Evolution and Ethics, and Other EssaysHuxley, Thomas Henry
Philosophy
Evolution and Ethics, and Other Essays
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Capital; Ethics, Evolutionary; Salvation Army
Note also, in this connection, that along with a wonderful persistence
of type, with change of species, genera, orders, etc., from formation
to formation, no species and no higher group which has once
unequivocally died out ever afterward reappears. Why is this, but that
the link of generation has been sundered? Why, on the hypothesis of
independent originations, were not failing species recreated, either
identically or with a difference, in regions eminently adapted to their
well-being? To take a striking case. That no part of the world now
offers more suitable conditions for wild horses and cattle than the
pampas and other plains of South America, is shown by the facility with
which they have there run wild and enormously multiplied, since
introduced from the Old World not long ago. There was no wild American
stock. Yet in the times of the mastodon and megatherium, at the dawn of
the present period, wild-horses--certainly very much like the existing
horse--roamed over those plains in abundance. On the principle of
original and direct created adaptation of species to climate and other
conditions, why were they not reproduced, when, after the colder
intervening era, those regions became again eminently adapted to such
animals? Why, but because, by their complete extinction in South
America, the line of descent was there utterly broken? Upon the
ordinary hypothesis, there is no scientific explanation possible of
this series of facts, and of many others like them. Upon the new
hypothesis, "the succession of the same types of structure within the
same areas during the later geological periods ceases to be mysterious,
and is simply explained by inheritance." Their cessation is failure of
issue.
Along with these considerations the fact (alluded to on page 98) should
be remembered that, as a general thing, related species of the present
age are geographically associated. The larger part of the plants, and
still more of the animals, of each separate country are peculiar to it;
and, as most species now flourish over the graves of their by-gone
relatives of former ages, so they now dwell among or accessibly near
their kindred species.
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