Agassiz, Barrande, Pictet, Falconer, E. Forbes, etc., and all oui greatest geologists, as Lyell, Murchison, Sedgwick, etc., have unanimously, often vehemently, maintained the immutability ol species." ^
In 1830 there was a prolonged discussion of this subject ir> the Academie des Sciences in Paris, Cuvier taking the side ot the permanence of species, and of creation and organization gov- erned by final purpose ; while Geoffroy St. Hilaire took the side of the derivation and mutability of species, and " denied," as Professor Owen says, " evidence of design, and protested against the deduction of a purpose." The decision was almost unani- mously in favour of Cuvier ; and from 1880 to 1860 there was scarcely a voice raised in opposition to the doctrine which Cuvier ad- vocated. This, as Biichner thinks, was the triumph of empiricism, appealing to facts, over philosophy guided by " Apriorische Spec- ulationen." Professor Agassiz, confessedly the first of living nat- uralists, thus closes his review of Darwin's book : " Were the transmutation theory true, the geological record should exhibit an uninterrupted succession of types blending gradually into one another. The fact is that throughout all geological times each period is characterized by definite specific types, belonging to defi- nite genera, and these to definite families, referable to definite orders, constituting definite classes and definite branches, built upon definite plans. Until the facts of nature are shown to liave been mistaken by those who have collected them, and that they have a different meaning from that now generally assigned to them, I shall therefore consider the transmutation theory as a scientific mistake, untrue in its facts, unscientific in its method, and mis- chievous in its tendency."^ If species, then, are immutable, their
1 Origin of Species, ■p. 383. In an earlier edition of his work he included Professor Owen's name in this list, which he now omits, and he also withdraws that of Lyell; adding to the passage above quoted the words, "But Sir Charles Lyell now gives the support of his high authority to the opposite side." Professor Owen, as shown above, although now admitting the mutability of species, is very far from adopting Mr. Darwin's theory. The essential element of that theory is the denial of teleology; the assertion that species owe their origin to the unintelligent operation of natural causes. This Owen distinctly denies. " Assum- ing, then," he pays, " that Pakeoihenum did ultimately become Equus, I gain no conception of the operation of the effective force by personifying as ' Nature ' the aggregate of beings which compose the universe, or the laws which govern these beings, by giving to my per- sonification an attribute which can properly be predicated only of intelligence, and by say- ing, ' Nature has selected the mid-hoof and rejected the others.' " American Journal of Science, second series, vol. xlvii. p. 4L As to Sir Charles Lyell, unless he has become a new man since the publication of the ninth edition of his Principles of Ge"lofjy in 1853, he is as far as Professor Owen from adopting the Darwinian theory; although he may admit, in a certain sense, the derivation of species.
S American Journal, July, 1860, p. 154.
32 PART n. ch. I.— origin of man.
existence must be due to the agency of God, mediate or immediate, and in either case so exercised as to make them answer a thought and purpose in the divine mind. And, more especially, man does not owe his origin to the gradual development of a lower form of irrational life, but to the energy of his Maker in whose image he was created.
Pangenesis. Mr. Darwin refers, in the " Origin of Species,"^ to " the hypoth- esis of Pangenesis," which, he says, he had developed in another work. As this hypothesis is made subservient to the one under consideration, it serves to illustrate its nature and gives an insight into the character of the writer's mind. Mr. Mivart says that the hypothesis of Pangenesis may be stated as follows : " That each living organism is ultimately made up of an almost infinite number of minute particles, or organic atoms, termed ' gemmules,' each of which has the power of reproducing its kind. Moreover, that these particles circulate freely about the organism which is made up of them, and are derived from all parts of all the organs of the less remote ancestors of each such organism dui'ing all the states and stages of such several ancestors' existence ; and therefore of the several states of each of such ancestors' organs. That such a com- plete collection of gemmules is aggregated in each ovum and sper- matozoon in most animals, and each part capable of reproducing by gemmation (budding) in the lowest animals and plants. There- fore in many of such lower organisms such a congeries of ancestral gemmules must exist in every part of their bodies, since in them every part is capable of reproducing by gemmation. Mr. Darwin must evidently admit this, since he says, ' It has often been said by naturalists that each cell of a plant has the actual or potential capacity of reproducing the whole plant ; but it has this power only in virtue of containing gemmules derived from every part.' " ^ These gemmules are organic atoms ; they are almost infinite in number ; they are derived from all the organs of the less remote ancestors of the plant or animal ; they are stored in every ovum or spermatozoon ; they are capable of reproduction. But reproduction, as involving the control of physical causes to accom- plish a purpose, is a work of intelligence. These inconceivably numerous and minute gemmules are, therefore, the seats of intelli- gence. Surely this is not science. Any theory which needs the support of such a hypothesis must soon be abandoned. It would
1 Page 196.
* Genem of Species, by St. George Mivart, F. R. S. London, 1871, chap. x. p. 208.