Criticisms on Origin of Species | Page 6

us to give Professor Kolliker's arguments in detail; our readers will find a full and accurate version of them in the 'Reader' for August 13th and 20th, 1864.
"1. No transitional forms between existing species are known; and known varieties, whether selected or spontaneous, never go so far as to establish new species."
To this Professor Kolliker appears to attach some weight. He makes the suggestion that the short-faced tumbler pigeon may be a pathological product.
"2. No transitional forms of animals are met with among the organic remains of earlier epochs."
Upon this, Professor Kolliker remarks that the absence of transitional forms in the fossil world, though not necessarily fatal to Darwin's views, weakens his case.
"3. The struggle for existence does not take place."
To this objection, urged by Pelzeln, Kolliker, very justly, attaches no weight.
"4. A tendency of organisms to give rise to useful varieties, and a natural selection, do not exist.
"The varieties which are found arise in consequence of manifold external influences, and it is not obvious why they all, or partially, should be particularly useful. Each animal suffices for its own ends, is perfect of its kind, and needs no further development. Should, however, a variety be useful and even maintain itself, there is no obvious reason why it should change any further. The whole conception of the imperfection of organisms and the necessity of their becoming perfected is plainly the weakest side of Darwin's Theory, and a 'pis aller' (Nothbehelf) because Darwin could think of no other principle by which to explain the metamorphoses which, as I also believe, have occurred."
Here again we must venture to dissent completely from Professor Kolliker's conception of Mr. Darwin's hypothesis. It appears to us to be one of the many peculiar merits of that hypothesis that it involves no belief in a necessary and continual progress of organisms.
Again, Mr. Darwin, if we read him aright, assumes no special tendency of organisms to give rise to useful varieties, and knows nothing of needs of development, or necessity of perfection. What he says is, in substance: All organisms vary. It is in the highest degree improbable that any given variety should have exactly the same relations to surrounding conditions as the parent stock. In that case it is either better fitted (when the variation may be called useful), or worse fitted, to cope with them. If better, it will tend to supplant the parent stock; if worse, it will tend to be extinguished by the parent stock.
If (as is hardly conceivable) the new variety is so perfectly adapted to the conditions that no improvement upon it is possible,--it will persist, because, though it does not cease to vary, the varieties will be inferior to itself.
If, as is more probable, the new variety is by no means perfectly adapted to its conditions, but only fairly well adapted to them, it will persist, so long as none of the varieties which it throws off are better adapted than itself.
On the other hand, as soon as it varies in a useful way, i.e. when the variation is such as to adapt it more perfectly to its conditions, the fresh variety will tend to supplant the former.
So far from a gradual progress towards perfection forming any necessary part of the Darwinian creed, it appears to us that it is perfectly consistent with indefinite persistence in one estate, or with a gradual retrogression. Suppose, for example, a return of the glacial epoch and a spread of polar climatal conditions over the whole globe. The operation of natural selection under these circumstances would tend, on the whole, to the weeding out of the higher organisms and the cherishing of the lower forms of life. Cryptogamic vegetation would have the advantage over Phanerogamic; Hydrozoa over Corals; Crustacea over Insecta, and Amphipoda and Isopoda over the higher Crustacea; Cetaceans and Seals over the Primates; the civilization of the Esquimaux over that of the European.
"5. Pelzeln has also objected that if the later organisms have proceeded from the earlier, the whole developmental series, from the simplest to the highest, could not now exist; in such a case the simpler organisms must have disappeared."
To this Professor Kolliker replies, with perfect justice, that the conclusion drawn by Pelzeln does not really follow from Darwin's premisses, and that, if we take the facts of Palaeontology as they stand, they rather support than oppose Darwin's theory.
"6. Great weight must be attached to the objection brought forward by Huxley, otherwise a warm supporter of Darwin's hypothesis, that we know of no varieties which are sterile with one another, as is the rule among sharply distinguished animal forms.
"If Darwin is right, it must be demonstrated that forms may be produced by selection, which, like the present sharply distinguished animal forms, are infertile, when coupled with one another, and this has not