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Darwin, in his well-known "Voyage in the Beagle" gives a peculiarly interesting description of the condition of the peat-beds in the Chonos Archipelago, off the Chilian coast, and of their mode of formation.
The watch is "going"; so is the organism. Each of them, in a sense, is a "wonderful little laboratory" in which manifestations of energy are constantly taking place. The watchmaker constructed the watch for that purpose; who or what constructed the organism? Darwin and the Darwinians would have said Natural Selection.
Together the clergyman and his neighbor discussed the merits of climbing roses, morning-glories and sweet-peas. Darwin met all and every one on terms of absolute equality, and never forced his scientific hypotheses upon any one.
Again, the sterility or fertility of crosses seems to bear no relation to the structural resemblances or differences of the members of any two groups. Mr. Darwin has discussed this question with singular ability and circumspection, and his conclusions are summed up as follow, at page 276 of his work:
On this basis it is only a question of time when the earth will be too full of people for it to be possible for the food to sustain them. Malthus added many observations and suggestions, but this is as much of the book as interests us in this connection. Here was the idea that suggested to Darwin his agency for producing the change of the animals of the past into those of the present.
Charles Darwin's theory. It will be observed that in the paragraph last quoted from, Mr. Darwin, more suo, is careful not to commit himself.
Darwin says, as to the sterility of species, that the cause lies exclusively in their sexual constitution; but all that need be affirmed is that sterility is brought about somehow, and it is undeniable that "crossing" is checked.
Darwin was equally eminent in Geology, Botany and Zoology. On November Twenty-fourth, Eighteen Hundred Fifty-nine, was published "The Origin of Species." Murray had hesitated about accepting the work, but on the earnest solicitation of Sir Charles Lyell, who gave his personal guarantee to the publisher against loss, quite unknown to Darwin, twelve hundred copies of the book were printed.
Darwin in his celebrated "Origin of Species," offers the foundation for such a theory; and I have myself endeavoured to apply it to all the chief cases of imitation in an article published in the "Westminster Review" for 1867, entitled, "Mimicry, and other Protective Resemblances Among Animals," to which any reader is referred who wishes to know more about this subject.
If only some genius, whilst admitting Paley's facts, could knock the brains out of Paley by the discovery of a method whereby watches could happen without watchmakers, that genius was assured of such a welcome from the thought of his day as no natural philosopher had ever enjoyed before. The time being thus ripe, the genius appeared; and his name was Charles Darwin.
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