CHAPTER VIII.

DESIGN.

And then

WHAT Mr. Darwin tells his children about adaptation he had already told Asa Gray: "To talk of climate or Lamarckian habit producing such adaptations as in the woodpecker, with its feet and tail, beak and tongue, to climb the tree and secure insects, is futile." he adds, "This difficulty I believe I have surmounted." Mr. Darwin believes, that is, that his theory of natural selection accounts for design. He is very strong in his rejection of "the action of surrounding conditions" in regard to adaptations. In that, he has plainly before his mind the stress which is laid by other naturalists on such external influences as climate, cold and heat, soil, etc.

We know, for example, that herds of horses that have remained close to alluvial regions usually consist of individuals of a large size, owing, as it is said, to "the rankness of their food;" and this applies to the large horses of the English middle counties. These are sprung indeed from horses Flemish and Dutch, already large; but still they have had the further advantage of the "lowland rich alluvial pastures of the plains." So, also, it is said that "climate and peculiar feeding" have, in domesticating the ox, actually reduced his bulk and diminished his very bones; while the same causes have been seen very specially to act in a similar way on

sheep. Sheep, it is true, can exist in almost every country; still it is equally true that "climate and soil fix limits." "The climate and the condition of existence which it induces, affect, with irresistible force, the structure, health, and reproductiveness of men and animals from the equator to the pole."

Now, such views as these cannot but have been perfectly familiar to Mr. Darwin. Nay, are not the principles they concern to be included among the most salient expedients and resources of the very breeders to whose operations he makes such signal reference in support of his own? The strange thing, then, is that he came, as it were, to dislike conditions, and even almost to grudge them any part whatever in the business proper of his enterprise. We must consider, however, that so far as conditions were conceived to be active in the production of adaptations, it was not for him to admit them against, in the same reference, a theory of his own. Not that he could admit them, in that special reference, as he seems to say, even on general grounds. To talk of climate or Lamarck in the same breath with adaptations was to him futile; or again (ii. 29), “That climate, food, etc., should make a Pediculus formed to climb hair, or woodpecker to climb trees," was "an absurd notion." Still he might have admitted the influence of conditions in the production of changed forms even as his favourite breeders did. That he did not do so will be found to prove itself in the Life and Letters even scores of times-as will be matter of express reference further on. It may be, as we say, that it was in the interest of his own theory that he was averse to conditions he would not have them diminish its glory, he says once to Hooker (ii. 390). In fact, it was to the provisions of his own theory that he attributed the production of the appearance of design: "An organic

being like the woodpecker may thus become adapted to a score of contingencies." That italicised thus must be understood to concern the explanations to his children. and to Asa Gray in regard to adaptation and design. These explanations amount to this:

Accidental change in an organism develops a new relation to nature, and the realisation of the relation gives the appearance of design. But from first to last in the process-really-design there is none. We have here, all through, in an organic reference, what we have. everywhere else in an inorganic-results of natural law, simply and alone. As, supernatural interference, there is none required; so, supernatural interference, there is none bestowed. The most remarkable adaptations for special purposes that can be seen in nature are perhaps those between flowers and the insects which fertilise them; but there is not one single special adaptation even there that is not the natural result of natural selection. There is, in a certain way, design of course, glaring design,but the whole of it is only ex post facto. Change of species is due to no mechanism whatever but the development of a new relation between nature and an individual organism, in consequence of one or more of those variations of chance and accident which are unaccountably always taking place, spontaneously as it were, in every living tissue, let it be existent anywhere. That rela tion, dependent on natural change completely accidental, may be distinctively named the Darwinian Relation. The seizing of a new place was the form in which what we name Relation, this new relation, occurred to Mr. Darwin; and this new relation being the simple consequent, was ex post facto design. The new relation, though quite an agreement of accident, really consisted of two terms in mutual rapport. Now it was rapport that alone suggested design-that alone was design and

here was rapport that was nothing but the effect of accident. An accidental variation accidentally corresponded to a factor of nature accidentally present, and a rapport, a relation, a coincidence, that looked like intentional concert, that looked like design, was the result. Mr. Darwin could no sooner have become aware of such a peculiarity as this, than it must have at once suggested itself to him that what was organic really occupied after all only the same level as what was inorganic. Physical mechanism, natural mechanism, was alone existent in the universe. Whether, otherwise, his religious views had been of themselves coming, for an indefinite time back, to no very different result, is not a consideration for us here it is enough that from the instant his own Darwinian Relation became plain to him, he gradually ceased, as it is said, to believe.

From previous expressions in this writing, the reader will, pretty well, have perceived that it (the writing) is no issue from the society de propaganda fide: these are not days in which it will occur to any true man to reflect with censure on his neighbour's religion. Any religious reference in Mr. Darwin's regard must be understood to concern only what bears on design; and it is only as so bearing that we shall make now certain quotations. There has been evidence already that what Mr. Darwin conceived to be the only opposite or alternative to his own doctrine was creation. Expressions to that effect, for example, we have already seen in passages of letters that concerned Lyell. "Creation or Modification" (ii. 371): that was the flag he definitively nailed to his mast. Mr. Darwin vacillated at times externally; but not for long, I honestly believe, did he ever in any serious respect vacillate internally after maturation of his ideas. Expressions of such vacillation occur, for instance (see Gifford Lectures), in regard to his views on conditions:

but they are as nothing beside their contraries, and are rather to be considered as but outcome of courtesy for the moment. So in the present connection when, in reply to the Duke of Argyll's remark on the evident expression of mind in his own illustrations from nature, Mr. Darwin admitted that " that often came over him with overwhelming force, but that, at other times, it seemed to go away," we are to see only a check of the moment to his veritable resolution and belief. In several expressions to Asa Gray also in mitigation of his own views of design, we cannot doubt that we have before us only the reluctance of such a genuine nature as Darwin's to cause his correspondent pain. He "grieves," he says (ii. 353), that he "cannot go as far as Dr. Gray about Design;" but at another time he writes (p. 373), " Your question, What would convince me of Design, is a poser: If I saw an angel come down to teach us good, and I was convinced from others seeing him that I was not mad, I should believe in design." On yet another occasion he again tells Dr. Gray (p. 373) that he has been "thinking more on this subject of late," but "grieves" to say that he comes to "differ more" from him. Within a year of his death Mr. Darwin will be found (i. 315) writing to W. Graham, "There are some points in your book which I cannot digest: the chief one is that the existence of so-called natural laws implies purpose: I cannot see this." This is not to be mistaken; and, again, there can be no more express statement than (p. 309) this other: "The old argument from design in Nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discoveredthere seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings, and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows."

We must credit Mr. Darwin with understanding at