The History of Creation, Vol. 1 (of 2): Or the Development of the Earth and its Inhabitants by the Action of Natural CausesHaeckel, Ernst
Philosophy
The History of Creation, Vol. 1 (of 2): Or the Development of the Earth and its Inhabitants by the Action of Natural Causes
Haeckel, Ernst
Evolution; Heredity; Human beings -- Origin
Interaction of the Two Organic Formative Causes,
Inheritance and Adaptation.—Natural and Artificial
Selection.—Struggle for Existence, or Competition for
the Necessaries of Life.—Disproportion between the
Number of Possible or Potential, and the Number of Real
or Actual Individuals.—Complicated Correlations of all
Neighbouring Organisms.—Mode of Action in Natural
Selection.—Homochromic Selection as the Cause of
Sympathetic Colourings.—Sexual Selection as the Cause of
the Secondary Sexual Characters.—Law of Separation or
Division of Labour (Polymorphism, Differentiation,
Divergence of Characters).—Transition of Varieties into
Species.—Idea of Species.—Hybridism.—Law of Progress
or Perfectioning (Progressus, Teleosis).
In order to arrive at a right understanding of Darwinism, it is, above
all, necessary that the two organic functions of _Inheritance and
Adaptation_, which we spoke of in our last chapter, should be more
closely examined. If we do not, on the one hand, examine the purely
mechanical nature of these two physiological activities, and the various
action of their different laws, and if, on the other hand, we do not
consider how complicated the interaction of these different laws of
Inheritance and Adaptation must be, we shall not be able to understand
how these two functions, by themselves, have been able to produce all
the variety of animal and vegetable forms, which, in fact, they have.
We have, at least, hitherto been unable to discover any other formative
causes besides these two, and if we rightly understand the necessary and
infinitely complicated interaction of Inheritance and Adaptation, we do
not require to look for other unknown causes for the change of organic
forms. These two fundamental causes are, as far as we can see,
completely sufficient.
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