nature of mathematical proof.
On the other hand, as Büchner has remarked in his "Lectures about Darwin's Theory": "How little can the hard-working wife of a degraded Australian savage, who hardly ever uses abstract words, and can not count above four, how little can such a woman exert her self-consciousness, or reflect on the nature of her own existence!"
He bore himself with sufficient dignity in the publicity of the Town Hall, where a great sensation was created by the pigeons being let loose without, and coming to Jack's call. Some of them fed from the boy's lips, and he was the hero of the hour, to Daddy Darwin's delight. Then the lawyer and the lawyer's office proved genial and comfortable to him.
Once more the abundance of tropical life is under Darwin's eyes, but now it is the life of an entirely different section. The dry climate of Peru furnished him with an environment distinctly unlike that of the moist Brazilian forest. He collects now with avidity, gathering especially insects and birds.
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