Vulgar words in Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin (Page 1)
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In like manner, if animals bred freely _inter se_ before our eyes, as for example the horse and ass, the fact was to be noted, but no animals were to be classed as capable of interbreeding until they had asserted their right to such classification by breeding with tolerable certainty.
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"The true method," he writes, "is the complete description and exact history of each particular object,"[39] and later on he asks, "is it not more simple, more natural and more true to call an ass an ass, and a cat a cat, than to say, without knowing why, that an ass is a horse, and a cat a lynx.
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On turning, however, to Buffon himself, I find the passage to stand as follows:-- "_Although_ the different species of animals are separated from one another by a space which Nature cannot overstep--_yet some of them approach so nearly to one another in so many respects that there is only room enough left for the getting in of a line of separation between them_,"[57] and on the following page he distinctly encourages the idea of the mutability of species in the following passage:-- "In place of regarding the ass as a degenerate horse, there would be more reason in calling the horse a more perfect kind of ass (un âne perfectionné), and the sheep a more delicate kind of goat, that we have tended, perfected, and propagated for our use, and that the more perfect animals in general--especially the domestic animals--_draw their origin from some less perfect species of that kind of wild animal which they most resemble.
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He may be trusted to have seen that if he once allowed the thin end of this wedge into his system, he could no more assign limits to the effect which living forms might produce upon their own organisms by effort and ingenuity in the course of long time, than he could set limits to what he had called the power of Nature if he was once to admit that an ass and a horse might, through that power, have been descended from a common ancestor.
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I may give the following as an example:-- "We do not know whether or no the zebra would breed with the horse or ass--whether the large-tailed Barbary sheep would be fertile if crossed with our own--whether the chamois is not a wild goat; and whether it would not form an intermediate breed if crossed with our domesticated goats; we do not know whether the differences between apes are really specific, or whether apes are not like dogs, one single species, of which there are many different breeds.... Our ignorance concerning all these facts is almost inevitable, as the experiments which would decide them require more time, pains, and money than can be spared from, the life and fortune of an ordinary man.
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But he has shown us long since how clearly he saw the impossibility of limiting mutability, if he once admitted so much of the thin end of the wedge as that a horse and an ass might be related.
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and _sometimes_ equally convenient, 9, 354, 365 Act of Parliament, Natural Selection compared to a certain kind of, 358 Age, old, the phenomena of, 67, 204, 381 Aggregation, the spirit of the age tends towards, 397, 398 Ahead, no organism sees very far, 44, 48, 54, 384 Aldrovandus, Buffon on the learned, 93 Alive, when we must not say that an animal is alive (to be retracted), 279 Allen, Grant, on 'Evolution, Old and New,' 386-388 ---- on the decay of criticism, 388 ---- calls Evolutionism "an almost exclusively English impulse," 393 Alternations of fat and lean years, Buffon on, 125 Amoeba, the, did not conceive the idea of an eye and work towards it, 43, 44, 384 Analogies, false, all words are apt to turn out to be, 365 Animals, contracts among, Dr. E. Darwin on, 205 Ape, the, and man, 90 Apes and monkeys, Buffon on, 153 ---- and children fall on all-fours at the approach of danger, 312 Apparentibus, _de non_, _et non existentibus, &c._, 36 Appearances, rather superficial, our only guide to classification, 34, 35, 36, 198, 204 Appetency, Paley's argument against the view that structures have been developed through, 22, 45 Aristides, C. Darwin as just as, 363 Aristotle denied teleology, 4 Artificial and real foot, differences between, 25 Asceticism, virtue errs on the side of excess rather than on that of, 35 Ass, the, and horse, Buffon's pregnant passage on their relationship, 80, 90, 91, 100, 101, 142, 143, 155, 164, 311 Authority, a hard thing to weigh, 253 BACON, F., on evolution, 69 Balzac, quotation from, on memory and instinct, 67 Bark, Erasmus Darwin's theory of, 208 Beaver, trowel incorporated into the beaver's organism, 8 Bees, neutralization of working, an act of abortion, 250 Beetles, Madeira, Lamarck and C. Darwin's views of their winglessness compared, 373, 380 Begin, How could the eye _begin_?
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---- rudimentary organs repeated through mere force of, 38, 39 ---- Buffon on, 148, 159, 160, 161, 162 ---- a second Nature, Lamarck on, 300 Habits, or use, and organ, Lamarck on the interaction of, 292, 311 Haeckel, on design, 4, 5 ---- on Goethe as an evolutionist, 71 ---- does not appear to know of Buffon as an evolutionist, 71, 393 ---- his surprising statement concerning Lamarck, 73 ---- his ignorance concerning Erasmus Darwin, 73, 393 ---- on Lamarck, 246, 247 ---- A. R. Wallace's review of his "Evolution of Man," 382, 384 Hamlet, the "Origin of Species" like "Hamlet" without Hamlet, 363 Handiest, a man should do whatever comes handiest, 51, 52 Hare, Buffon on the, 123, &c. Hartmann's philosophy of the unconscious, and "Life and Habit," 56, 57 Hearing, when we once reach animals so low as to have no organ of, we lose this organ for good and all, 379 Heredity and habit, Buffon on, 148, 159, 160, 161, 162 ---- only another term for unknown causes, unless the "Life and Habit" theory be adopted, 384 Hering, Professor, referred to, 66, 67 ---- his theory as given in "Nature" by Ray Lankester, 198-200 Herschel, Sir John, compares natural selection to the Laputan method of making books, 10 Higgling and haggling of the market, 50 History of the universe, each organism is a, from its own point of view, 31 Horse and ass, Buffon's most pregnant passage on the, 80, 90, 91, 100, 101, 142, 143, 155, 164, 311 ---- and man, skeleton of the, 88, 89 ---- and zebra, Buffon on the, example of irony, 80, 155, 164 Hume, his saying that generation is more remarkable than reason, 233 Huxley, Professor, referred to, 93 ---- pointed out to Professor Mivart the difficulty in the way of natural selection, 344 ---- his ignorance concerning the earlier history of evolution, 392, 393 Hybridism, Buffon on, 117, 118 Hybrids, sterility of, Lamarck on, and C. Darwin on, 272, 273 IDEAS, the bond or nexus of our, 23, 29, 30 Ignorance, the prevailing, concerning the earlier evolutionists, 61 ---- it is easy to hide our, under such expressions as "plan of creation," or natural selection, 358 Imitation, instinct not referable to, as maintained by Erasmus Darwin, 202 Immutability of species and design commonly accepted together, 9, 10 Improvements, small successive, in man's inventions, 44, 46, 47, 54, 55, 384 Inaccuracy of thought, C. Darwin accused of, 359 Incipiency, of complex structures, a difficulty in the way of the Natural selection view of evolution, 21, 22 Incorporate, the designer is, with the organism, 30 Increase, geometrical ratio of Buffon on the, 123 ---- Lamarck on, 280 ---- Patrick Matthew on, 320, 321 Indefinite, with C. Darwin the variations are, 342, 344 Indifference, I say I am more indifferent than I think I am, whether mind is or is not the least misleading symbol for the cause that sustains the universe, 371 Indirect action of conditions of existence according to Lamarck, 294, 299, 306.