Part 9

M. Clémenceau’s Church policy may be summed up in the word Destruction; he goes much further than a mere abrogation of the Concordat. He looks to the day when Notre-Dame shall be a museum, and the Madeleine a scientific institute. He holds that the Republic should repudiate the Catholic Church and treat all ecclesiastical buildings as State property. He would not object to a Gallican Church being afterwards constituted, nor forbid members of that communion from buying back some of the churches if they could afford to do so; but he would apply to Roman Catholics the law against secret societies, and absolutely prohibit French priests, under pain of banishment, to acknowledge the authority of Rome. When people arguing with him about this scheme, remark that “persecution never succeeds,” he answers: “Nonsense, it is half-hearted persecution that does not succeed. Protestantism was thoroughly well stamped out of Spain, and Romanism out of England. I should not expect to get rid of our French Romanists within a few years—two or three generations would be required to complete the extirpation. But if the work is to be done fully, it must be commenced with vigor.”

M. Clémenceau will never do much when he comes to office, because he wants the power of moving masses. He has already been yelled at in Montmartre as a backslider because he has refused to espouse the economic fallacies of the Socialists. The multitude is not to be swayed by pure reason, and no man can be a successful revolutionist unless he have a dash of the fanatic about him. Events are nevertheless preparing to bring M. Clémenceau to the Premiership, and this consummation will be important because it will involve the incursion of an entirely new set of men into all the public offices. M. Clémenceau’s influence comes, not from his doctrines, but simply from his combativeness which has made him the captain of a fine hungry host of young men who see no chance of turning the Opportunists out of their snug places under Government except by banding together as a new party.

If M. Ferry could bring the China and Tonquin wars to a brilliant ending, could manage to create a Budget surplus, reduce taxation, relieve the military burdens of the country, and put an end to the agricultural and commercial stagnation—he might become a People’s man for some years. Indeed he might consolidate his popularity by carrying out half of the programme just sketched. The least success on his part in war or diplomacy would be inflated by his Opportunist supporters into a great triumph, because it is indispensable for the existence of a party that its leader should be a man of reputation. Political ideas must be incarnated in a man before democratic electorates can understand them. Gambetta’s death took the Opportunists by surprise, and they were not prepared with a man to put in his place. “_Jouons au Ferry_,” said M. Arthur Ranc, and M. Ferry had the great luck of coming to power just at the moment when the Opportunists had begun to perceive that there must be no more overthrowing of Cabinets for some time.—_Temple Bar._

ORGANIC NATURE’S RIDDLE.

BY ST. GEORGE MIVART.

II.

A thoroughly mechanical conception of nature is the scientific ideal of a very large and a very influential school of thinkers.[24] and the goal towards which they strive. In so striving they follow the lead of the earliest of modern philosophers, Descartes, who would probably have felt no small satisfaction could he have foreseen that the doctrine of animal automatism would be so eloquently advocated in the nineteenth century, as well as that of a mechanical evolution of new species of animals and plants.

[24] Thus Kirchenoff has said (_Prorectoratsrede_, Heidelberg, 1865), “The highest object at which the natural sciences are constrained to aim is the reduction of all the phenomena of nature to mechanics;” and Helmholtz has declared (_Populaer Wissenschaft liche Vorträge_, 1869), “The aim of the natural sciences is to resolve themselves into mechanics.” Wundt observes (_Lehrbuch der Physiologie des Menschen_), “The problem of physiology is a reduction of vital phenomena to general physical laws, and ultimately to the fundamental laws of mechanics;” while Haëckel tells us (_Freie Wissenschaft und freie Lehre_) that “all natural phenomena without exception, from the motions of the celestial bodies to the growth of plants and the consciousness of men ... are ultimately to be reduced to atomic mechanics.”

Evidently the last-mentioned conception was necessary to render the mechanical theory complete. As long as men believed in the action of any mysterious intelligence hidden in nature, and working through it in specific evolution towards foreseen and intended ends, a mechanical conception of nature was obviously impossible. But no less impossible was the acceptance of such a mechanical hypothesis as long as any belief remained in the existence, in individual animals, of an innate and mysterious _instinctive_ power directing their actions in ways beneficial to them or to their race, yet unintended and unforeseen by the creatures which performed those actions. A denial of the existence of any true “instinct,” as well as of any unmechanical action in specific evolution, was then necessary for the maintenance of the mechanical theory, and accordingly such denials have been confidently made, as we have already seen.

While, however, this current of thought has been gaining in volume and velocity, another contrary current has no less made itself manifest, and amongst its exponents Edward Von Hartmann[25] is an eloquent advocate of the manifest action of intelligence in nature, and of what may thus be called an “intellectual” as opposed to a “mechanical” conception of the universe. He lays much stress upon instinct, and is as earnest in asserting its distinct existence and nature, as are the mechanicians in denying its existence.

