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Show 90 DAR WINI.AN .A. slight, over the rest, are in the long-r~n ~ure to survive, to propagate, and to occupy the lumted field, to the exclusion or destruction of the weaker brethren. All this we pondered, and could not much object to. In fact, we began to contract a liking for a system which at the outset illustrates the advantages of good breeding, and which makes the most " of every creature's best." Could we" let by-gones be by-gones," and, begin-ning now, go on improving and diversifying for the future by natural selection, could we even take up the theory at the introduction of the actually existing species, we should be well content ; and so, perhaps, would most naturalists be. It is by no means difficult to believe that varieties are incipient or possible species, when we see what trouble naturalists, especially botanists, have to distinguish between them-oneregarding as a true species what another regards as a variety; when the progress of knowledge continually increases, rather than diminishes, the number of doubtful instances; and when there is less agreement than ever among naturalists as to what is the basis in Nature upon which our idea of species reposes, or how the word is to be defined. · Indeed, when we consider the endress disputes of naturalists and ethnologists over the human races, as to whether they belong to one species or to more, and, if to more, whether to three, or five, or fifty, we can hardly help fancying that both may be right-or rather, that the uni-humanitarians would have been right many thousand years ago, and the multi-humanitarians will be several thousand years later ; while at present the safe thing to NATURAL SELECTION, ETC. 91 say is, that probably there is some truth on both sides. " Natural selection," Darwin remarks, "leads to divergence of character; for the more living beings can be supported on the same area, the more they diverge in structure, habits, and constitution" (a principle which, by-the-way, is parallel~d and illustrated by the diversification of human labor); and also leads to much extinction of intermediate or unimproved forms. Now, though this divergence may" steadily tend to increase," yet this is evidently a slow process in Nature, and liable to much counteraction wherever man does not interpose, and so not likely to work much harm for · the future. And if natural selection, with artificial to help it, will produce better . animals and better men than the present; and fit them better " to the conditions of existence," why, let it work, say we, .to the top of its bent. There is still room enough for improvement. Only let us hope that it always works for good: if not, the divergent lines on Darwin's lithographic diagram of '' Transmutation made Easy," ominously show what small deviations fro~ the straight path may come to in the end. The prospect of the future, accordingly, is on the whole pleasant and encouraging. It is only the backward glance, the gaze up the long vista of the past, that reveals anything alarming. :Here the lines converge as they recede into the geological ages, and point to conclusions which, upon the theory, are inevitable, -but hardly welcome. The very first step backward makes the negro and the Hottentot our blood-relations- not that reason or Scripture objects to that, |