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Why is the larva of the Osmia, which thrives upon albumen, actually fed upon honey during its early life? Why is a vegetable diet the rule in the hives of bees from the very commencement, when the other members of the same series live upon animal food? If I were a "transformist" how I should delight in this question!
The same writer furnishes us with the real explanation of Buffon's attitude when he says that Buffon was "too sane and matter-of-fact a thinker to go much beyond his facts, and his evolution doctrine remained always tentative." Buffon, like many another man, from St. Augustine down to his own times, considered the transformist explanation of living nature.
On the other hand, it is easy to understand his aversion from purely empirical, evolutionist, or transformist doctrines, such as those set forth in the works of Lamarck and Darwin which came to his notice.
They have enabled us greatly to shorten the time biological evolution seems to demand. They also render us less exacting toward paleontology. So that, all things considered, the transformist hypothesis looks more and more like a close approximation to the truth.
All this is a chain of highly logical deductions, and it hangs together with a certain air of reality, such as we like to look for in a host of "transformist" arguments which are put forward as irrefutable.
Russkaya Mysl, Sept. 1888: "The Theory of Beneficency of Struggle for Life, being a Preface to various Treatises on Botanics, Zoology, and Human Life," by an Old Transformist. Supposed war of each against all. Tribal origin of human society. Late appearance of the separate family. Bushmen and Hottentots. Australians, Papuas. Eskimos, Aleoutes.
Hence the flourishing colonies of the Anthophoræ, the Osmiæ, the Euceræ, the Halicti, and other makers of honey, while the hunters of prey work in isolation; hence the societies in which the bee displays its admirable talents, the supreme expression of instinct. This is what I should say if I were a "transformist."
There is the stumbling-block of the usual transformist theories, and Mr Bergson devotes to it a closely argued and singularly penetrating criticism, by an example which he analyses in detail. But in both cases they fail. "The truth is that adaptation explains the windings of the movement of evolution, but not the general directions of the movement, still less the movement itself.
Fate has ordained that almost every point on which we differ should be crowded into this vol. Have you seen the October number of the Revue des deux Mondes? It has an article on you, but I have not yet read it; and another article, not yet read, by a very good man on the Transformist School. I am very glad to hear that you are beginning a book, but do not let it be "little," on Distribution, etc.
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