[25] In his work on _The Unconscious_, a translation of which has been lately published by Messrs. Trübner & Co.

As was said at the beginning of the former article, the great interest just now of the study of instinct, lies in its bearings on the Darwinian hypothesis, or rather on the philosophy therewith connected. Let us then proceed to examine whether or not the analogies before pointed out between instinct and other forms of vital activity can be carried further. Let us especially examine whether the consideration of instinct in the widest sense of that term, throws any glimmerings of light upon that most recondite and still most mysterious process, _the genesis of new species_.

We may be encouraged to hope that such a result is possible from the words of one of those twin biologists who on the same night put forth their independently-arrived-at views as to what we are all agreed to regard as at least an important factor in the origin of species. No less a person than Mr. Wallace has written the following significant words:—

“No thoughtful person can contemplate without amazement the phenomena presented by the development of animals. We see the most diverse forms—a mollusk, a frog, and a mammal—arising from apparently identical primitive cells, and progressing for a time by very similar initial changes, but thereafter each pursuing its highly complex and often circuitous course of development with unerring certainty, by means of laws and forces of which we are totally ignorant. It is surely a not improbable supposition that the unknown power which determines and regulates this marvellous process may also determine the initiation of these more important changes of structure, and those developments of new parts and organs which characterise the successive stages of the evolutions of animal forms.”

These words advocate and confirm what I have elsewhere antecedently urged. Many influences doubtless may come into play in the origin of new species; but let us look a little narrowly at certain influences which _must_ come into play therein, and the action of which no man can deny.

One of these influences (which no one has more richly illustrated than has the late Mr. Darwin) is that of heredity; but what _is_ heredity?

In the first place it is obviously a property, not of new individuals, not of offspring, but of parental forms. As every one knows, it is the innate tendency which each organism possesses to reproduce its like. If any living creature, x, was self-impregnating and the outcome of a long line of self-impregnating predecessors, all existing in the midst of one uniform and continuously unvarying environment, then x would produce offspring completely like itself. This fundamental biological law of reproduction may be compared with the physical first law of motion, according to which _any body in motion will continue to move on uniformly at the same rate and in the same direction until some other force or motion is impressed upon it_.

The fact that new individual organisms arise from both a paternal and a maternal influence, and from a line of ancestors every one of which had a similar bifold origin, modifies this first law of heredity only so far as to produce a more or less complex compound of hereditary reproductive tendencies in every individual, the effect of which must be analogous to that mechanical law of _the composition of forces_ resulting in the production of a new creature resembling its immediate and more remote progenitors in varying degrees, according to (1) the amount of force springing from each ancestral strain, and (2) the compatibility or incompatibility[26] of the prevailing tendencies, resulting in an intensification, perpetuation, modification, or neutralisation of ancestral characters, as the case may be.

[26] Mr. Darwin tells us that two topknotted canaries produce bald offspring, due probably to some conflicting actions analogous to the interference of light.

All such action is but “heredity” acting in one or other mode; but there is another and fundamentally different action which has to be considered, and that is the action of the environment upon nascent organisms—an action exercised either directly upon them, or indirectly upon them through its direct action upon their parents. That such actions produce unmistakable effects is notorious. It will be, I think, sufficient here to advert to such cases as the well-known brood-mare covered by a quagga, and the peculiar effects of a well-bred bitch being lined by a mongrel. These show how an action exercised upon the female parent (but with no direct action on the immediate offspring) may act indirectly upon her subsequent progeny.

As a rule, modifications accidentally or artificially induced in parents are not transmitted to their offspring, as is well shown by the need of the repetition of circumcision, and of pressure of Indian children’s heads and Chinese girls’ feet, in each generation. Yet there is good evidence that such changes are occasionally inherited. The epileptic offspring of injured guinea-pigs is a case often referred to. Haëckel speaks of a bull which had lost its tail by accident, and which begot entirely tailless calves. With respect to cats,[27] I am indebted to Mr. John Birkett for the knowledge of an instance in which a female with an injured tail produced some stump-tailed kittens in two litters.

[27] See _The Cat_ (John Murray, 1881), p. 7.

There is evidence that certain variations are more apt to be inherited than others. Amongst those very apt to be inherited are skin affections, affections of the nervous system and of the generative organs, _e.g._ hypospadias and absence of the uterus. The last case is one especially interesting, because it can only be propagated indirectly.

