The Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution | Page 7

manifested in special creation, or by descent with adaptive modification? If it is said by design manifested in special creation, we must suppose that the Deity formed an archetypal plan of certain structures, and that He determined to adhere to this plan through all the modifications which those structures exhibit. Now the difficulties in the way of this supposition are prodigious, if not quite insurmountable. In the first place, why is it that some structures are selected as typical and not others? Why should the vertebral skeleton, for instance, be tortured into every conceivable variety of modification in order to make it serviceable for as great a variety of functions; while another structure, such as the eye, is made in different sub-kingdoms on fundamentally different plans, notwithstanding that it has throughout to perform the same function? Will any one have the hardihood to assert that in the case of the skeleton the Deity has endeavoured to show His ingenuity by the manifold functions to which He has made the same structure subservient; while in the case of the eye He has endeavoured to show his resources by the manifold structures which He has to subserve the same function? If so, it appears to me a most unfortunate circumstance, that throughout both the vegetable and animal kingdoms, all cases which can be pointed to as showing ingenious adaptation of the same typical structure to the performance of widely different functions, are cases which come within the limits of the same natural group of plants and animals, and therefore admit of being equally well explained by descent from a common ancestry; while all cases of widely different structures performing the same function are to be found in different groups of plants or animals, and are therefore suggestive of independent variations arising in the different lines of hereditary descent.
To take a specific illustration. The octopus or devil-fish belongs to a widely different class of animals from a true fish, and yet its eye, in general appearance, looks wonderfully like the eye of a true fish. Now, Mr. Mivart pointed to this fact as a great difficulty in the way of the theory of evolution by natural selection, because it must clearly be a most improbable thing that so complicated a structure as the eye of a fish should happen to be arrived at through each of two totally different lines of descent. And this difficulty would, indeed, be almost fatal to the theory of evolution by natural selection, if the apparent similarity were a real one. Unfortunately for the objection, however, Mr. Darwin clearly showed, in his reply, that in no one anatomical feature of typical importance do the two structures resemble one another; so that in point of fact the two organs do not resemble one another in any particular further than it is necessary that they should, if both are to serve as organs of sight. But now, suppose that this had not been the case, and that the two structures, besides presenting the necessary superficial resemblance, had also presented an anatomical resemblance; with what tremendous force might it have then been urged,--"Your hypothesis of hereditary descent with progressive modification being here excluded, by the fact that the animals compared belong to two widely different branches of the tree of life, how are we to explain the identity of type manifested by these two complicated organs of vision? The only hypothesis open to us is intelligent adherence to an ideal type." But as this cannot now be urged in any one case throughout the whole organic world, we may, on the other hand, present it as a most significant fact, that, while within the limits of the same large branch of the tree of life we constantly find the same typical structures modified so as to perform very different functions, we never find any vestige of these particular types of structure in other large divisions of that tree. In other words, we never find typical structures appearing except in cases where their presence may be explained by the hypothesis of hereditary descent; while in thousands of such cases we find these structures undergoing every conceivable variety of adaptive modification.
Consequently, special creationists must fall back upon another position and say,--"Well, but it may have pleased the Deity to form a certain number of ideal types, and never to allow the structures occurring in the one type to appear in any of the others." I answer, undoubtedly it may have done so; but if it did, it is a most unfortunate thing for your theory; for the fact implies that the Deity has planned His types in such a way as to suggest the counter-theory of descent. For instance, it would seem to me a most capricious thing in the Deity to make