Besides, thanks to the works of Mr. Spencer, Professor Mivart, Professor
Semper, and very many others, there has for some time been a growing
perception that the Darwinism of Charles Darwin was doomed. Use and
disuse must either do even more than is officially recognised in Mr.
Darwin's later concessions, or they must do a great deal less. If they
can do as much as Mr. Darwin himself said they did, why should they not
do more? Why stop where Mr. Darwin did? And again, where in the name of
all that is reasonable did he really stop? He drew no line, and on what
principle can we say that so much is possible as effect of use and
disuse, but so much more impossible? If, as Mr. Darwin contended, disuse
can so far reduce an organ as to render it rudimentary, and in many cases
get rid of it altogether, why cannot use create as much as disuse can
destroy, provided it has anything, no matter how low in structure, to
begin with? Let us know where we stand. If it is admitted that use and
disuse can do a good deal, what does a good deal mean? And what is the
proportion between the shares attributable to use and disuse and to
natural selection respectively? If we cannot be told with absolute
precision, let us at any rate have something more definite than the
statement that natural selection is "the most important means of
modification."
Mr. Darwin gave us no help in this respect; and worse than this, he
contradicted himself so flatly as to show that he had very little
definite idea upon the subject at all. Thus in respect to the
winglessness of the Madeira beetles he wrote:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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