Darwiniana : Essays — Volume 02Huxley, Thomas Henry
Science
Darwiniana : Essays — Volume 02
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882; Evolution (Biology)
Now, as to the third test, that there are no other causes competent to
explain the phenomena, I explained to you that one should be able to say of
an hypothesis, that no other known causes than those supposed by it are
competent to give rise to the phenomena. Here, I think, Mr. Darwin's view
is pretty strong. I really believe that the alternative is either Darwinism
or nothing, for I do not know of any rational conception or theory of the
organic universe which has any scientific position at all beside Mr.
Darwin's. I do not know of any proposition that has been put before us with
the intention of explaining the phenomena of organic nature, which has in
its favour a thousandth part of the evidence which may be adduced in favour
of Mr. Darwin's views. Whatever may be the objections to his views,
certainly all other theories are absolutely out of court.
Take the Lamarckian hypothesis, for example. Lamarck was a great
naturalist, and to a certain extent went the right way to work; he argued
from what was undoubtedly a true cause of some of the phenomena of organic
nature. He said it is a matter of experience that an animal may be modified
more or less in consequence of its desires and consequent actions. Thus, if
a man exercise himself as a blacksmith, his arms will become strong and
muscular; such organic modification is a result of this particular action
and exercise. Lamarck thought that by a very simple supposition based on
this truth he could explain the origin of the various animal species: he
said, for example, that the short-legged birds which live on fish had been
converted into the long-legged waders by desiring to get the fish without
wetting their feathers, and so stretching their legs more and more through
successive generations. If Lamarck could have shown experimentally that
even races of animals could be produced in this way, there might have been
some ground for his speculations. But he could show nothing of the kind,
and his hypothesis has pretty well dropped into oblivion, as it deserved to
do. I said in an earlier lecture that there are hypotheses and hypotheses,
and when people tell you that Mr. Darwin's strongly-based hypothesis is
nothing but a mere modification of Lamarck's, you will know what to think
of their capacity for forming a judgment on this subject.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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