Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

have been investigated.

I fail to discover any principle which will justify those who recognise accidental death as a phenomenon of nature-however limited in its action-in saying that they cannot possibly believe that it will be the case on a great scale. There is but one intelligent explanation. It is a desperate effort to retain unaltered a preconceived opinion in spite of the most damaging evidence to the contrary.

Mr. Wallace further says:

"Though the survival in individual cases may sometimes be due rather to accident than to any real superiority, yet we cannot doubt that in the long run those survive which are the best fitted by their perfect organism to escape the dangers which surround them."

"The best organised, or the most healthy, or the most active, or the best protected, or the most intelligent, will inevitably, in the long run, gain an advantage over those which are inferior in these qualities; that is, the fittest will survive, the fittest being, in each particular case, those which are superior in the special qualities on which safety depends.”—(Darwinism. p. 103, p. 123.)

Mr. Wallace says, "though the survival in individual cases may be due to accident." But does this fairly represent the fact that the great majority of deaths in each generation takes place in early life before the power of selection can possibly come into play? He says that "the fittest will survive." We have already seen how his assumptions on this point are contradicted in detail by our actual experience. No mere repetition of our experience can "in the long run" produce an entirely different result. There must be a new heaven and a new earth, and an entirely different condition of organic life, if future destruction is to be altogether discriminative. But on what principle can we assume that this will be the case? Such statements simply amount to the reiteration of the logical requirements of the theory in opposition to all our experience. Mr. Wallace has no ground for eliminat

ing the element of accidental death; still less for laughing it to scorn as an idle chimera. In this connection he cannot be justified in

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

Even if the power of selection were sure in its action as far as it went, so that the fittest in each generation always survived, the process of transmutation might still, it is admitted, take a great time to accomplish. But the conditions may be such as to require a comparatively speedy transmutation. And this is possible without assuming any great cataclysmal change in external conditions. The power of attaining sufficient modification ultimately would avail little, if immediate modification was required by the necessity of the case. When Fred Vincy finds himself unable to pay the money for the bill to which Mr. Garth had put his name, and which was sorely needed for Alfred's premium, he said, "I shall certainly pay it all, Mrs. Garth-ultimately." "Yes, ultimately!" said Mrs. Garth, who, having a special dislike to fine words on ugly occasions, could not now repress an epigram:"But boys cannot well be apprenticed ultimately they should be apprenticed at fifteen." Equally vain would be the power of selection to modify an organism ultimately, if an immediate adaptation were necessary for the continuance of the species.

*

*Middlemarch. vol. ii, p. 41.

CHAPTER V.

THE THEORY COMPARED WITH THE REALITY

(continued).

(d) COMPETITION MODIFIED BY CO-OPERATION.

"None of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself." "As we have many members in one body, so we being many are one body.

"And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it."-PAUL.

THE theory of Natural Selection demands that there should be the strictest and the keenest competition between the individuals of the same species and the individuals of different species, and between species and species.

"There must in every case be a struggle for existence; either one individual with another of the same species, or with the individuals of distinct species."-(Darwin. Origin of Species. p. 50.)

"Every species is for itself, and for itself alone: an outcome of the always and everywhere fiercely-raging struggle for life.”— (Romanes. The Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution. p. 76.)

"As the species of the same genus usually have-though by no means invariably--much similarity in habits and constitution, and always in structure, the struggle will generally be more severe between them, if they come into competition with each other, than between the species of distinct genera."-(Darwin. The Origin of Species. p. 59.)

"The struggle for life-this bellum omnium contra omnes—is an indisputable and undeniable fact which we here accept in its widest relations."--(Oscar Schmidt. The Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism. p. 140.)

This struggle is due, according to Mr. Wallace, to the absence of co-operation, to the self-dependence and isolation of each individual. It is a struggle not in some vague sense of all against all, but in a most definitely personal and terrible manner of one against all and of all against one.

"We must consider why it is that Natural Selection acts so powerfully upon animals; and we shall, I believe, find that its effect depends mainly upon their self-dependence and individual isolation. There is, as a general rule, no mutual assistance between adults, which enables them to tide over a period of sickness. Neither is there any division of labour; each must fulfil all the conditions of its existence." (Wallace. Contributions to Natural Selection. pp. 311-12.)

"As the individual existence of each animal depends upon itself, those that die must be the weakest, the very young, the aged, and the diseased; while those that prolong their existence can only be the most perfect in health and vigour--those who are best able to obtain food regularly and avoid their numerous enemies. It is, as we commenced by remarking, a 'struggle for existence,' in which the weakest and least perfectly-organised must always succumb.”— (Wallace. Contributions to Natural Selection. pp. 32-33.)

"The closer the kindred of the competitors, the more ardent is the struggle for the existence."-(Oscar Schmidt. The Doctrine of Descent. p. 143.)

Here, then, you have in the clearest possible statements the logical and consistent demands of the theory of Natural Selection. If the fittest is to survive, there must be a fair field and no favour. The theory would find all that it asks from nature if it could be shown that the bellum omnium contra omnes were indeed, as Dr. Oscar Schmidt affirms, “an indisputable and undeniable fact."

In testing this uncompromising statement, we may first of all ask-What evidence has been adduced on this subject? The answer to this question to this question is given by Prince Kropotkin, who points out that, while Mr. Darwin assumes that this competition is a fact in nature, he gives

no illustration of its action between individuals of the same species

"The idea which permeates Darwin's work is certainly one of real competition going on within each animal group for food, safety, and possibility of leaving an offspring. He often speaks of regions being stocked with animal life to their full capacity, and from that overstocking he infers the necessity of competition. But when we look in his work for real proofs of that competition we must confess that we do not find them sufficiently convincing. If we refer to the paragraph entitled 'Struggle for Life most severe between Individuals and Varieties of the same Species,' we find in it none of that wealth of proofs and illustrations which we are accustomed to find in whatever Darwin wrote. The struggle between individuals of the same species is not illustrated under that heading by even one single instance: it is taken as granted." The competition between closely allied animal species

is illustrated by but five examples, out of which one at least (relating to the two species of thrushes) now proves to be doubtful. But when we look for more details in order to ascertain how far the decrease of one species was really occasioned by the increase of the other species, Darwin, with his usual fairness, tells us: 'We can dimly see why the competition should be most severe between allied forms which fill nearly the same place in nature; X but probably in no case could we precisely say why one species has been victorious over another in the great battle of life.'". (Nineteenth Century. vol. xxviii., pp. 713-4.)

On the other hand, Prince Kropotkin has vividly described the effect upon his own mind and that of a fellow naturalist when the dictum of Natural Selection was brought to the test of actual experience.

"I recollect myself the impression produced upon me by the animal world of Siberia when I explored the Vitim regions in the company of so accomplished a zoologist as my friend Polyakoff was. We both were under the fresh impression of The Origin of Species, but we vainly looked for the keen competition between animals of the same species which the reading of Darwin's work had prepared us to expect, even after taking into account the remarks of the third chapter (p. 54 of the small edition). We saw plenty of adaptations for struggling, very often in common, against the adverse circumstances of climate, or against various enemies; and Polyakoff wrote many a good page upon the mutual dependency of carnivores,

« AnteriorContinuar »