Darwiniana : Essays — Volume 02Huxley, Thomas Henry
Science
Darwiniana : Essays — Volume 02
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882; Evolution (Biology)
The Quarterly Reviewer admits "the certainty of the action of natural
selection" (p. 49); and further allows that there is an _à priori_
probability in favour of the evolution of man from some lower animal form,
if these lower animal forms themselves have arisen by evolution.
Mr. Wallace and Mr. Mivart go much further than this. They are as stout
believers in evolution as Mr. Darwin himself; but Mr. Wallace denies that
man can have been evolved from a lower animal by that process of natural
selection which he, with Mr. Darwin, holds to have been sufficient for the
evolution of all animals below man; while Mr. Mivart, admitting that
natural selection has been one of the conditions of the evolution of the
animals below man, maintains that natural selection must, even in their
case, have been supplemented by "some other cause"--of the nature of which,
unfortunately, he does not give us any idea. Thus Mr. Mivart is less of a
Darwinian than Mr. Wallace, for he has less faith in the power of natural
selection. But he is more of an evolutionist than Mr. Wallace, because Mr.
Wallace thinks it necessary to call in an intelligent agent--a sort of
supernatural Sir John Sebright--to produce even the animal frame of man;
while Mr. Mivart requires no Divine assistance till he comes to man's soul.
Thus there is a considerable divergence between Mr. Wallace and Mr. Mivart.
On the other hand, there are some curious similarities between Mr. Mivart
and the Quarterly Reviewer, and these are sometimes so close, that, if Mr.
Mivart thought it worth while, I think he might make out a good case of
plagiarism against the Reviewer, who studiously abstains from quoting him.
Both the Reviewer and Mr. Mivart reproach Mr. Darwin with being, "like so
many other physicists," entangled in a radically false metaphysical system,
and with setting at nought the first principles of both philosophy and
religion. Both enlarge upon the necessity of a sound philosophical basis,
and both, I venture to add, make a conspicuous exhibition of its absence.
The Quarterly Reviewer believes that man "differs more from an elephant or
a gorilla than do these from the dust of the earth on which they tread,"
and Mr. Mivart has expressed the opinion that there is more difference
between man and an ape than there is between an ape and a piece of granite.
[Footnote: See the _Tablet_ for March 11, 1871.]
And even when Mr. Mivart (p. 86) trips in a matter of anatomy, and creates
a difficulty for Mr. Darwin out of a supposed close similarity between the
eyes of fishes and cephalopods, which (as Gegenbaur and others have clearly
shown) does not exist, the Quarterly Reviewer adopts the argument without
hesitation (p. 66).
There is another important point, however, in which it is hard to say
whether Mr. Mivart diverges from the Quarterly Reviewer or not.
The Reviewer declares that Mr. Darwin has, "with needless opposition, set
at nought the first principles of both philosophy and religion" (p. 90).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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