OCR Text |
Show 140 DARWINIAN A. of the author in these passages. The whole reads more naturally as a caution ·against the inconsiderate use of final causes in science, and an illustration of some of the manifold errors and absurdities which their hasty assumption is apt to involve-considerations probably equivalent to those which induced Lord Bacon to liken final causes to "vestal virgins." So, if any one it is here Bacon that "sitteth in the seat of the scor' nful." As to Darwin, in the section from which the extracts were made, he is considering a subsidiary question, and trying to obviate a particular difficulty, but, we suppose, is wholly unconscious of denying " any manifestation of design in the material universe." He concludes the first sentence: -"and consequently that it was a character of importance, and might have been acquired through natural selection; as it is, I have no doubt that the color is due to some quite distinct cause, probably to sexual selection." After an illustration from the vegetable creation, Darwin adds : "The naked skin on the head of a vulture is generally looked at ·as a direct adaptation for wallowing in putridity; and so it may be, or it may possibly be due to the direct action of putrid matter; but we should be very cautious in drawing any such inference, when we see that the skin on the head of the .cleanfeeding male turkey is likewise naked. The sutures m the skulls of young mammals have been advanced as a beautiful adaptation for aiding parturition, and no doubt they facilitate or may be indispensable for this act; but as sutures occur in the skulls of young .birds and reptiles, which have only to escape from a broken egg, we may infer that this structure has aris~n from the laws of growth, and has been taken advantage of m the parturition of the higher animals." JJ.ARWIN .ANJJ HIS REVIEWERS. 141 All this, simply taken, is beyond cavil, unless the attempt to explain scientifically how any desio-ned . 5 result is accompljshed savors of impropriety. In the other place, Darwin is contemplating the patent fact that ''perfection here below" is relative, not absolute-and illustrating this by the circumstance that European animals, and especially plants, are now proving to be better adapted f~r New Zealand than many of the indigenous ones-that" the correction for the aberration of light is said, on high authority, not to be quite perfect even in that most perfect organ, the eye." And then follows the second extract of the reviewer. But what is the position of the reviewer upon his own interpretation of these passages~ If he insists that green woodpeckers were specifically created so in order that they might be less liable to capture, must he not equally hold that the black and pied ones were specifically made of these colors in order that they might be more liable to be caught~ And would an explanation of the mode in which those woodpecke: r:s came to be gr.een, however complete, convince him that the color was undesigned~ · As to the other illustration, is the reviewer so complete an optimist as to insist that the arrangement and the weapon are wholly perfect (guoad the insect) the normal use of which often causes the animal fatally to injure or to disembowel itself~ Either way it seems to us that the argument here, as well as the insect, performs hari-kari. The E waminer adds : "We should in like manner object to the wordfavomole as implying that some species are placed by the Oreator tmder ~nfavora'ble circumstances, at least under such as might be advantageously modified." 7 |