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Show 388 DARWINIANA. But simpler correlations are involved in similar difficulty. The superabundance of the pollen of pinetrees above referred to, and in oak-trees, is correlated with chance fertilization under the winds. In the analogous instance of willows a diminished amount of pollen is corr<7lated with direct transportation by insects. Even in so. simple a case as this it is not easy to see how this difference in the conveyance would reduce the quantity of pollen produced. It is, we know, in the very alphabet of Darwinism that if a male willow-tree should produce a smaller amount of pollen, and if this pollen communicated to the offspring of the female flowers it fertilized a similar tendency (as it might), this male progeny would secure whatever advantage might come from the saving of a certain amount of work and material; but why should it begin to produce less pollen? But this is as nothing compared with the arrangements in orchidflowers, where new and peculiar structures are introduced- structures which, once originated and then set into variation, may thereupon be selected, and thereby le'd on to improvement and diversjfication. :But the origination, and even the variation, still remains unexplained either by the action of insects or by any of the processes which coHectively are personified by the term natural selection. We really believe that these exquisite adaptations have come to pass in the course of Nature, and under nat~ral selection, but not that natural selection alone explains or in a just sense originates them. Or rather, if this term is to stand for sufficient cause and rational explanation, it must denote or include that inscrutable EVOLUTIONARY TELEOLOGY. 389 something which produces-as well as that which results in the Slll'vival of-" the fittest.~' We h~ve been considering this class of questions only as a naturalist might who sought for the proper or reasonable interpretation of the problem before him, unrriingled 'Yith considerations from any other source. Weightier arguments in the last resort, drawn from the intellectual and moral constitution of man, lie on a higher plane, to which it was unnecessary for our particular purpose to rise, however indispensable this be to a full presentation of the evidence of mind in N a.ture. To us the evidence, judged as impartially as we are capable of judging, appears convincing. But, whatever view one unconvinced may take, it cannot remain doubtful what position a theist ought to occupy. If he cannot recognize design in Nature because of evolution, he may be ranked with those of whom it was said, " Except ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe." How strange that a convinced theist should be so prone to associate design only with miracle ! All turns, however, upon what is meant by this Nature, to which it appears more and more probable that the being and becoming-no less than the wellbeing and succession-of species and genera, as well as of individuals, are committed. To us it means "the world of force and movement in time and space," as Aristotle defined it-the system and totality of things in the visible universe. What is generally called Nature Prof. Tyndall names matter-a peculiar nomenclature, requiring new definitions (as he avers), inviting misunderstand- |