Zomer 2009 no. 67
53 The Dutch Dickensian Volume XXIX
29-1 [Joij-7, ïasoa
ALL THE YEAR HOUND.
[Conducted by
look it in the face. But then comes the old
question, What is Truth Mr. Darwin be
lieves he knows, or is on the way to know.
Charles Darwin comes of a family renowned
for close observation, intellectual ability, and
boldness of speculationhe is gifted with clear
and passionless judgment, and with an amiable
and gentlemanly disposit ionit is doubtful
whether he have an enemy in the world; it
is certain that he has, and deserves to have,
many friends. He is blessed with a sufficiency
of worldly riches, and has not strong health
the very combination to make a student. He is
sincerity itself, thoroughly believing all he states,
and daring to state what he believes. No mental
reservation is employed to dissemble the ten
dency of Lis scientific views. He has circum
navigated the globe, and beheld the manners of
many men, savage and civilisedof many birds,
beasts, reptiles, and fishes. He has compared
living forms with those which existed on the
same spot of land ages and ages ago. In his
Yoyago with the Beagle lie has delighted his
readers with the simplicity and the clearness
with which he litis explained geological changes.
Tor more than twenty years he has been pa
tiently accumulating and reflecting on all sorts
of facts which could possibly have any bearing
on the origin of living things as we now behold
them existing; regardless of expense and la
bour, he has long searched for the truth respect
ing this question. He believes he lias found it,
and he enunciates his creed in a book which is
an abstract of a larger work that will take two
or three more years to complete.
But, as the tolerant spirit of the age allows
him to state and to hold his belief unmolested,
it also allows dissenters from his novel doctrines
to declare their unbelief of them, and to manifest
the hardness of their hearts by utter deafness to
Mr. Darwin's most persuasive attempts at con
version. The world in general is quite unpre
pared to hear his unaccustomed views pro
pounded. The propositions are so unfamiliar,
that, be they false or be they true, they are
almost sure to meet with a flat. denial. The do
minant and fundamental idea may be grand,
clear, and decided. As a theory, it is complete
and harmonious in all its parts, regarded merely
as a theorybut, as a history of the past,
and as a statement of present and future facts,
its authority must entirely rest 011 the reader's
judgment whether the proofs and the reasouing
are conclusive to his mind or not. It is a ques
tion of the interpretation to be given to certain
appearances and occurrencesit is a matter of
circumstantial evidence. Mr. Darwin is already
supported by a small party of disciples and fol
low -labourers, who put faith in his inspiration;
while the great majority shrink back in alarm at
the boldness of his conclusions, and at the illi
mitable lapse of time which it unfolds before
their wondering and bewildered gaze. He will
hardly be surprised himselfnor will the reader
to find that the mass of his audience have
ears but hear not, and eyes but see not—as be
sees and understands the works of nature. Be
fore accepting such a theory, we, the multitude,
must, think twice. Well, let us think twice;
thinking twice never does harm.
The creed to which it is proposed to convert
the world is as followsAlthough much remains
obscure, and will long remain obscure, Mr. Dar
win entertains uo doubt that the view which most
naturalists entertain, and which he formerly en
tertained himselfnamely, that caeh species has
been independently createdis erroneous. He
is fidly convinced that species are not immu
table;*' but that those belonging to what are
called the same genera are lineal descendants of
some other and generally extinct species.
The modifications which species have under
gone are mainly, hut not exclusively, he believes,
the result of a process called Natural Selection.
He cannot doubt that the theory of descent,
with modification, embraces all the members of
the same class. He believes that atuuials have
descended from at most only four or five proge
nitors, and plants from an equal or lesser
number. Analogy would lead him one step
further namely, to the belief that, in the be
ginning, there arose some single, primitive, ru
dimentary, organised cell, or elementary being,
which was the first parent of every living crea
turethat all animals and plants have descended
from some one prototype. But analogy, he
owns, may be a deceitful guide. Nevertheless,
all living things have much in common in their
chemical composition, their germinal vesicles,
their cellular structure, and their laws of growth
aud reproduction. We see this even in so
trifling a circumstance as that the same poison
often similarly affects plants and animals; or
that the poison secreted by the gall-fly pro
duces monstrous growths on the wild rose or
oak-tree. Therefore, Mr. Darwin would infer
from analogy that, probably, all the organic
beings which have ever lived on this earth nave
descended from some one primordial form, into
which life was first breathed by the Creator.
Is it too much to say that, in the good old
times, opinions like those would have been
strongly redolent of fagot and flame
Our philosophical reformer adduces numerous
facts which he holds to be inexplicable on the
theory of independent acts of creation. By the
supposition of a migration, with subsequent
modification, we can see why oceanic islands
should be inhabited by few species, but, of these,
that many should be peculiar. We can clearly
see why those animals which cannot cross wide
spaces of ocean, as frogs and terrestrial mam
mals, should not inhabit oceanic islandsand
why, 011 tho other hand, new and peculiar spe
cies of bats, which can traverse the ocean,
should so often be found on islands far distant
from any continent. The grand facts respect
ing the grouping of all organic beings on certain
areas of the earth's surfacesuch as a predo
minance of monkeys with prehensile tails in one
country, of ant-eaters ana toothless animals in
See Species,"
174.
in All the Tear Sound, No. 58,
