Canterbury Pieces | Page 8

lapse of time slight
deviations would undoubtedly become permanent and inheritable, those
alone being perpetuated which were beneficial to individuals in whom
they appeared. Repeat the process with each deviation and we shall
again obtain divergences (in the course of ages) differing more strongly
from the ancestral form, and again those that enable their possessor to
struggle for existence most efficiently will be preserved. Repeat this
process for millions and millions of years, and, as it is impossible to
assign any limit to variability, it would seem as though the present
diversities of species must certainly have come about sooner or later,
and that other divergences will continue to come about to the end of
time. The great agent in this development of life has been competition.
This has culled species after species, and secured that those alone
should survive which were best fitted for the conditions by which they
found themselves surrounded. Endeavour to take a bird's-eye view of
the whole matter. See battle after battle, first in one part of the world,
then in another, sometimes raging more fiercely and sometimes less;
even as in human affairs war has always existed in some part of the
world from the earliest known periods, and probably always will exist.
While a species is conquering in one part of the world it is being
subdued in another, and while its conquerors are indulging in their
triumph down comes the fiat for their being culled and drafted out,
some to life and some to death, and so forth ad infinitum.
C. It is very horrid.
F. No more horrid than that you should eat roast mutton or boiled beef.
C. But it is utterly subversive of Christianity; for if this theory is true
the fall of man is entirely fabulous; and if the fall, then the redemption,
these two being inseparably bound together.
F. My dear friend, there I am not bound to follow you. I believe in
Christianity, and I believe in Darwin. The two appear irreconcilable.
My answer to those who accuse me of inconsistency is, that both being
undoubtedly true, the one must be reconcilable with the other, and that
the impossibility of reconciling them must be only apparent and
temporary, not real. The reconciliation will never be effected by

planing a little off the one and a little off the other and then gluing them
together with glue. People will not stand this sort of dealing, and the
rejection of the one truth or of the other is sure to follow upon any such
attempt being persisted in. The true course is to use the freest candour
in the acknowledgment of the difficulty; to estimate precisely its real
value, and obtain a correct knowledge of its precise form. Then and
then only is there a chance of any satisfactory result being obtained. For
unless the exact nature of the difficulty be known first, who can attempt
to remove it? Let me re-state the matter once again. All animals and
plants in a state of Nature are undergoing constant competition for the
necessaries of life. Those that can hold their ground hold it; those that
cannot hold it are destroyed. But as it also happens that slight changes
of food, of habit, of climate, of circumjacent accident, and so forth,
produce a slight tendency to vary in the offspring of any plant or
animal, it follows that among these slight variations some may be
favourable to the individual in whom they appear, and may place him
in a better position than his fellows as regards the enemies with whom
his interests come into collision. In this case he will have a better
chance of surviving than his fellows; he will thus stand also a better
chance of continuing the species, and in his offspring his own slight
divergence from the parent type will be apt to appear. However slight
the divergence, if it be beneficial to the individual it is likely to
preserve the individual and to reappear in his offspring, and this
process may be repeated ad infinitum. Once grant these two things, and
the rest is a mere matter of time and degree. That the immense
differences between the camel and the pig should have come about in
six thousand years is not believable; but in six hundred million years it
is not incredible, more especially when we consider that by the
assistance of geology a very perfect chain has been formed between the
two. Let this instance suffice. Once grant the principles, once grant that
competition is a great power in Nature, and that changes of
circumstances and habits produce a tendency to variation in the
offspring (no matter how slight such variation may be), and unless you
can define the possible limit of such variation during