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Darwin's scheme for improving our British climate by hauling out all the icebergs from the polar basin in seasons when the wind sate fair for the tropics; by which means these wretched annoyers of our peace would soon find themselves in quarters too hot to hold them, and would disappear as rapidly as sugar-candy in children's mouths.
To these isolated difficulties I ascribe the less importance, however, because even a little while ago, before the discovery of the Prawn-Nauplius, this entire domain of the development of the Malacostraca was almost inaccessible to Darwin's theory. Nor will I dwell upon the contradictions which appear to result from the application of the Darwinian theory to this department.
When the struggle against 'Political Economy' was at its height, Darwin's Origin of Species revealed a universe in which the 'few simple principles' seemed a little absurd, and nothing has hitherto taken their place. Mr.
Returning to the accidental element, it is evident that the strongest point against the compatibility of Darwin's hypothesis with design in Nature is made when natural selection is referred to as picking out those variations which are improvements from a vast number which are not improvements, but perhaps the contrary, and therefore useless or purposeless, and born to perish.
"Lower animals, especially the dog, manifest love, reverence, fidelity, and obedience; and it is from these elements that the religious sentiment in man has been slowly evolved by a process of natural selection." By Charles Darwin, M. A., F. R. S., etc. New York, 1871, vol. i. p. 179. The Sense in which Mr. Darwin uses the Word "Natural." We have not yet reached the heart of Mr. Darwin's theory.
And when we endeavour to penetrate into the darkness of past ages, we find the same tribal life, the same associations of men, however primitive, for mutual support. Therefore, Darwin was quite right when he saw in man's social qualities the chief factor for his further evolution, and Darwin's vulgarizers are entirely wrong when they maintain the contrary.
If his lordship doubts this, let him study the ways of animals for himself; or, if he cannot do that, let him read the chapters in Mr. Darwin's "Descent of Man" on sexual selection among birds. If he retains any doubt after that, we must conclude that his head is too hard or too soft to be influenced, in either of which cases he is much to be pitied.
In the long vacations I pressed plants, stuffed birds and pounded rocks in some vague belief that I was approximating the new method, and yet when my stepbrother who was becoming a real scientist, tried to carry me along with him to the merest outskirts of the methods of research, it at once became evident that I had no aptitude and was unable to follow intelligently Darwin's careful observations on the earthworm.
It will also appear how far-reaching were the consequences of the denial of design that was involved in Mr. Darwin's theory that luck is the main element in survival, and how largely this theory is responsible for the fatuous developments in connection alike with protoplasm and automatism which a few years ago seemed about to carry everything before them. The position, then, stands thus.
Darwin's pregnant paragraphs, the novice in biology is apt to complain of the frequency of what he fancies is gratuitous assumption. Thus while it may be doubted if, for some years, any one is likely to be competent to pronounce judgment on all the issues raised by Mr.
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