JUBILEE OF DARWINISM.

Otago Witness, Issue 2840, 19 August 1908, Page 82

JUBILEE OF DARWINISM.

THE STORY OF A REVOLUTION.

' On July 1, 50 years ago, a, company of savants assembled at the Linnean, Society to hear a paper which bore the somewhat day title, "On the Tendencies of Species to Form Varieties, and on the Perpetuation of -Species And Varieties by Natural Selection," says Mr Edward Clodd in the Daily Chronicle. | "A certain spice of romance was imported into the occasion by the rumour ' that two eminent naturalists, thousands of miles apart, had hit independently on the solution of a problem which had baffled

inquiry fjrom the time, about a century and a-half, that doubts were thrown on i traditional beliefs^ fortified by Scripture, , in tb« special creation of the myriad ' species of plants and animals.

— The Quest. —

I "The solution had not been reached 'per saltum' j no great discovery has thus belied • the doctrine of Evolution ; hence, the history of the stages by which 'natural selection' arrived at the goal is one of slow pursuit, caution, and revision. The way I for its acceptance had been prepared by | many pioneer workers, most notable of : all,- Herbert Spencer; and although he < and othens knew it- not, two men, one ( as far back as 1813, in a .paper, "On. a White Woman,, Part of Whose Skin was Black/ and another, in 1831, in a book on 'Naval Timber,' had adumbrated a theory the simplicity of which caused Huxley to exclaim, 'when Darwin propounded it, 'How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!'

— Malthus's Famous Essay. —

"While brooding on the question, Darwin read the Rev. Thomas Malthus 's

'Essay on the Principle of Population,' wherein is refuted the superficial notion that *in sending months Providence sends food to fill them.' Malthus shows that the means of existence do not increase in the same ratio as the number of mouths, and, therefore, that in the inevitably resulting struggle for life, the weakest go to the wall. Consequently, a check is imposed on the increase.

"Here Darwin found a theory by which to work. • ,He applied it to the whole organic ' Everything varies ; even 'two peas' are unlike, and any favourable variation equips its possessor for victory in the ceaseless struggle for existence. In these variations (the causes of

which remain, obscure) there are the factors on which natural selection acts in the production, of new species, the development of the most primitive" life-forms into the tnghest, involving vast periods of time.

—Dr Wallace's Bolt. —

"The theory took shaj>e in 1838, and there followed 20 years ' of patient observation and sifting of material as test of its validity. Heedful only of truth, and heedless of fame, Darwin would have continued pursuit of his work in quiet, but a bolt from the blue forced bis hand. In June, 1858, Dr Alfred Wallace (happily still with us) sent him from the Malay Archipelago a paper in which the theory of natural selection Was set forth in terms so identical that Darwin said to Lyell : 'If Wallace had my MS. fcketeh written in 1842, he could not have made a better abstract.' And it is a further curious coincidence that Dr Wallace was also led 'to think of positive checks' by reading Parson Malthus, who, if he lias no place in the Lives of the Saints, should be accorded one in the Hagiology of Science.

— For and Against the Theory. —

"The first man outside the circle of Darwin's intimates to accept the theory was Canon Tristram, a distinguished ornithologist, and, in unenviable contrast, the famous anatomist, Sir Richard Owen, was among the earliest of Darwin's opponents. He attacked the book in the Edinburgh Review, and inspired Bishop Wilberforce's onslaught in the Quarterly, wherein 'natural selection' was declared to be 'incompatible with the Word of God.' Cardinal Manning denounced it as 'a brutal philosophy' ; Carlyle echoed ' this in his special vernacular ; Sir John Herschel called it 'the law of higgledy-piggledy ; Professor Adam Sedgwick mourned over it as 'false and mischievous,' but hoped 'to meet Darwin in heaven' ; Wliewell refused the book a place in Trinity College Library ; and the attitude of a section of the press is shown in the Daily Telegraph making Professor Fawcett's approving review of the 'Origin' a reason for advising the Southwark electors not to return him to Parliament. An odd example of the lingering prejudice is supplied in the withdrawal of his balance from Martin's Bank by a customer, because one of the partners attended Darwin's funeral !

— The Battle To-day.—

"Not to unduly excite opposition, Darwin had only briery hinted, at the end of his book, that 'light would be thrown on the origin of man and his history' by the theory of natural selection. His prescience was shown in the storm which rose when, in 1863, Huxley published his 'Evidences a 6 to Man's Place in Nature.' Therein were marshalled the facts in proof of the descent of man and ape from a common ancestry ; and, what was of more 6erioue import, of ail unbroken chain of psychioal continuity between the lowest and highest life-forms. Mind was declared, no less than other phenomena, to be explicable by the groeesses of evolution. Herein lay cause of battle, the echoes of whose fray have not yet died away. Any seeming truce is no warrant of belief in a treaty of peace ; the ultimate issue car be only surrender by the forces of obscurantism.

— Evolution and the Spiritual Natuio. —

"For the history of opposition is a record of intermittent concession?, Sonxe

of these were on. matters Tvhich appeared , to involve no discrediting of fundamenjbal ftogmas. Assent was tafddly given to the , demands of astronomy .and geology, be- ) cause these, could he harmonised with h '■ flexible Interpretation «f sacred docu- ' me.nts. But there could be no parleying with anthropology in its insistence on the extension of the theory of evolution to man's spiritual as well as bodily nature, and to his religious as well as his intellectual development. And %he latest declaration of episcopal lips affirms that tliera can Ibe no terms -with a sci&i*o& which contravenes the dogma of the fall | of man and all that' is involved therein, i

"The same brave words hare been applied, in turn, tq other dogma^ declared with equal assurance to be integral parts of the foundations of religion. Yet religion has not suffered by their extinction, because it has its basis in the permanent needs of mankind."