Little Masterpieces of Science: The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer
History
Little Masterpieces of Science: The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer
Evolution (Biology); Natural history
When we can feel assured that all the individuals of the same species,
and all the closely allied species of most genera, have, within a not
very remote period descended from one parent, and have migrated from
some one birth-place; and when we better know the many means of
migration, then, by the light which geology now throws, and will
continue to throw, on former changes of climate and of the level of the
land, we shall surely be enabled to trace in an admirable manner the
former migrations of the inhabitants of the whole world. Even at
present, by comparing the differences between the inhabitants of the sea
on the opposite sides of a continent, and the nature of the various
inhabitants on that continent in relation to their apparent means of
immigration, some light can be thrown on ancient geography.
The noble science of geology loses glory from the extreme imperfection
of the record. The crust of the earth, with its imbedded remains, must
not be looked at as a well-filled museum, but as a poor collection made
at hazard and at rare intervals. The accumulation of each great
fossiliferous formation will be recognized as having depended on an
unusual occurrence of favourable circumstances, and the blank intervals
between the successive stages as having been of vast duration. But we
shall be able to gauge with some security the duration of these
intervals by a comparison of the preceding and succeeding organic forms.
We must be cautious in attempting to correlate as strictly
contemporaneous two formations, which do not include many identical
species, by the general succession of the forms of life.
As species are produced and exterminated by slowly acting and still
existing causes, and not by miraculous acts of creation; and as the most
important of all causes of organic change is one which is almost
independent of altered and perhaps suddenly altered physical conditions,
namely, the mutual relation of organism to organism--the improvement of
one organism entailing the improvement or the extermination of others;
it follows, that the amount of organic change in the fossils of
consecutive formations probably serves as a fair measure of the
relative, though not actual lapse of time. A number of species, however,
keeping in a body might remain for a long period unchanged, while within
the same period, several of these species, by migrating into new
countries and coming into competition with foreign associates, might
become modified; so that we must not overrate the accuracy of organic
change as a measure of time.
In the future I see open fields for far more important researches.
Psychology will be securely based on the foundation already well laid by
Mr. Herbert Spencer, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental
power and capacity by gradation. Much light will be thrown on the
origin of man and his history.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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