Changes in the environment notoriously produce changes in certain cases, even in adults. The modifications which may result from the action of unusual agencies on the embryo have been well shown by M. C. Dareste.[28] As has been already remarked, processes of repair take place the more readily the younger the age of the subject. Similarly, it is probable that the action of the environment generally acts more promptly and intensely on the embryo than in the older young. That the same organism will sometimes assume very different forms has been observed by Professor Lankester in the case of _Bacterium rufescens_.[29]

[28] See _Archives de Zool. expér._ vol. ii. p. 414 vol. v. p. 174, vol. vi. p. 31; also _Ann. des Sci. Nat. 4 séries, Zoologie_, vol. iii. p. 119, vol. xv. p. 1, vol. xvii. p. 243; and his work _Recherches sur la production artificielle des Monstruositées ou essais de Tératogénie expérimentale_.

[29] See _Quarterly Journal of Micros. Soc._, New Series, (1873), vol. xiii. p. 408, and vol. xvi. (1876) p. 27.

The effects of changed conditions is often very striking. _Ficus stipulata_ grown on a wall has small, thin leaves, and clings to the surface like a large moss or a miniature ivy. Planted out, it forms a shrub, with large, coarse, leathery leaves.

Mr. Wallace has pointed out some of the curious direct effects of external conditions on organisms. He tells us[30] that in the small island of Amboina the butterflies (twelve species, of nine different genera) are larger than those of any of the more considerable islands about it, and that this is an effect probably due to some local influence. In Celebes a whole series of butterflies are not only of a larger size, but have the same peculiar form of wing. The Duke of York’s Island seems, he tells us, to have a tendency to make birds and insects white, or at least pale, and the Philippines to develop metallic colors; while the Moluccas and New Guinea seem to favor blackness and redness in parrots and pigeons. Species of butterflies which in India are provided with a tail to the wing, begin to lose that appendage in the islands, and retain no trace of it on the borders of the Pacific. The Æneas group of papilios never have tails in the equatorial region of the Amazon Valley, but gradually acquire tails, in many cases, as they range towards the northern and southern tropics. Mr. Gould says that birds are more highly colored under a clear atmosphere than in islands or on coasts—a condition which also seems to affect insects, while it is notorious that many shore plants have fleshy leaves. We need but refer to the English oysters mentioned by Costa, which, when transported to the Mediterranean, grew rapidly like the true Mediterranean oyster, and to the twenty different kinds of American trees said by Mr. Meehan to differ in the _same manner_ from their nearest American allies, as well as to the dogs, cats, and rabbits which have been proved to undergo modifications directly induced by climatic change. But still more strange and striking changes have been recorded as due to external conditions. Thus it is said[31] that certain branchiopodous creatures of the crab and lobster class (certain crustacea) have been changed from the form characteristic of one genus (_Artemia salina_) into that of quite another (_Branchipus_), by having been introduced in large numbers by accident into very salt water. The latter form is not only larger than the former, but has an additional abdominal segment and a differently formed tail. Such changes tell strongly in favor of the existence in creatures of positive, innate tendencies to change in definite directions under special conditions.

[30] _Tropical Nature_, pp. 254-259.

[31] _Nature_, 1576, June 8, p. 133. Schmankevitsch at Odessa.

It is also obvious that the very same influences (_e.g._ amounts of light, heat, moisture, &c.) will produce different effects in different species, as also that the nature of some species is more stubborn and less prone to variation than that of others. Such, for example, is the case with the ass, the guinea-fowl, and the goose, as compared with the dog, the horse, the domestic fowl, and the pigeon. Thus both the amount and the kind of variability differ in different races, and such constitutional capacities or incapacities tend to be inherited by their derivative forms, and so every kind of animal must have its own inherent powers of modifiability or resistance, so that no organism or race of organisms _can_ vary in an absolutely indefinite manner; and if so, then unlimited variability must be a thing absolutely impossible.

The foregoing considerations tend to show that every variation is a function[32] of “heredity” and “external influence”—_i.e._ is the result of the reaction of the special nature of each organism upon the stimuli of its environment.

[32] In the mathematical sense of the word.

In addition to the action of heredity and the action of the environment, there is also a peculiar kind of action due to an internal force which has brought about so many interesting cases of what is called “serial and lateral homology” which cannot be due to descent, but which demonstrate the existence of an intra-organic activity, the laws of which have yet to be investigated. Comparative anatomy, pathology, and teratology combine to point out the action of this internal force.

“Lateral homology” refers to the production of similar structures on either side of the body, as in the similarity of our right and left hands and feet. “Serial homology” refers to the production of similar structures one behind the other, as in the series of similar segments in the body of a worm or a centipede, and the similar series of limbs in the latter animal.

