At the Deathbed of Darwinism | Page 4

posterior piece regenerates at its anterior
cut end, not a head but a tail. "Not by the widest stretch of the
imagination can such a result be accounted for on the selection theory."
Quite the reverse case presents itself in certain planarians. If the head of

planaria lugubris is cut off just behind the eyes, there develops at the
cut surface of the head-piece another head turned in the opposite
direction. "These and other reasons," concludes Professor Morgan (p.
381), "indicate with certainty that regeneration cannot be explained by
the theory of natural selection."
The ingenuity of the Darwinian imagination, however, will hardly fail
to assign some reason why two heads are more useful than one in the
above instance, and thus reconcile the phenomenon with Darwinism.
For, according to Professor Morgan "to imagine that a particular organ
is useful to its possessor and to account for its origin because of the
imagined benefit conferred, is the general procedure of the followers of
the Darwinian school." "Personal conviction, mere possibility," writes
Quatrefages, "are offered as proofs, or at least as arguments in favor of
the theory." "The realms of fancy are boundless," is Blanchard's
significant comment on Darwin's explanation of the blindness of the
mole. "On this class of speculation," says Bateson in his "Materials for
the Study of Variation," referring to Darwinian speculation as to the
beneficial or detrimental nature of variations, "on this class of
speculation the only limitations are those of the ingenuity of the
author." The general form of Darwin's argument, declared the writer of
a celebrated article in the North British Review, is as follows: "All
these things may have been, therefore my theory is possible; and since
my theory is a possible one, all those hypotheses which it requires are
rendered probable."
3. We pass now to the question of the possibility of building up a new
species by the accumulation of chance individual variations. That
species ever originate in this way is denied by the advocates of the
evolutionary theory which is now superseding Darwinism. Typical of
the new school is the botanist Hugo De Vries of Amsterdam. The
"first-steps" in the origin of new species according to De Vries are not
fluctuating individual variations, but mutations, i.e., definite and
permanent modifications. According to the mutation theory a new
species arises from the parent species, not gradually but suddenly. It
appears suddenly "without visible preparation and without transitional
steps." The wide acceptance with which this theory is meeting must be

attributed to the fact that men of science no longer believe in the origin
of species by the accumulation of slight fluctuating modifications. To
quote the words of De Vries, "Fluctuating variation cannot overstep the
limits of the species, even after the most prolonged selection--still less
can it lead to the production of new, permanent characters." It has been
the wont of Darwinians to base their speculations on the assumption
that "an inconceivably long time" could effect almost anything in the
matter of specific transformations. But the evidence which has been
amassed during the past forty years leaves no doubt that there is a limit
to individual variability which neither time nor skill avail to remove.
As M. Blanchard asserts in his work, La vie des etres animes (p. 102),
"All investigation and observation make it clear that, while the
variability of creatures in a state of nature displays itself in very
different degrees, yet, in its most astonishing manifestations, it remains
confined within a circle beyond which it cannot pass."
It is interesting to observe how writers of the Darwinian school attempt
to explain the origin of articulate language as a gradual development of
animal sounds. "It does not," observes Darwin, "appear altogether
incredible that some unusually wise ape-like animal should have
thought of imitating the growl of a beast of prey, so as to indicate to his
fellow monkeys the nature of the expected danger. And this would have
been a first step in the formation of a language." But what a tremendous
step! An ape-like animal that "thought" of imitating a beast must
certainly have been "unusually wise." In bridging the chasm which
rational speech interposes between man and the brute creation, the
Darwinian is forced to assume that the whole essential modification is
included in the first step. Then he conceals the assumption by
parcelling out the accidental modification in a supposed series of
transitional stages. He endeavors to veil his inability to explain the first
step, as Chevalier Bunsen remarked, by the easy but fruitless
assumption of an infinite space of time, destined to explain the gradual
development of animals into men; as if millions of years could supply
the want of an agent necessary for the first movement, for the first step
in the line of progress. "How can