On the Theory of the Origin of Species by Natural Selection in the Struggle for Life

I cannot doubt,' says Mr. Darwin, ' that the theory of descent by gradation embraces all the members of the same class.T believe that animals have descended from THE ORIGIN OF SrEClES BY NATURAL SELECTION.at most only four or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or even lesser numl)er.'He is, indeed, disposed to go further than this, and to derive all organised beings whatsoever from a single progenitor.Here, however, he judges from the analogous structures and chemical composition of all plants and animals, but admits that analogy may be an unsafe guide, and so the number of the progenitors of the theory may be reckoned at from eight to ten.But what, it may well be asked, are these progenitors or prototypes? for these words are but generic terms, which convey no notion of size, form, or quality.We must, in fact, consider them as atoms or monads of unappreciable minute- ness-not visible even by the solar microscoj)e; in truth, nothing better than ' such stuiF as dreams are made of.' The theory supposes that from the hypothetic progenitors in question-the origin of which it is as impossible for the human mind to conceive as the origin of the universe itself-have descended all living things, from the smallest infusorial animalcule up to the elephant, the whale, and man himself.These mighty results are to be attained through the preservation of ' favoured races in the struggle for life ;' that is, by a perpetual sequence of profitable variations in every species of plants and animals.The profitable variations, however, which the muta- tions produce, are so slow, so minute, and so unappreciable that the hypothesis demands millions of years for their accomplishment; an assumption which, as it is unsupported by any fact, places it at once beyond the reach of human investigation, relegating it to the realm of imagination.Authentic history certainly affords no evidence in favour of the theory of beneficial mutation by natural selection.The wild and even the domestic animals of Egypt have undergone no change in times of an antiquity which has been variously estimated at from 5,000 up to 10,000 years.In the Egyptian catacombs liave been found mummies of the ibis and the kestrel hawk, not differing in a feather, or the spot of a feather, from these birds of I'^gypt of the present day.The ox, the

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• The wild type as concept and in experimental practice

  Open Access•Tarquin Holmes•Studies in History and Philosophy…•2017

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