These tendencies to lateral and serial repetition show themselves in ways which cannot be accounted for by inheritance from ancestral forms, but loudly proclaim the presence and action of some internal force tending to produce such homologous repetitions in organisms in different animals.

Thus even in ourselves, when we compare our leg and foot with our arm and hand, we find that they have homologous features which cannot be accounted for as being inheritances from supposed ancestral animals. Our extremities resemble each other in the texture of the skin, the shape of the nails, and other points, and these resemblances are not due to external conditions, but exist in spite of them; and comparative anatomy reveals to us countless similar examples in the animal kingdom. Limbs can hardly be more unlike in form and position than are the arms and legs of birds, and yet we meet with breeds of fowls and pigeons the feet of which are furnished with what are called “boots,” that is, with long feathers which grow on the side of the foot, serially corresponding with that of the hand, which grow the feathers of the wing.

Again, in disease, and in cases of monstrosity or congenital malformation, nothing is more common than to find precisely similarly diseased conditions, or similar abnormalities of structure, affecting serially or laterally homologous parts, such as corresponding parts of the two arms or two legs, or of the right (or left) arm and hand and leg and foot respectively.

Altogether it seems then to be undeniable that the characters and the variations of species[33] are due to the combined action of internal and external agencies acting in a direct, positive, and constructive manner.

[33] The existence of internal force must be allowed. We cannot conceive of a universe consisting of atoms acted on indeed by external forces, but having no internal power of response to such actions. Even in such conceptions as those of “physiological units” and “gemmules” we have (as the late Mr. G. H. Lewes remarked) given as an explanation that very power the existence of which in larger organisms had itself to be explained.

It is obvious, however, that no character very prejudicial to a species could ever be established, owing to the perpetual action of all the destructive forces of nature which destructive forces, considered as one whole, have been personified under the name “natural selection.”

Its action, of course, is, and must be, destructive and negative. The evolution of a new species is as necessarily a process which is constructive and positive, and, as all must admit, is one due to those variations upon which natural selection acts. Variation, which thus lies at the origin of every new species, is (as we have seen) the reaction of the nature of the varying animal upon all the multitudinous agencies which environ it. Thus “the nature of the animal” must be taken as the cause, “the environment” being the stimulus which sets that cause in action, and “natural selection” the agency which restrains it within the bounds of physiological propriety.

We may compare the production of a new species to the production of a statue. We have (1) the marble material responding to the matter of the organism; (2) the intelligent active force of the sculptor, directing his arm, responding to the psychic nature of the organism, which reacts according to law as surely as in the case of reflex action in healing, or in any other vital action; (3) the various conceptions of the artist, which stimulate him to model, responding to the environing agencies which evoke variation; and (4) the blows of the smiting chisel, corresponding to the action of natural selection. No one would call the mere blows of the chisel—apart from both the active force of the artist and the ideal conceptions which direct that force—_the_ cause of the production of the statue. They are _a_ cause—they help to produce it and are absolutely necessary for its production. They are a _material_ cause, but not the _primary_ cause. This distinction runs through all spheres of activity. Thus the inadequacy of “natural selection” to explain the origin of species runs parallel with its inadequacy to explain the origin of instinct, as before pointed out.

The _formal_ discoverer of a new fossil is the naturalist who first sees it with an instructed eye, appreciates and describes it, not the laborer who accidentally uncovers but ignores it, and who cannot be accounted to be, any more than the spade he handles, other than a mere _material_ cause of its discovery. So we must regard the sum of the destructive agencies of nature, as a material cause of the origin of new species, their formal cause being the reaction of the nature of their parent organisms upon the sum of the multitudinous influences of their environment. This kind of action of “the organism”—this formal cause—has been compared by Mr. Alfred Wallace, and by me, with the action of the organism in its embryonic development; and this, I have further urged, is to be likened to the processes of repair and reproduction of parts of the individual after injury, and this, again, to reflex action, and, finally, this last to instinct as manifested in ourselves and in other animals also.

The phenomena, then, exhibited in the various processes which have been passed in review—nutrition, growth, repair, reflex action, instinct, the evolution of the individual and of the species—will, I think, abundantly serve to convince him who carefully considers them, that a mechanical conception of nature is inadequate and untenable. For it cannot be denied that in all these various natural processes, performed by creatures devoid of self-conscious intellect, there is somehow and somewhere a latent rationality, by the imminent existence of which their various admirably calculated activities are alone explicable. We are compelled to admit that the merely animal and vegetable worlds which we regard as irrational, possess a certain rationality. This innate mysterious rationality blindly executes the most elaborately contrived actions in order to effect necessary or useful ends not consciously in view. We have here to consider the question, “How is this blind rationality, this practical but unconscious intelligence, explicable?”