Luck, or Cunning, as the Main Means of Organic ModificationButler, Samuel
Philosophy
Luck, or Cunning, as the Main Means of Organic Modification
Butler, Samuel
Evolution; Natural selection
He did not, however, make his distinctive feature as distinct as he
should have done. Sometimes he said one thing, and sometimes the
directly opposite. Sometimes, for example, the conditions of existence
“included natural selection” or the fact that the best adapted to their
surroundings live longest and leave most offspring; {156a} sometimes “the
principle of natural selection” “fully embraced” “the expression of
conditions of existence.” {156b} It would not be easy to find more
unsatisfactory writing than this is, nor any more clearly indicating a
mind ill at ease with itself. Sometimes “ants work _by inherited
instincts_ and inherited tools;” {157a} sometimes, again, it is
surprising that the case of ants working by inherited instincts has not
been brought as a demonstrative argument “against the well-known doctrine
of _inherited habit_, as advanced by Lamarck.” {157b} Sometimes the
winglessness of beetles inhabiting ocean islands is “mainly due to
natural selection,” {157c} and though we might be tempted to ascribe the
rudimentary condition of the wing to disuse, we are on no account to do
so—though disuse was probably to some extent “combined with” natural
selection; at other times “it is probable that disuse has been the main
means of rendering the wings of beetles living on small exposed islands”
rudimentary. {157d} We may remark in passing that if disuse, as Mr.
Darwin admits on this occasion, is the main agent in rendering an organ
rudimentary, use should have been the main agent in rendering it the
opposite of rudimentary—that is to say, in bringing about its
development. The ostensible _raison d’être_, however, of the “Origin of
Species” is to maintain that this is not the case.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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