A604    Review:     Lewes, George Henry. 1868. Mr. Darwin's hypotheses. Fortnightly Review n.s. 3 (April, June); 353-73, 611-28, 4 (July), (November): 61-80, 492-509.   Text   Image

antagonists, and so remove the great obstacles to the general acceptance of Evolution. That I incline to a multiplicity of origins, the reader has already seen; and it now remains for me briefly to justify that position. The view itself may be thus indicated. In lieu of conceiving all organic resemblances as the inheritance from a common source, and all the diversities as divergences from that source, it is more consistent to assume that the resemblances, though very often due to kinship, are very often

A604    Review:     Lewes, George Henry. 1868. Mr. Darwin's hypotheses. Fortnightly Review n.s. 3 (April, June); 353-73, 611-28, 4 (July), (November): 61-80, 492-509.   Text   Image

disposition to undervalue the immense part played in Biology by what will hereafter be known as the Lex Daruiniana; but only a desire to leave the doctrine of Evolution free to include the Struggle for Existence among other factors. There can be no doubt that Natural Selection (aided by some minor laws as, for example, Moritz Wagner's Law of Migration ),1 while it gives a sudden precision to parts of the evolution doctrine that were very vague, also gives a satisfactory explanation of the

A604    Review:     Lewes, George Henry. 1868. Mr. Darwin's hypotheses. Fortnightly Review n.s. 3 (April, June); 353-73, 611-28, 4 (July), (November): 61-80, 492-509.   Text   Image

contradiction to it, or are simply purposeless; many of them have no adaptation even to its embryonic state; whereas all show stamped on them the unmistakeable characters of ancestral adaptations and the progressions of Organic Evolution. What does the fact imply? There is not a single known example of an organism which is not developed out of simpler forms. Before it can attain the complex structure which distinguishes it, there must be an evolution of forms which distinguish the structures of

A604    Review:     Lewes, George Henry. 1868. Mr. Darwin's hypotheses. Fortnightly Review n.s. 3 (April, June); 353-73, 611-28, 4 (July), (November): 61-80, 492-509.   Text   Image

presented themselves in very different animals, and therefore that these organs, although so closely resembling each other, are not due to ancestral influence, we can hardly refuse to extend to the whole organism what we have admitted of a particular organ; and thus the admission of the spontaneous evolution of closely-resembling organs carries with it the admission of the spontaneous evolution of closely-resembling organisms; that muscular tissue should, under certain similar conditions

A604    Review:     Lewes, George Henry. 1868. Mr. Darwin's hypotheses. Fortnightly Review n.s. 3 (April, June); 353-73, 611-28, 4 (July), (November): 61-80, 492-509.   Text   Image

evidence that the organic world has had a vast variety of origins, or as evidence of successive gradations in the evolution of the one primordial protoplast. Seeing how the marked differentiations successively appear in the apparently homogeneous ovum of the highest animal, how muscle and nerve and gland are successively wrought out of a layer of cells which contained no traces of them, there seems no objection priori to the inference that in the development of the animal series from a

A604    Review:     Lewes, George Henry. 1868. Mr. Darwin's hypotheses. Fortnightly Review n.s. 3 (April, June); 353-73, 611-28, 4 (July), (November): 61-80, 492-509.   Text   Image

assuming a deeper principle, which may be thus formulated: All the complex organisms are evolved from organisms less complex, as these were evolved from simpler forms; the link which unites all organisms is not always the common bond of heritage, but the uniformity of organic laws acting under uniform conditions. It is therefore consistent with the hypothesis of Evolution to admit a variety of origins or starting-points, though not consistent to admit the sudden appearance of complex Types, such

A604    Review:     Lewes, George Henry. 1868. Mr. Darwin's hypotheses. Fortnightly Review n.s. 3 (April, June); 353-73, 611-28, 4 (July), (November): 61-80, 492-509.   Text   Image

MR. DARWIN'S HYPOTHESES. CONCLUSION. THERE seems to me only ono alternative logically permissible to the Evolution Hypothesis, namely, that all organic forms have had either a single origin, or numerous origins; in other words, that a primordial cell was the starting-point from which all organisms have been successively developed, or that the development issued from many independent starting-points, more or less varied. This is apparently not the aspect presented by the hypothesis to the

F878.2    Book:     Darwin, C. R. 1868. The variation of animals and plants under domestication. London: John Murray. 1st ed., second issue. vol. 2.   Text   Image   PDF

greater probability and distinctness of view, that the common bond of connection between the several foregoing cases is an actual, though partial, return to the structure of the ancient progenitor of the group. If this view be correct, we must believe that a vast number of characters, capable of evolution, lie hidden in every organic being. But it would be a mistake to suppose that the number is equally great in all beings. We know, for instance, that plants of many orders occasionally become

A604    Review:     Lewes, George Henry. 1868. Mr. Darwin's hypotheses. Fortnightly Review n.s. 3 (April, June); 353-73, 611-28, 4 (July), (November): 61-80, 492-509.   Text   Image

Genera and Species were produced by direct exercise of a Creative Will, whereas Varieties and Races were produced by the operation of natural laws. Such a separation of agencies is unphilosophic; and if we avoid it by the acknowledgment of every individual plant and animal being the product of a creative fiat, then indeed we get rid of the Dualistic conception of Nature, but the difference between the hypothesis of Creation and the hypothesis of Evolution becomes only a difference of terms. I have

A604    Review:     Lewes, George Henry. 1868. Mr. Darwin's hypotheses. Fortnightly Review n.s. 3 (April, June); 353-73, 611-28, 4 (July), (November): 61-80, 492-509.   Text   Image

transmit their true character. Our sheep in tropical countries lose their wool in a few generations. The tendency to recur to the ancestral form, a tendency noticeable even under domestication, is a fact of profound significance, but it is a simple consequence of biological laws, and is invoked by the advocates of Evolution not less than by the advocates on the other side. It has, therefore, no peculiar significance in the case now under examination. All we have to deal with here is the influence